Waterspider -

Sounds fairly standard for a FOP (Ferment on premises) store. These
are much more common in Canada than in the US, I believe. And to the
extent they exist in the US, they tend to be mostly beer, with wine as
a sideline -- I believe the one FOP in the MPLS/St Paul area is
something like 80% or more beer, and 20% wine.
My impression is that winemaking at these stores is pretty much
limited to kits, and probably a limited selection of those. No reason
you couldn't work from fresh grapes (in season) but that opens up the
potential for a lot more complication and time spent by the owner
(crushing, pressing, MLF, aging in barrels) -- the challenge is to be
compensated for that time without having the whole process be too
complicated or expensive. Kits are a lot more predictable, and you
can turn them around in 6 or 8 weeks. You are selling convenience and
fun, rather than cost savings, so I would think you'd want to have a
good selection of impressive labels to use, as well as distinctive
bottles, etc. Maybe even recipes that would go well with particular
wines, or party themes, or ... You'd also need to be open evenings/
weekends.

I believe I read not long ago that these were only legal in Canada in
a few provinces (but the bigger ones) -- BC, Ontario and (I think)
Quebec. But if that's where most of the population is, maybe that's
enough. Home winemaking is a LOT more popular in Canada than in the
US -- something like 10% of the wine consumed in Canada is home-made.
The comparable figure for the US would be some tiny fraction of 1%.

Another good place to get feedback on this kind of thing would be
www.winepress.us. It tends to get a lot more traffic that the usenet
group these days, and several of the regulars have owned/run homebrew
supply stores, and/or FOPs. So long as they aren't located across the
street from you, I think they'd be willing to share whatever wisdom
they've accumulated. :-)


Doug