Neither John S. Lombardo nor Tony Demers had any professional retail or wine experience prior to establishing Providence-based Bin 312 in 2012.
But Lombardo, a former chief actuary and chief financial officer in the insurance industry, said he and Demers, who owned an industrial-training-application-design business, had the requisite “passion.”
“It turns out it’s not easy to open a wine shop,” said Lombardo of the two-year process of finding and purchasing a retail liquor license from “someone who had run their business into the ground and had a reasonable idea of what [the license] was worth.”
The search was necessitated because towns produce a set amount of liquor retail licenses matching the population, he said, and since Providence’s population has held steady over the past few years, no new licenses have been offered.
Once they purchased the license, it took Lombardo and Demers 18 months to build out the store. In describing the shop, Lombardo said it “facilitates conversations of pairing wine with food” rather than the more conventional geography-based layout of other wine shops.
While Bin 312 also sells beer and spirits, Lombardo said the focus is “principally” wines that “aren’t run-of-the mill, those heavily advertised or available on every restaurant list” and their specialty is bottles priced under $20.
Located at the intersection of Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design, and adjacent to multiple law offices, what sets the South Main Street-based wine shop apart from others is its weekly free, themed wine tastings.
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From 5-8 p.m. every Thursday Lombardo said the shop sees foot traffic from students, adjuncts, administrators, attorneys and residents – often upwards of 100 people.
“The wonder of wine tasting is you’re always right. If you like it, perfect, if you don’t … I have a sink here [and] we’ll dump that and try something else. The best way to know wine is to try it and if you can do that for free, all the better,” said Lombardo.
One previous tasting, which commemorated the week Edmund Hillary summitted Mount Everest in 1953, featured wines grown at high altitude in the Chilean Salta region, Argentina’s Mendoza province, Mount Etna in Sicily and Spain’s Mount Bolo.
Lombardo said the company is limited by Rhode Island law from opening a second shop or selling gourmet cheeses in addition to alcohol, but he looks forward to finding ways to increase revenue in coming years.
In the almost five years Bin 312 has been in business, Lombardo counts among his biggest “measures of success” positive cash flow and the fact that Demers and he are still very good friends.
OWNERS: John S. Lombardo and Tony Demers
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Wine shop
LOCATION: 312 South Main St., Providence
EMPLOYEES: 3
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 2012
ANNUAL SALES: WND
