Latest / Small Business Success with Fexingo: Local Companies, Main Street Stories, and Community Commerce / How a Local Bookstore Used a Wine Bar to Beat the Chains
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this bookstore in Portland, Maine — it's called The Printed Vine — and it's doing something that sounds a little counterintuitive on paper. The owner added a wine bar. Twenty seats, local wines by the glass, cheese boards. And it's not a gimmick. It's now forty percent of total revenue. Luna: Forty percent from wine? That's wild. But doesn't that defeat the whole point of a bookstore? I mean, you're selling pinot noir, not poetry. Lucas: That's exactly the question everyone asks. And I think the answer is that the wine bar actually protects the bookstore. The owner, Claire Davison, opened it in 2023, right when foot traffic was falling nationally for independent bookstores — down about six percent that year, according to the American Booksellers Association. Luna: So she saw the trend and got ahead of it. What's the square footage trade-off? A wine bar takes up space that could be shelves. Lucas: Right. She gave up about three hundred square feet of retail floor space. But here's the thing — her revenue per square foot went from about thirty-five dollars to eighty-five. The wine bar itself does about fifty dollars per square foot, but the books next to the bar do over a hundred. Because people linger. Luna: Linger — that's the key word. Amazon can't make you stay for a glass of cabernet. Lucas: Exactly. Davison told me the average customer without the wine bar spends fifteen minutes in the store. With the bar, it's an hour. And that extra forty-five minutes translates into an additional book sale about sixty percent of the time. So the wine bar isn't competing with the books — it's subsidizing them. Luna: So the bar is basically a loss leader that isn't a loss. How does the math work on the liquor license? In Portland, that can't be cheap. Lucas: It's not. She paid about twelve thousand for the license, plus another ten in buildout — tables, glassware, a small bar counter. But she broke even on the investment within seven months. The bar's margin is about sixty-five percent on wine by the glass, and she's moving about fifty bottles a week. Plus she does wine and book pairing events every Thursday. Luna: Pairing events — like here's your chardonnay, here's your Sally Rooney? I love that. Lucas: Exactly. She partners with a local sommelier who picks three wines and three books. Tickets are forty-five dollars — includes a glass of each wine and a ten-dollar store credit toward the featured book. She sells out every week, about thirty tickets. That's over thirteen hundred dollars per event, and most people use that credit and buy more. Luna: So the events are a marketing expense that pays for itself. What about the risk? A bookstore with a wine bar — that changes the vibe. Does it still feel like a bookstore? Lucas: That was her biggest worry. She told me she didn't want it to feel like a bar that happens to sell books. So she kept the bar in the back, behind a glass partition. From the front door, you see books. You have to walk through the stacks to get to the wine. The bar is a destination, not the entrance. Luna: So the books are the hero. The wine is the sidekick. That's smart design. Lucas: It is. And it's paying off in more ways than direct revenue. She's getting local authors doing readings at the bar — which drives more foot traffic. And she's noticed that the wine bar customers tend to be people who previously only bought books online. They come for a glass, discover the store, and become regular book buyers. Luna: So it's actually converting Amazon shoppers. That's a huge win. What's the biggest challenge she's faced? Lucas: Staffing. Running a wine bar requires a different skill set than running a bookstore. She had to hire a part-time bartender and train everyone on basic wine service. And there's the regulatory side — she has to log sales and do inventory differently. But she says the extra complexity is worth it because it gives her a moat. Luna: A moat — that's exactly what a small business needs. Something the big guys can't easily copy. Amazon isn't opening wine bars. Lucas: Right. And that's the broader lesson here. For any small business competing against a giant, you have to find the thing the giant can't do. For a bookstore, that's community space, curated experience, and — in this case — a glass of wine. It's an adjacency that strengthens the core. Luna: I love that phrase — 'adjacency that strengthens the core.' So many small businesses try to diversify into something totally unrelated, and it dilutes their brand. But this is the opposite. Lucas: Exactly. The wine bar makes The Printed Vine more of a bookstore, not less. And that's the takeaway for any local business: find the one thing you can offer that the national competitors can't replicate, and build your defense around it. Luna: You know, it's funny — the show we do every week is kind of like that wine bar. It's the thing that makes the experience different. And if it's been helpful for you, there's a really easy way to keep it going. Lucas: Yeah, we keep the show ad-free, and listener support is what makes that possible. If you've gotten value from these conversations, you can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure — just a way to keep the glass full, so to speak. Luna: And back to The Printed Vine — I think the real genius is that Claire didn't just add a revenue stream. She added a reason for people to come in person. And that's something every Main Street business is fighting for. Lucas: Absolutely. She's betting that the in-person experience still has value. And the numbers suggest she's right. The Printed Vine's total revenue was up twenty-two percent in 2024, and the book sales alone — excluding wine — grew eight percent. The bar lifted all boats. Luna: So if you're a small business owner listening, what's your version of a wine bar? What's the thing that makes people stay longer, spend more, and tell their friends? Lucas: That's the question. For The Printed Vine, it was wine. For a hardware store, it could be workshops. For a florist, it could be a subscription. The common thread is finding an adjacency that deepens your relationship with customers. And that's a strategy that works whether you're in Portland, Maine, or anywhere else. Luna: Alright, next episode we're going to talk about a local bike shop that started a coffee roastery. Same idea, different flavor. Lucas: I can't wait. Until then, find your adjacency.