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How This ‘It’ Wine Shop Grew From Online to In-Person

In reverse order, the Parcelle wine shop started with retail—then moved to restaurants.

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    When Grant Reynolds launched his online wine shop Parcelle in 2019, it didn’t take long to grow a cult fan base. After years working in restaurants, the sommelier and alum of NYC hotspot Charlie Bird already had a keen sense of what the people wanted to drink. It was only when he was ready to expand a few short years later that he flipped the script: Instead of more retail, he opted to open a wine bar/restaurant hybrid in downtown New York City.

    “For us, it’s a way to connect customers who may be retail customers who might want to sit and have a nice place to drink a glass of wine and maybe have dinner,” Reynolds says. And if they drink something from the menu they want to have at home? “Through having both businesses, we’re able to get their wines delivered to their door.” 

    Adding that a lot of restaurants today will package a pasta or sauce as a way to grow and scale their business, for Parcelle, “This was a way to go do it that was able to stay true to what we’re doing—which is that we’re still providing and selling wine.”

    As the first brick-and-mortar opened in New York City’s Dimes Square neighborhood in 2022, featuring small, seasonal plates and comfortable, chic furniture—primarily previously owned—Parcelle had the feel of a well-appointed home. The team all had extensive backgrounds in the restaurant industry, which Reynolds says helped them “not to bite off more than we could chew” as they tested the waters of adding the physical space to their online operations. 

    “This was definitely a new business-within-a-business,” he says, noting that while there’s overlap between retail and the restaurant—such as allowing diners to order bottles from the menu for at-home delivery—they still hold different hours and require different skill sets to run. For operational oversight, a team of three work under Reynolds and sit across both retail and the restaurant businesses, with one overseeing operations, another overseeing e-commerce tech, and one who oversees purchasing and finance.

    The value of good clear payment processing is something we spend a lot of time on.
    Grant Reynolds

    Payments play a huge role across Parcelle’s operations. While they use existing services and platforms to run the businesses, they invested in custom technology to sync the online point-of-sale system with the brick-and-mortar one. 

    Reynolds opted for a cashless business model, primarily as a safety measure. “Our restaurants are open until midnight, we’re a small business and we don’t have robust security,” he says. Instead, they take credit cards and occasional ACH transfers, adding that, with all the custom tech, “the value of good clear payment processing is something we spend a lot of time on.”

    Efficient inventory management and smart sourcing are at the core of Parcelle's operations. Parcelle leverages New York’s base of wine importers and wholesalers as well as its network of private collectors to build inventory, which it then spreads across the shop and restaurant. “We spend half of our time sourcing the wine, and the other half trying to sell it,” Reynolds says. 

    They also spend a lot of time using data to inform decisions about wine purchases and menu planning, balancing creative choices with analytical insights. “I’m not saying every decision needs to be backed up by data, but it certainly helps” guide what they're purchasing, what should change, or what’s not working, Reynolds says.

    Those strong foundations and systems have allowed further growth for the brand. Earlier this summer, Parcelle opened another brick-and-mortar location in the city’s West Village neighborhood.

    By equipping customers and those who sell wine with the tools to understand and appreciate it more deeply, the company hopes to foster a lasting connection with it. “Wine is this thing that is a real learning and education and mystery around it,” he says. “Our approach is, ‘let’s try to give people information that they can use in real life, or even outside of Parcelle.’”