Wine & Words

Sometimes I wondered how this happened. I mean, Yvonne and I moved down here in January of 2001 to live the retirement life. I had sold a business in Raleigh and was looking forward to life on the water - building small boats, working in the garden, sharing our little piece of paradise with our friends. We figured we had it made. Then 9/11 happened. Everyone's world changed. Our comfortable retirement nest egg started to shrink. We thought and talked a lot about what to do next. We'd always had the idea that it might be "fun" to open a little shop...maybe selling wine, gourmet food, books and music - our favorite things. We found that the old Windley/Willis grocery store building in Belhaven was for sale, so we went to have a look at it. The building was pretty much a wreck. But we are cockeyed optimists and thought it would make a lovely little store when fixed up. We bought the place and after 4 months of hard work and a few tens of thousands of dollars of investment we opened the original Wine & Words store.store_interior Those days of running the store were easy. One of us could manage
 it on our own, so we continued landscaping the house, building boats, making baskets in our spare
Old Windley/Willis Store, interior
 time. But people kept asking if they could get a glass of wine or a bite to eat. So we thought it would be nice to change our gallery space (in the apartment attached to the store) into a little wine bar and serve tapas and light foods out of the little kitchen. It didn't take long for the health inspectors to quash that idea. If we wanted to serve wine by the glass, we had to also serve food. And if we wanted to serve food, we needed a licensed kitchen. If we were going to serve wine and food, we were going to have to build a restaurant. Oh, well. Things seemed on the move in Belhaven. Development was coming. Investing the rest of our nest egg into a little restaurant seemed like a logical next step. We had no idea what we were in for. We built the new addition throughout the summer of 2004. New front deckNew rear entranceUnpainted dining roomFoundation beginsDemolition 1
The health department had to approve the plans before we even started building, and we had many go 'rounds about what was necessary. The project kept getting bigger and bigger, even though we were clear we just wanted a little place where we could serve wine and snacks. I still remember the day we opened the Back Bay Cafe - November 6, 2004. We were going to serve lunch during the day and "small plates" in the evenings on weekends. A few people came for lunch that first day and were very disappointed that we didn't have sweet tea or Coca-Cola or...anything they were used to. What's "hummus"? We changed our small plates menu every week. Yvonne was climbing a steep hill of teaching herself how to run a commercial kitchen. I was building our wine list and trying to write menu descriptions that would entice people to try something different. We needed to learn how much to charge, where to get food items that were "different," what hours to be open, how to manage our costs, what help we needed and where would we find them. But we kept at it, listening to our customers, learning from anyone who had something to add, and supporting each other through the completion of some daunting tasks and the climbing of steep and slippery learning curves.
This weekend, it is 5 years since we opened Back Bay Cafe. We've grown in confidence and customer base. We change the menu seasonally, with weekend Specials that allow Chef Yvonne to play and to feature fresh, seasonal ingredients. We accept reservations, because some nights we are very busy. And those are the times I'm simply amazed. I sit at my post behind the checkout desk, listening to the hum of happy voices enjoying the ambiance and the extraordinary food. Sometimes there are birthdays and I hear Sharion's cool singing. I watch Yvonne in her chef hat and hot pepper chef pants keeping the kitchen humming smoothly then coming out to the dining room to greet all the customers we know by name. And I think, "We've created something here. Something that never existed before. Something that has become an important part of many people's lives."
And I am so grateful. Grateful for my partnership with Yvonne, who is always up to the task. Grateful for the many new people we've met and friends we've made. Grateful for the opportunity to do something new with our idealistic standards of quality while running a business with honesty and integrity. It sure isn't retirement, and if someone 20 years younger than us came along and wanted to pick this project up and keep on developing it, we'd be glad to talk. And when we have the opportunity to retire again, we'll always have our Wine & Words and Back Bay Cafe experience to reflect on. I think we done good. Thanks for the opportunity.