Wine Store
Uncorked
Jeff Bonafede will be the first to tell you that the retail wine business is a lousy business model for a small shop owner. Wine consumption is declining, grape fields are being ripped out, and pallets of unsold bottles are sitting in warehouses. Costco and BevMo can sell wine cheaper than he ever could.
“If you’re just selling wine, youβll be out of business,” Bonafede said.Β
So what has kept Uncorked thriving for 15 years, across two locations in Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach, winning this award year after year? Bonafede doesn’t hesitate.
“Community and experience,” he said. “People come to see people here.”
That’s it. That’s the formula. The 600-plus wines from around the world, the carefully curated craft beers, the wine club with over 1,000 members β all of it matters. But what co-founders Bonafede, Kathy Knoll, and Gerry Vazquez have really built, at the corner of Pier Avenue in Hermosa Beach and on Manhattan Avenue in Manhattan Beach, is a place. A corner of the community where neighbors drift in on foot, where the staff knows what you like before you ask, where the outdoor tables fill up on a good evening with people who came for a bottle and stayed for the conversation.
Bonafede has worn an Uncorked baseball cap for 15 years and made community involvement β education foundations, charity events, neighborhood causes β the shop’s primary advertising strategy. It has worked because it was never really a strategy. It was just who they are.
Wine, he’ll tell you, has always been about communion. Humans have been sharing it at the table for thousands of years. Uncorked just gives them a place to keep doing it.
Uncorked 302 Pier Ave.
Hermosa BeachΒ
(424) 247-7117
1000 Manhattan Ave.
Manhattan Beach
Β (310) 372-2021Β
