Two years ago, right after Cork & Olive set up shop in Tampa, I went to check out the place. My reaction was a combination of admiration and nausea: great service (they'll open anything in the store for you to taste!) but the wines – mostly unknown private labels from other countries – sucked. (Read the column). After the story broke, the C&O folks hated me, openly criticizing me to anyone who would listen. But I shrugged it off, figuring the public would discover the wine crappiness for themselves. Apparently, they did: Cork and Olive declared bankruptcy in June.
But a couple of months ago, the fashionable and energetic Frank Henselmann and his team of investors plucked the ailing company from the flames. Believing the concept could yield big returns with a few tweaks, they emerged Cork & Olive from bankruptcy in October.
The first thing his team did throughout the thirteen locations was eliminate most of the private labels, since so few people had familiarity with them. J.C. Milam, Cork & Olive's corporate wine buyer, has already brought in 120 new wines, with 80-100 more on the way. With a store formerly full of foreign selections, the replacements are decidedly domestic and New World. Citing the statistic that 80 percent of American wine sales are domestic, Frank's mantra is "give the people what they want."
They are keeping the olive oil portion of the business, since it represents 40 percent of their revenue, as well as the "bottles open all the time" or "taste-ucation" concept but they've limited the selection to a few wines each week rather than the taste anything you want buffet. Stay tuned to see how it all turns out.
This article appears in Dec 3-9, 2008.