Passion for wine drives mother to business success

She didn’t think much would come of it, but Jessica Granatiero decided to write to the wine columnist at The Wall Street Journal anyway, just to thank her for spotlighting small businesses in a recent piece on wine stores.
The columnist, Dorothy J. Gaiter, responded by asking her to recommend the best wines for a gift basket. So, two weeks later, it was Granatiero, co-owner and operator of the Savory Grape Wine Shop on Main Street in East Greenwich, providing advice to some of the savviest business readers in the nation in the Journal.
That sort of fortunate happenstance, backed by years of hard work and dedication, is typical of the adventurous path that Granatiero continues to forge, taking her from the corporate world to successful entrepreneurship. Wine & Vines magazine says the annual growth of retail wine sales in the nation averages 4 percent, but Granatiero says at her store the yearly rate is 15 percent.
Perhaps it is because she runs a business she loves.
“I look back and think, how did I do it?” she said of opening the store in April 2006.
She can remember, as a child, hearing her father complain about his job and how much he hated it. Those memories made her vow years ago that “I will never do something I hate,” she said. So, after 10 years of working in the corporate world of public relations in Cambridge, Massachusetts, “I wanted a change, something I had a love and passion for, and the one thing that kept coming back to me was wine,” Granatiero said.
A graduate of Salisbury University in Maryland, where she received a bachelor’s degree in marketing and communications, and the holder of a master’s degree in psychology from Catholic University in Washington, D.C., Granatiero worked her way through school as a waitress at fine dining establishments in the Washington area. It was there she learned about wine. “I had to know and taste the wines,” she said. She spent the fall of 2005 putting together a business plan to see if a bank would lend her money to open a wine shop. Using her background in marketing, she researched the financial considerations of running her own business and she studied the wine industry, particularly in Rhode Island, to make sure there was a niche her shop could fill.
After Bank Rhode Island (which, she said, loved her business plan) provided the funding, Granatiero established a wine shop that she says, with pride, is like no other in the state. Soft music, plank floors and the work of local artists prominently displayed on brick walls suggest an art gallery more than a liquor store.
“I wanted to give people a nonintimidating environment to learn about wine,” Granatiero said. “I wanted to create an environment that was warm and inviting, almost as if you’re walking into your favorite bookstore.”
Her selection includes some wines that are hard to find in this state, Granatiero said, as well as organic wines and Rhode Island wines; the latter, she said, always are showcased at the front of the store. She and her staff of three employees taste every wine and take notes on each so they can better help customers.
“It’s a challenge and an opportunity to be a business owner,” she said, “but you can never sit back and relax. You always need to be looking to improve, to do more than the competition, to find out what you can do better.
“You need to stay ahead of the curve,” she said. •