The shake-up of the restaurant and bar industry caused by Covid-19 has, without a doubt, had a sizable impact on the entire service sector. When dining and drinking out recovers, there will certainly be demand for cooks and servers, but what about beverage specialists like sommeliers and bartenders? Will changing conditions in big cities create incentives for drinks pros to move to smaller cities and towns?
That’s what Adam Teeter and Zach Geballe discuss on this week’s “VinePair Podcast.” Are some of the advantages of a smaller city — like cheaper rent and less competition — compelling enough to create an exodus? Are some of our ideas about larger and smaller markets outdated in this era of remote work and video conferencing? Will this be yet another way in which Covid-19 completely reshapes the drinks landscape?
Listen Online
Or Check out the conversation here
Adam: From Brooklyn, New York, I’m Adam Teeter.
Zach: And in Seattle, Washington, I’m Zach Geballe.
A: And this is the “VinePairPodcast.” And Zach, man, what’s going on? What you’ve been up to? I mean, you’ve got like three days left. I mean, Dry January is going to be over. So what are you going to be drinking? Because you said that what you liked about Dry January is you get to plan. So I’d like to know your plan.
Z: I know, it’s true. It’s one of these funny things, so just because of how the calendar falls, the first day of February — when you all presumably or many of you are listening to this — is a Monday. And so it’s not like the most exciting day to be like, let’s have a drink. I think, honestly, the thing that I’ve craved the most and it’s sort of surprised me is, I really think, I got some darker beers from a brewery near our house that were like a special run. And my wife and I got them during January, we’ve been kind of holding on. So I have a hazelnut stout, which sounded appealing to both of us. So that’s kind of been the thing I’ve been most jonesing for. And that’s kind of a good “I’m going to have a drink on Monday night. I’m not going to have several.”
A: Yeah.
Z: But really, I think the two things beyond that that I’ve been missing, definitely gonna have some sparkling wine of some sort. Knowing me, probably Champagne.
A: Yeah.
Z: And then I’ve really also been missing gin. I didn’t think that would be the spirit that I’d be missing, but so, I don’t know, maybe I will make myself a gin and tonic. Honestly it’s been the drink that I’ve been sort of craving, in part because I’ve been drinking some just plain tonic water on occasion. So which is like, I like tonic water all right. But man, that is a big-a** let down.
A: Yeah.
Z: It’s not the same as drinking a gin and tonic. I am well aware. So yeah, these last couple of days there’s always that, like, sort of voice in the back of my head that’s like, “It’s basically February. You can have a drink, it’s OK. ” And it’s like, I’m just going to hold on, and then I feel like I’ve completed something, but yeah. What have you been drinking?
A: So I mean, Naomi and I actually did this really fun thing last night where we had dinner and then at the end of dinner we had a glass each of Scotch. Which was nice, we didn’t have any through dinner and whatever, then in the late evening, we had a glass of Scotch while we watched a television show so it was sort of like our treat that was almost like a dessert. And I really liked that. It was a GlenDronach, which is a Tim McKirdy favorite.
Z: Oh, really?
A: Yeah. And it was really good. It was very delicious. And it was a nice way to end the evening. And so that’s probably the most memorable thing that I’ve had recently. And it was also nice because I’ve been drinking a lot of bourbon, and I forgot how nice Scotch is, especially in the late evening. I find that I can’t drink bourbon after a meal. I can have a glass of bourbon on a Friday night instead of a cocktail. I’d have a glass of bourbon, and then I’ll have dinner and maybe a bottle of wine with Naomi, but I’m not going to have a bottle of wine and then be like, “You know what I want? Is a dram of bourbon.” I feel like to me I can’t do it. But the Scotch was nice. I feel like it’s just like that lighter whiskey, not as light as an Irish whiskey, but it was a lighter whiskey that just is very, very drinkable. And so that was nice. Yeah, besides that, man, not much. Who knows what I’ll get into this weekend, but no real plans. It’s also supposed to be the coldest weekend of the year. We’re at that point in January when we get a few of these days where it’s just unbearable. And I think we’re there. And it’s pretty funny, too, to pick on Tim McKirdy one more time.
Z: Why not?
Z: Why not?
A: Yeah, he’s down in the Caribbean right now visiting family. And he’s like, “I fly back on Saturday.” I was thinking to myself, man, I would just have been like, “We’re all working remote. Can I stay until this crazy cold front is through?” Because it’s going to be insane. Even today, I think the high is like 28 or something. It’s no fun. So who knows? I’m actually thinking more, too, about like, OK, I’m going to have to go to the grocery store maybe tomorrow morning before work. What do I want to get for the weekend in terms of dinners and stuff that are also kind of warming and comforting because it’s going to be miserable, I think.
Z: Yeah, I would say that is one of the things about this year of quarantining that is like, it does make it a lot easier when the weather sucks to be like, “Well, I wasn’t going to do anything anyhow,” at least for me. The downside is, it does on the flip side make that bad weather feel maybe more oppressive because you’re like, “Even if I were to brave the cold, what exactly would I be braving it for?” I like to avoid all people. I wanted to mention one thing also when we were talking about drinking, because I thought it was really interesting to me to think about this in the context of this period of time in the winter where for much of the U.S., it’s cold out, and people are eating and drinking. If they’re doing it, a lot of them are doing it outside, even if it’s not very pleasant. And I was wondering, I know you had mentioned that you were meeting Mary Taylor for beers on our last episode. What was it like to sit outside and drink a beer in what I’m assuming was not nice weather?
A: Oh, let me tell you two stories, Zach, now that you asked. So one, Mary Taylor, it wasn’t that bad actually, because it was like one of these more temperate nights. And also we just had like two beers. And so I wasn’t there for that long. So earlier this week, Monday, actually, so I guess a week from when people are going to listen to this podcast, I have a friend who sits on our advisory board. He’s become a friend, but he is an adviser. His name is Philippe Newlin. And he actually runs this company called IvyWine, which is really amazing. He used to also run Duclot. So they import Pétrus.
Z: We’ve had Felipe on the podcast, too. You only hang out with people who have already been on the podcast.
A: Oh, right. Yes. If you wanna be my friend, come on the podcast.
Z: Except me, right?
A: Yeah. You’re not my friend. No, Zach. You’re my friend. Come on. I don’t want to get that message to people.
Z: I know. I know.
A: But also I like how you kind of dug for the compliment there. That was really good. But so he was like, “Can we get breakfast? I want to tell you about some cool stuff I’m doing,” which he’s doing some super-cool stuff. So Philippe basically, in addition to — and I’m going into way too much information about him — but he teaches this very popular wine class to students at Columbia Business School and Yale Law School or maybe Yale Business School. And it’s super popular. You take it one of the years you’re in school. It’s considered extracurricular, but it’s only available to people who are students of these schools. And he’s been doing it for 10 or 15 years, I think. And he has this massive following. So anyways, he’s been still doing it through Covid remotely, just like every other professor has been teaching remotely. But, Philippe’s eight courses are on wine, which I think is awesome. And so he wanted to catch up about that and talk about some other things he was up to. And he was like, “Can we meet for breakfast?” And I was like, “Sure.” And we met in Lower Manhattan. And it was miserable. I mean, I put on long underwear. I joked with him, it was like I was getting ready to go skiing. But I’m from the South and don’t ski. I don’t do these things. I don’t do these crazy winter sports where you have to wear 50 flayers, and you’re like, “Yeah, but I’m outside it’s the best!” It was fine for the 15 minutes that I had my cappuccino, and then it became really miserable really fast. And they had heaters and stuff, and I felt really bad for these restaurant workers, and it was this place called Dudley’s which, actually, they claim to have introduced the avocado toast to New York City. It’s these Australian, I think they’re from Melbourne, it’s like an Aussie all-day cafe. And there were other people there. I think it’s been featured in shows or whatever. We picked it because it was equidistant to where we were both coming from. And they have a really safe outdoor setup. That’s the other thing, too, that you have to check for. What feels safe. There’s a lot of it in the city we talked about before, like outdoor indoor dining, where it’s like literally they have four walls and a door, and it just happens to be outside. It’s like, “So this actually looks smaller than if I were to eat inside your restaurant? This doesn’t feel safe.” But this is open, but that “openness” means it’s miserable. So it’s hard, man. And yeah, this weekend I think is going to hurt a lot of places because it’s going to be so cold. Who’s going to do that?
Z: Yeah, I don’t know.
A: It’s not easy. It’s not easy. I’m just ready for a crowded, warm bar in the winter. That’s always a fun time.
Z: The thing where you step inside and suddenly you’re wearing your winter coat and all that, and all of a sudden you’re like, “Oh, it is like 80 degrees in here, and I have to shed all of my clothing as fast as possible.”
A: Yeah. And the only thing that sucks about that, right?
Z: Is the smell?
A: If you go to a really crowded bar, your jacket always winds up on the floor.
Z: Yeah.
A: It always winds up on the floor in a crowded bar when it’s that warm inside and the floor is sticky and you’re like, “Oh man, now my nice winter coat is on the floor of this bar.”
Z: I used to be the person who never understood why coat checks existed in places. Not so much in bars, occasionally clubs, etc. And now as an actual adult, I’m like, “Oh, I would gladly pay 5 bucks to make sure that no one stepped on my coat.”
A: Exactly, right? It’s like, no, I’m going to keep this and just risk it being covered in spilled beer later. But so speaking of restaurants, etc., we have a pretty fun topic today. You want to introduce it? Because the email that came from the listener came through and was addressed to you.
Z: It’s true. Yeah. So we got an email from a listener. And as a reminder, of course, if you guys want to reach out to us with comments, questions, or possible topics, it’s [email protected]. And John, who wrote to us, thank you so much for your email. And he kind of had a long email that was in part in response to an article I wrote for VinePair, or an essay, I guess, I wrote a couple of weeks ago, pondering the future specifically of the sommelier profession. And he wrote, and John is based in Blacksburg, Va. He works at Virginia Tech and also owns a wine bar there. And he was writing asking a question about basically — maybe in particular in light of what’s happened to the industry through Covid — is there the possibility that sommeliers, as he asked and I would expand this to maybe be “beverage professionals” more generally, so your skilled bartenders, your cicerones, people of that ilk who are specialized beverage professionals within the larger restaurant/bar industry. Would they be tempted to move or interested in moving to smaller markets that might not have a person of their standing already or might not have many? And sort of trading in the density and the “glamour,” I guess you would say, of big-city living for smaller cities, towns, college towns like Blacksburg, places like that. And I thought this was a fascinating question. I wrote back to John and we’ll cover kind of some of what I said. But I would really love to start with your thoughts, Adam. You’re connected to a lot of the industry, as am I. And I’m wondering, have you heard any sort of rumblings along these lines from people — whether they’re, specifically the sommeliers, bartenders I spoke of, or maybe just beverage industry pros, period?
A: So I think two things. One, I’m from a small town, too. A small college town. So I think, I used to always have this perspective that obviously that’s why you left those places. That’s why I didn’t even want to go to college in the university town I was from, even though I love the sports team — War Damn Eagle. But, I wanted to go to Atlanta and go to school at Emory, and then, same exact story, you wanted to go to NYU, right? Like this “being in a city” and whatever. I do think, though, there are people doing it. And I think what’s interesting about what you said to John that resonated with me in your response, because you CC’d me, which was very nice of you, was I don’t see a lot of people moving to these towns. And look, it’s going to have to start to happen if more people move, but I don’t see people in many of these towns looking for jobs. In like the, “I’m going to move to a college town where a wine bar already exists and try to become their beverage director.” And I think you had a good point about that, which was because if you get there and you don’t like that place, then there’s not another place for you to move to, if that’s the only great wine bar that caused you to move there in the first place. What I do see some of, and I think we might see more of, is people moving and opening their own places. I mean, yes, rent is going to be cheap in New York, relatively, when Covid is over there are people getting “steals.” But you’re never going to beat the rent of smaller towns. I mean, to put this in perspective. This has nothing to do with bars, but this is just friends of mine I know who are looking to potentially open a brewery. They’re connected or were connected to a very large, very famous brewery in New York City. They’ve gone out on their own. And they were looking in a small town in the Hudson Valley, and they found this property that was, like, it’s two buildings. It’s on a river. It has an apartment in one of the buildings that you can use. You can furnish it but it’s fully updated. It’s like this old tanning factory or something. Do you know what the rent is for a month?
Z: I’m guessing. I’m guessing it’s — I don’t know. You tell me.
A: $5,000.
Z: Wow.
A: Right? Like you can’t find a tiny office in Manhattan for $5,000 that’s a thousand square feet. So I think there are opportunities to move to these towns. And as other people in the Hudson Valley on the brewery side have noticed, people will also come to those destinations. And I think especially when it’s smaller, when small towns are connected to colleges, as you mentioned in your article, right? There are additional economic drivers that help. There are huge football games. There are basketball games. There’s usually university theaters that bring people into the town in addition to just a town that has a group of people in it that are, I don’t want to say “intelligentsia” like an elitist. But, they all would be looking for a nice wine bar to meet up with their grad students. I mean, I think that was my dad’s biggest thing when he was a professor, he just retired. But there were no really great bars to meet your students, your adult students at. Right? Because you either were at a point when I was growing up and he was really pushing as having lots of grad students where, like you were either going to wind up at the bars where all your undergrad students were at — and you don’t want to ever be there. Or you were basically having a beer with your student in your office. Or you’re inviting them into your home. There weren’t any “adult places.” And that’s what I thought was so cool about what John said in his emails was, he was like, this wine bar he’s created is for the professors. It’s for the adults in town. But then there are students who want to learn about wine who are of age, seniors or whatever, who are now coming to his wine bar, too. So you definitely are hearing about it. There’s another really great bar called Law Bird in Columbus, Ohio. Yes. I also get that Columbus is a bigger city, but it’s really known for the university.
Z: Yeah, of course.
A: Law Bird is amazing. And it’s done really well and winning a lot of awards on the mixology front. And I think there are people around the country that are really starved for these places. And as we’ve become more connected, we’re seeing what we can have. We’re traveling to New York and we’re experiencing it or maybe we’re living in a city like New York or Atlanta or whatever for a few years and having a great experience going out to wine bars or cocktail bars and then going to these smaller towns. We want that still. And I think there’s a huge opportunity. But I definitely think it’s an opportunity more in ownership, right? Than in people saying that they’ll move for something that already exists unless two or three people go and open their own places. And then there’s enough that you could move around a little bit.
Z: Yeah, I think it’s really fascinating. One of the things you and I talked about way back in the early days of this podcast, we talked a little about some of these same issues. And there I think it was a much more hypothetical conversation because we didn’t have this massive change and blow to the industry that Covid has provided. That is going to be a real prompt for a lot of change if it hasn’t already done that. And then we were talking a lot about how — maybe we weren’t talking about college towns exactly. We were talking about, sort of second- and third-rung cities. Places like Atlanta, places like Pittsburgh, maybe you would say Austin or Omaha, those are all different in various ways. And I still think that that whole piece of what we’ve talked about is really true and that there’s a lot, and I think one thing you will see is definitely people will be challenged to find jobs of the kind that they’re used to in New York, in San Francisco, in Las Vegas, possibly even, moving to smaller cities. But I think, and to come back to this specific topic, what I hadn’t considered, but until John’s email and thinking more about it, was that really, for a lot of people, the potential is going to be to build something of their own or maybe with an existing property where the ownership is willing to really kind of invest in this idea and say, “Look, yeah, we might be in Boise or we might be in Blacksburg, we might be in,” you know, pick one of our hundred. “And we know that there is an audience here.” And yes, the audience is a fraction of the possible audience for something in New York or San Francisco. But we also know that there’s no competition. We have a captive audience in a lot of ways and more than ever before, people in those places are not interested exclusively in the limited selection and arguably limited quality that their options would have provided. And we’ve talked a lot on this podcast, both in terms of the flagship pod and the “Next Round” episodes, to and about challenges in getting products to people who are not in big cities. Right? People who are just as enthusiastic of a spirit drinker, beer drinker, wine drinker who want to drink the things that they hear about, that they read about, that they see things about on social media and don’t have a conduit because they don’t have a good wine shop in their hometown or a wine bar in their hometown. And online shipping is maybe becoming more of a thing, but still not robust enough for a lot of people, and the idea of going into one of those places is really, I think, exciting, because, again, like I said, there’s not the same level of competition. And because — I’ll say this from my own perspective even — one thing that became a little hard in what I was doing professionally in Seattle, and I think is even more so the case in possibly somewhere like New York, is that to be sort of “cutting edge” you suddenly are at a point where you are encouraging people and recommending to people these really obscure wines. And that doesn’t mean they’re not amazing. Sometimes they’re fantastic, but it does sometimes take you pretty far afield. It took me pretty far afield sometimes from what I really fell in love with about wine. And it was much more about, OK, well, how obscure of a wine — specifically, because, again, that’s where I’ve mostly worked — how obscure a wine could I procure? And at some point is that really the thing? But in a smaller market, you might be able to. I’m not saying you’re going to be like, have you ever heard of Burgundy? I mean, maybe that will be your role, but it’s more like you can still probably excite people with really, really amazing wines that still come from classic regions. You can probably turn people on to great producers in Burgundy or Barolo or the Sonoma Valley or whatever. Those things are not going to be as ubiquitous or seen as passé, almost, in a market that isn’t inundated with wine bars and shops or cocktail bars or whatever. You can work in this great area where you’re not necessarily selling the stuff that everyone knows, but you’re also not having to kind of strain at the borders of what is even available to excite people, I don’t think.
A: Yeah, I think you’re really right here. You’re spot on. And, I was realizing while you were talking is what we’re talking about, it’s not like it hasn’t been done before. Yeah. OK fine, I gave some examples like other wine bars and bars I know of of the few, but chefs have been doing this for years.
Z: Yeah, absolutely.
A: I mean, chefs have been doing this for years. I mean, that’s what is interesting about Auburn now. For the last I think six or seven years even longer, what’s considered to be one of the best restaurants in the state of Alabama and I think in the southeast is called Acre, and it’s in Auburn. The chef left, I think he was either in Atlanta or in New Orleans and moved back. And has this incredible farm-to-table restaurant. Now, I don’t remember any time I’ve been there there being a beverage director. But that might be because he can’t find someone, right? I’m not really sure. But chefs have been doing it forever. I mean, that’s what kind of helped reinvigorate the Hudson Valley was all of these incredible chefs that were leaving the West Village in Brooklyn and whatever and saying, like, “Screw it, I’m going to move up there.” And then beverage people followed. So, there’s no reason why you can’t go that route and find a chef that’s doing that or just do it yourself. The models are there, the one thing I’m curious about, though, Zach, is the comment you did make in the email, which was, some people might be scared about being able to find the wines that they love in their current markets. And I get that, even if it’s something that either is not true. Right? Like maybe you can find them if you work hard enough or also that people just need to get over, like, “OK, so you can’t find your heavily allocated X, Y, or Z. But like, there’s so much good wine out there, why do you care?”
Z: Yeah, I remember years and years ago talking to a sommelier, a wine director, I guess, who was working in Charleston and then moved to North Carolina and was talking about how even just in that change, North Carolina is a pretty big population state, but it doesn’t have the equivalent of Charleston. Or I mean, Asheville is kind of a food destination, but it’s much smaller and it’s not, you know, it’s not coastal. It’s not kind of picturesque in the way that Charleston is. And what she told me, was like, “You know, the great thing about this is all the wine that I had to fight for in Charleston” because, South Carolina as a state or Charleston as a market got X amount of it. And North Carolina gets at least that much allocated by the importer or the distributor. But no one wants it, or there’s a few people maybe in the Research Triangle who want it. There’s a few markets for those kinds of wines. But she was able to go get what she wanted. And I think that to some extent where you go, that may or may not be the case. I mean, Virginia is complicated because obviously Virginia has some big cities and obviously a lot of sort of satellite D.C. neighborhoods that probably have serious wine programs or wine restaurant wine bars and shops. But at the same time, I think that, yes, you may not be able to get the exact wine you want. Although on the flip side, if you move to a place — especially a smaller city or town — and you open a serious wine shop and you show the distributor in that state, like, “Look, I can sell whatever. I want to get this, I’ll buy it.” They will take your money, generally. They’ll be happy to. Even if it’s something that they work with an importer who doesn’t normally bring that into their state. But you tell them, “Hey, look, I’ll buy two cases of this” or “I’ll buy five cases of this” or whatever the quantities you’re working on. They’re in it to do business. And so they will generally do business with you if they can. And a lot of those places would love, for a variety of reasons, those businesses would love to shift to buy higher-end wines, to sell them. It’s good for them on a lot of different levels. But the other thing I would say is — and this is the piece of it that I think I mentioned in my article — and I’m not sure how to resolve this because I do think there is a challenge to this, which is part of the reason why people have traditionally gravitated towards big markets in the beverage alcohol profession, is some of what we talked about, lots of different job opportunities. You have better access to product, but some of it is about a level of camaraderie and a community. And that, to me, is one of the things that I think is just a challenge. It’s not an insoluble one. And it’s certainly, there are some people in the beverage alcohol profession who, frankly, are not as interested in that community going forward or want to build it from scratch, themselves. Someone I spoke to for that article who I think we’ve featured on VinePair before, John Wabeck, who is a guy in Pittsburgh, a wine professional in Pittsburgh, and really kind of created the sommelier scene in Pittsburgh, not entirely by himself, but was really instrumental in creating it. You can be a person like that who says, “You know what, I don’t need an existing community. I will create one. I will find people who are interested in wine or cocktails. And I’ll teach them, I’ll learn from them, etc.” But there are a lot of people who come to big cities because they recognize that one of the best ways to learn about these things is to be in a community. And it’s hard to do that if you’re the expert. It’s nice to be the expert in some ways, but it’s hard to learn sometimes when you’re the expert. You have to be the engine of your own learning all the time. And unfortunately, the other piece of this is that, and we’ve talked about this on the podcast, too, especially outside of those regions, maybe even outside of the U.S. the perception of America as a market, especially for wine, but for other things, too, is still about, what, four or five, eight, 10 cities max? It’s a fight to get not just products, but people who are visiting winemakers and even whole promotional organizations and boards. If you’re in a smaller town, do you want to be having to go on the road, take a five-, six-, seven-hour drive just to be able to go taste wine, because the only city in your broad region that’s getting a visit from this Italian wine consortium or whatever is that far away? That’s a tough thing. I mean, again, I don’t think it’s insurmountable. I think there are some people who would look at that as an acceptable cost, but it is a real challenge for people, I think, especially younger professionals who might not be able to kind of be as self-confident in saying, “Hey, I’m going to just go build this thing from nothing.” Or flip side, maybe they’re just dumb enough to think they can and will succeed because that’s a lot of what life is is just trying s***.
A: Yep, I agree. I completely agree. I think there’s a lot of opportunity and there’s going to be some downsides, as you said. But also, I do wonder if how we’ve all become so digital in the last year might help with that somewhat. Could you still join a tasting group that is now digital and meet with people and keep your game up? Could you still join a group of bartenders who are learning skills on Zoom or things like that? So that yes, it’s a bummer. But I also think when certain markets do emerge, other places will follow. Right? I think other people will follow. People will start realizing all of a sudden that Blacksburg is a great place for wine because if one person is having a lot of success, someone else is going to open another place. That’s just how it works. When a market realizes that Italian food is the hot thing, more Italian restaurants open. And I think the same thing is true for this. It’s just people taking the leap. And I do think it’s really, really interesting to think about there being more people doing that in the next few years, post-Covid. I really do.
Z: I think the other piece of this that we can’t know now totally but is going to be interesting, is to what extent does the broader population say, “Maybe I don’t want to live in New York City?” I mean, we’ve talked about whether this whole “New York dying thing” is a myth or not. And obviously, New York is not dying. But I do think that there are some real questions as to whether, as maybe more work goes fully digital, as people reconsider what their priorities are, we may just see a little bit of a migration away from really big cities with crazy-expensive costs of living. And that might help foster some of this movement within the service sector. Because obviously, to some extent, the service sector is always going to follow people and the money. And if those kinds of people are moving — whether it’s to college towns or to just smaller communities or smaller cities — then yes, for sure, “tradespeople” will follow, too. And I think also, maybe something for us to talk about another time, I don’t think it’s going to fit into this conversation but makes it interesting for you and I and for everyone at VinePair to think about: How do you cover an industry that is maybe a little bit more dispersed? And I think we’ve always done a really good job of highlighting bars, restaurants, wine programs, etc. all over the country. But it is true that the more decentralized it becomes, the more kind of like, “Oh, how do we grapple with an industry where maybe the greatest wine bar in the country is actually in the 143rd largest community in the country? Like, that’s certainly possible, and that would be cool. But it also puts an additional kind of onus on us, which I mean, I’m interested in, but is kind of different than in an era when the only things that people seem to care about in wine were happening in five cities.
A: Yeah, I agree. I mean, look, I’d encourage people who are listening, if you have thought about it there’s definitely people who love wine, cocktails, great beer all over the country. And I think now more than ever, there’s a lot less risk to doing it. So, yeah, if you are thinking about it, drop us a line. Let us know if you’ve done it. I’d love to hear those stories, too. If you’re a listener and you’ve opened a cocktail bar, wine bar, craft beer bar, whatever in a smaller market, we would love to hear from you. I think it’d be cool to interview you for “Next Round” etc. and let other people hear what you’re up to. Because I think, again, like I said earlier, there’s going to be some really, really, really exciting things that happen and a lot more possibilities than they’re used to be.
Z: Yeah, for sure.
A: Zach, this has been great, as always. For everyone listening, drop us a note at [email protected]. Let us know what you think about the show. Leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. Five stars please, and we’ll see you next week.
Z: Sounds great.
Thanks so much for listening to the VinePair Podcast. If you enjoy listening to us every week, please leave us a review or rating on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever it is that you get your podcasts. It really helps everyone else discover the show. Now for the credits. VinePair is produced by myself and Zach Geballe. It is also mixed and edited by him. Yeah, Zach, we know you do a lot. I’d also like to thank the entire VinePair team, including my co-founder, Josh, and our associate editor, Cat. Thanks so much for listening. See you next week.
Ed. note: This episode has been edited for length and clarity.
This story is a part of VP Pro, our free platform and newsletter for drinks industry professionals, covering wine, beer, liquor, and beyond. Sign up for VP Pro now!
