Beverage Dynamics is the largest national business magazine devoted exclusively to the needs of off-premise beverage alcohol retailers, from single liquor stores to big box chains, through coverage of the latest trends in wine, beer and spirits.
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a selection of non-alcoholic items like mixers, non-alcoholic beer and wine, orange juice and tonic water. On a good summer weekend it also can move 10,000 pounds of ice. Up front, just beyond the six checkout coun- ters (an additional two are in the gift area) is a locked, two-sided glass cabinet in which are mer- chandised single-malts, high-end bourbons and such anomalies as Ciroc grape-based vodka (which was deemed to be worth a spot in the cabinet after in-store cameras revealed that a crew of shoplifters had made off with half a dozen bottles in one go). Rarities range up to a 1958 Macallan at $6,299 and Bowmore White and Gold at about $6,000 each. A Knappogue Castle from 1951 goes for $854.99. A handful of beers have also earned entry there, such as Brewdog's Tactical Nuclear Penguin at $78.99 and its Save the Bismarck at $99.99. In back are two large beer coolers, one for premi- um mainstays like Bud and Miller Lite, the other for micros, imports and specialty items like malternatives. Adjacent warm shelves contain pretty much all the brands Bay Ridge stocks. Strikingly, the mainstream cooler merchandises its suitcases of mainstream beers with their narrow sides facing the shopper, so as to boost cooler capacity and minimize the need for restocking. That trades off the usual billboard effect, but Ferrar doesn't see much of a cost in doing so. "If they want Miller Lite they'll find it," he said. At the time of Beverage Dynamics' visit toward mid-July, a major event was looming in the Maryland beer world: the long-awaited arrival of New Belgium's Fat Tire beer. Characteristically, Ferrar and son-in-law, David Marberger (who these days runs the store's day-to-day operations) had thoroughly prepared: they were plan- ning a 6 a.m. tasting the first day the beer became available. Ferrar said he'd made sure his store would be the first to have the coveted Colorado craft brew available in the state. Now at 14,000 square feet, in two decades the operation has grown 15-fold in sales to where it does upwards of $10 million annually, Ferrar said. It turns its inventory 11 times per year, including 15 times for beer and six times for wine. Ferrar said he's happy to see customers of all social and economic strata sharing his checkout lines, with sophisticated wine buyers standing right behind residents of a low-rise housing project across the street who're there to snag a 22- ounce bottle of Heineken. "We serve everyone" in the community, he said. Asked to name the core reason for his success over the past 21 years, Ferrar declares: "The personality of the store made the difference." David Marberger, Ferrar's son-in-law, handles the store's day-to-day opera- tions; Ferrar says his input is vital to the store's success. The Early Years T hough Bay Ridge is a community institu- tion by now, at 21 years it's a relatively young player on the retail scene, launched by an entrepreneur who had never been in the business and, at the time he got going, barely drank the stuff. Ferrar, who grew up in Prince George's County, MD, was working at Sysco in food-service distribution in Houston when he had a heart attack at age 48. That prompted a rethinking of his priorities. After the corporate rat race, a move into retail, where he could be his own boss, seemed like it might be restorative. "I needed a break from the corporate structure," he says now. Though he has only praise for Sysco as a company, "I was just not cut out to be in that kind of corporate structure," he reminisces. He's now 69 years old. So he returned home to Maryland, where an aunt who'd been in the liquor retail business helped finance his venture. Certainly, the project didn't stem out of any deep personal enthusiasm for the fruits of the vine: "I was almost a non-drinker at the time," Ferrar recalled. With his aunt as his "silent partner, my golden angel," he bought a foundering 4,000- square-foot operation housed in the shell of a former 14,000-square-foot former supermarket. He raised his share of the down payment by selling his home. "My wife and I put everything we had into this," Ferrar said. He did garner one edge from a stint ear- lier in his career at supermarket equipment supplier Hobart, which gave him a knack for store design and merchandising innovation. The early years were arduous. In the first five 18 • Beverage Dynamics • www.beveragedynamics.com • September/October 2011