Today we’d like to introduce you to Lou Amdur.
Hi Lou, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I opened my wine bar in Hollywood in 2005. My inspiration was the French bar à vin, which I’d discovered and fallen for on my first trip to Paris. Places like Jacques Melac (sadly now closed), comfortable, neighborhood places which offer wines by the glass and simple, rustic food with which to enjoy your drinks. After many trips to France, I found myself one cold winter night alone in a rental car on a dark road, in the southwest of France, en route to the town of Auch to eat cassoulet and more importantly drink the local wines and it began to dawn on me that I needed to try to fix this situation. Leaving my software gig was one of the scariest times of my life. I still recall sitting in the parking structure on my last day, after surrendering my security badge, with my box of personal possessions perched on my passenger seat and thinking, “what have I done?” After seven years, I sold the business with the idea of opening a wine shop. I thought it would be easy to find a new location, but I was mistaken.
Once you set parameters for a business location, e.g., for me, no more than a five mile radius from my home (this is the advice I give fellow ex-pat New Yorkers: one key to sanity in Los Angeles is, if you can, not schlepping in your car during rush hour), I realized just how misguided I was. There’s a tremendous competition for street-level retail space in Los Angeles, and it took me a year and visits to over thirty spaces to find a good fit. So, here I am in Los Feliz, running a neighborhood wine shop where our customers can walk in any night of the week (at least they could before the pandemic) and find something that’s ready to drink, to enjoy with tacos, pizza, or a something from the dispensary. We focus on wines that are farmed organically and made without added chemical garbage.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I think in a fairytale world, starting a new business is magic, but in reality I don’t believe it is a smooth road for anyone. We’ve been in business now for nearly seven years: it’s gratifying to have many regulars because it indicates to me that I’m doing something that folks value, but there are also so many dimensions of my business that I know I could execute with more grace and efficiency.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
We’re a neighborhood wine shop, selling an ever-changing roster of wines. Nearly everything we sell is organically farmed and fermented only with wild yeasts.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Starting any business is a risk. You can arm yourself with a Nobel-prize winning business plan, work hard, work smart, and it’s still a risk. You might have a brilliant idea, or at least you think you do — you may be deluded. You may be insufficiently capitalized, you may not understand the market, you may underestimate your competition, and you’d be in good company if you fail. Or, a once-in-a-hundred-years event like the SARS Cov-2 pandemic can take the wind out of your sails, through no fault of your own. While it may be a personal and financial tragedy if you do fail, business failures are not edge cases.
With selling wine, I think it’s important to recognize that just because you love something, there’s no guarantee that anyone else will; thinking otherwise is merely an exercise in narcissism. Then again, it’s my name on the sign above my storefront. That said, I didn’t start a wine shop to peddle products that are a function of market research and psychographic modeling, for better or worse. We try to stock wines that are farmed well, made without added crap, and ideally say something about the sensibility and traditions of the people that grow them. One way we reduce the risk of narcissism is by soliciting ongoing customer input. We host weekly tastings, sometimes as many as four per week. They’re invaluable for us as we get real-time feedback. This practice is on hold during the pandemic, and we and our customers eagerly await a time when we can safely resume in-store tastings.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: louwineshop.com
- Instagram: @louwineshop
- Facebook: Lou Wine Shop & Tastings
- Twitter: @louonwine
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/lou-wine-shop-and-tastings-los-angeles
Image Credits
Laura Joliet
