First Coast Register August/September 2015 | Page 8

Sara Richelson, Jason Richelson, Vanessa K. Harper, Terence Livingston &
Michael Clement
What is your connection to the First Coast?
I went to high school at the Episcopal School in Jacksonville.
My family moved from Minnesota to Jacksonville in 1988, and I
graduated in 1992. I lived in Jacksonville all through high school
before going to Colorado for school. I traveled to Europe for
school, and then ended up in New York.
Now I split my time between Florida and New York. I’m in
Florida once or twice a month. Personally, part of my grand
scheme is to spend more time in Florida and this is helping me.
My mom and her husband are involved in Simply Wine, and my
dad lives in Marsh Landing. He’s one of our best customers! We’re
definitely all family down here.
How did you end up with an interest in wine?
I started a bunch of companies in New York, and moved
from tech companies in the late 90s to a wine and grocery store
business in Brooklyn. Then I took a detour from the wine business
into software.
We had two wine stores and a grocery store and everything was
going great except for our point of sales software—the software
that you use to ring up transactions. It kept crashing. I couldn’t
find any support and I couldn’t find any good software to help us
run our business better. When our server crashed in the grocery
store, I said ‘I’m done—there has to be a cloud-based solution.’
There wasn’t, and that was in 2008.
The problem resulted in the development of Shopkeep, which
has grown to be bigger than me. Shopkeep has done extremely
well, and since I have hired someone to run Shopkeep, that has
freed up more time for other projects, like Simply Wine.
Where did the idea from Simply Wine come from?
Simply Wine is an idea I had last summer when I was in
Jacksonville. I know the wine business from New York. We have
really great wine—all around $15. That’s what 80 percent of
people out there want. They simply want to have a good bottle of
wine between $10 and $20.
The Greene Grape (my wine store) had just that—great wine,
only about 120 different kinds, all around that same price point.
Everything was good. People would say ‘I’ve never had a bad
bottle of wine from your store.’ They would trust that.
I am bringing a similar kind of model to Simply Wine and
Florida.
8 August - September 2015 | First Coast Register

Katharine Baughman

Backyard Pops

How does delivery factor in?
Everyone buys grocery store wine. They say ‘There’s wine
here, so I’ll grab it.” It’s convenient. You’re competing with that
convenience. I’m trying to bring really great wine to Jacksonville
through our tasting room, but more importantly through delivery.
We allow you to taste all of our wine in our tasting room, and
you can order from your phone and have it delivered to your
house. I think once you’ve tried the wine that you have, seen the
experience and the ease of purchasing, you’ll continue to come to
us. It’s a very unintimidating environment.
What makes it friendlier?
I fell into the wine industry by accident—I’m an everyday
person and I drink $15 bottles of wine. I don’t want to feel
intimidated that I don’t know anything about wine. Some of the
wine stores in Jacksonville I found were quite intimidating. You
felt like you had to know about wine or you’d end up spending too
much money.
Simply Wine is everybody’s store. You should never feel
intimidated. You should be able to taste stuff. If you don’t know,
then you should try!
There’s a huge sign in the front of the store that says ‘Love the
wine you’re with.’ If you don’t like any of the wine, bring back your
empty bottle and we’ll give you your money back.
That’s powerful. People need to know is and trust us.
Where do your wines come from?
We’re sourcing most of our wine from New York, and as we
grow we’ll be bringing it directly into Florida. We’re bringing
now to Jacksonville some of the producers that we used to sell at
Greene Grape—because we’ve visited them and gotten to know
them. We know they produce great wine every year. You won’t
find these wines anywhere else.
What else do you want the First Coast to know about Simply
Wine?
We really want people to know that we’re going to be elevating
the quality of everyday wine in Jacksonville and eventually i