Maggie Gephard, general manager, Liquorama Wine Cellars.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAN WAGNER
Liquorama Wine Cellars, in Hyde Park, NY, prides itself on treating customers like family.
By Cheryl Ursin
"This is a terrible thing to say," said general manager, Maggie Gephard, "but I want our people to use their human computers. We don't need a POS system because everyone knows where everything is, how much we have of it and how much it costs."
A
Quite a feat since the store carries more than 4,000 different labels of wine.
And the people at Liquorama know more than that. More likely than not, when a regular customer walks in the door, that customer will be greeted by name. "One of our people, Diane Kidney, I should give her the title 'President of Customer Relationships' or something," joked Gephard. "She knows people's birthdays, if their husband's sick, where their kids are in school, if they've been watching their cholesterol levels. People love her."
t Liquorama Wine Cellars, in Hyde Park, NY, a landmark wine store open since 1962, there is no point-of-sale system.
Gephard admits she doesn't remember names quite as well as Diane Kidney does. Customers joke with her because "while I can't tell you their names, I will see them and remember what they drink," she said. And Liquorama gets the full gamut of customers, from locals to tourists, from wine collectors to people whose doctor told them they should drink a glass of red wine a day.
Veteran Staff L
iquorama Wine Cellars has been in Hyde Park, home of the Culinary Institute of America, though Liquorama predates it, since 1965. (The store was first opened, by owners Dominic and Laura Giambona, in Queens, NY, three years earlier.) The store remains at the same location, in the Hyde Park Mall, though the store has expanded into an adjacent storefront and is now about 4,000 square feet in size. It is run by a long-time staff. Gephard, for instance, can't remember exactly how long she's been there.
26 • Beverage Dynamics • www.beveragedynamics.com • November/December 2011
