It doesn't have to cost $100 or age for 50 years to taste good. That's why Nancy Beskar plans to help Twin Cities customers find the perfect bottle of wine for less than $25.
Beskar will open the first WineStyles retail shop in Minnesota in January at Excelsior and Grand in St. Louis Park. Beskar is an area developer for the Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based franchisor. She is seeking franchisees to help her open as many as 50 wine stores in Minnesota within the next seven years. The initial cost to open a stores is between $123,000 and $200,500, according to the WineStyles Web site.
Five WineStyles shops in the nation exist so far -- in Fort Lauderdale and Coral Springs, Fla.; San Francisco and San Ramon, Calif.; and Springfield, Mo.
WineStyles wants to help beginning wine-sippers, as well as regular aficionados, become wine connoisseurs by offering selected inexpensive but high quality wines. They are displayed by "style" -- for example, rich, buttery, crisp -- instead of by region of origin.
The first store will be 1,200 square feet.
Beskar said she wants to create an "elevated wine experience" that liquor stores overlook.
WineStyles will compete here with chain and 'ma-and-pa' liquor stores as well as discounters that sell wine, such as Costco Wholesale Corp. and Cost Plus World Market.
So far, there is no national chain of small shops specializing solely in low-cost wines, said Russ McGinty, senior vice president of retail in the Minnetonka office of Madison Marquette, based in Washington, D.C..
Specialty wine retailing through franchises is a new concept, said Ralph Massetti, president and CEO of Tempe, Ariz.-based The Franchise Builders, a franchise marketing firm.
Wine costing less than $25 a bottle makes up a significant part of the wine market, said David Anderson, vice president of Minneapolis-based France 44 Wines and Spirits, which serves the under-$25 market, as well as the higher-end wine buyer.
Many people just starting with wine focus on lower-end products first, then move to other pirce points as they experiment, he said.
Tim Hilger, a principal with Minneapolis-based Diversified Acquisitions Inc., represented Beskar in the search for space.
© MINNEAPOLIS/ST PAUL BUSINESS JOURNAL - December 13, 2004