Ep. 990 Dino Borri | On The Road With Stevie Kim

Welcome to the Italian wine podcast. This episode is brought to you by Vinitally International Academy, announcing the twenty fourth of our Italian wine Ambassador courses to be held in London, Austria, and Hong Kong. From the twenty seventh to the twenty ninth of July. Are you up for the challenge of this demanding force? Do you want to be the next Italian wine ambassador? Learn more and apply now at vunitly International dot com. Welcome to another episode of On The Road Edition, hosted by Stevie Kim. Each week, she travels to incredible wine destinations interviewing some of the Italian wine scenes most interesting personalities, talking about wines, the Foods, as well as the incredible travel destinations. Okay. Boys and girls, Chad Agati. My name's Stevie Kim, and welcome to mama jumbo shrimp or Italian wine podcast on the road edition. Today, we are in this very, very extremely noisy place Italy as the Americans would say Italy Right? And where it all started? Because I remember when this started with Oscar. How many years ago was that? The first time that we opened in Italian was fifteen years ago, but this one was two thousand and ten, twelve years ago. Yeah. Twelve years ago. So I was here actually at the opening, and I met you for the first time at the opening. So who are you? What's your name? My name is Dino Bory. I work for Italy since, ever I say, I'm a a vintage wine on the shelf. Let's say that. And, you know, I opened the first store in Japan when we opened the first hitler in Japan. It was the first store that brought Italian. And then after that, we moved to US, and we opened this one in this location. Twelve years ago. It's crazy. Right? It's crazy. You didn't have any gray back then. No. I was I was young. I was young. But, you know, after that, now we have more than forty store worldwide. I know. That's crazy. That's crazy. Just in fifteen year, we did that. So where where is Italy, in America? Not right now. We are in a six, city in North America, New York, Boston, Chicago, Vegas, LA, and during the pandemic, we opened in Dallas. Oh my god. You opened, Italy, and During the pandemic? Yeah. Two Italy during the pandemic. One here and one in London. In two thousand and twenty, Dallas March two thousand twenty one, the London. Oh my god. And this year, we are opening a new one in in San Jose. The capital of the Silicon Valley. We are opening the Italy Silicon Valley. Oh, that's exciting. So listen. So I know you've been here forever. But what is your role exactly? You know, I do the global partnership for Italy. I'm the vice president of the company. Okay. But how many, like, is Italy America different from Italy? No. We are just one company. Of course, the operation, they are a little different. Of course, we have a US North America branch. This is independent, but not independent in the ownership of whatever is during the operation. And, Europe, Italian rest of the Europe, but we are just one company. So is Nicola still working here? Yeah. Nicola starting to work in Toronto, of course, the name in Bologna, and then came here in two thousand and ten to be the store manager of this store, and now he's, he's a the globalcy of the company. Oh, okay. He's the big boss. Oh, my god. He was so young when I met him. Yeah. You know, we were young when you met us. And what about Oscar? Oscar is our founder. He is doing, still, let's say, with us because he's always with us, is not involved anymore in the daily operation. Let's say that, but, of course, is involved in the strategic of Italy. So, Tina, you know, tell us a little bit about what happened during the pandemic. K. Give me a little, like, a skinny recap of what happened. You know, during the pandemic, of course, we wear it a lot because we are not just a retailer, but we are also restaurant and most of our business outside Italian is a restaurant business. And of course, we had to close all the restaurant, but we are a retailer. And because we are a retailer, we were, able to be open every day. And was pretty complicated, but thanks God. We survived right now. We are almost back, hundred percent. Not yet, because, of course, we miss all the tourists, the international tourists, the Italian tourist, but I wanna say that's, last year, the the end of the last year was one of our best, almost like nineteen. So, I saw you a lot in the beginning in clubhouse. That was last year, actually. Tell me a little bit about your experience in, Clubhouse. You know, what's happened for, as you know, for almost two year, the producer, they cannot come over in US. And user, we have our producer in the store, to do the class, to do the tasting, to be involved with our customer because it was not possible to travel with a side to start. This live podcast. Let's say this was very good because the producer continued to maintain a relation with us. So listen, I want to ask you, of course, a little bit about the wine business, you know, with Italy. So first of all, how does it work? In New York, of course, you have a wine shop which is separate from Yeah. From the shop, the the supermarket, and the and the big name frame. Does is it like that elsewhere? Every state in the US are different. You know, the rules are different. For example, in New York, you cannot, a company cannot have more than one wine store and cannot be inside a grocery store. This is why it's attached, but in the storage we have downtown, we cannot sell wise. But during the pandemic, we were allowed because the state allowed the restaurant to do And, you know, in fact, you know, a lot of our customer were able to buy prosciutto and wine during the pandemic. But now, again, no. But in Chicago, we can do like Retaya, Chicago, LA, Vegasa, Dallas, we can do like an Italian way. Italy is one of the largest, purchaser of Italian wine in US because, of course, we have a retail store, but remember that we are a huge rest Surance. We have more than one thousand five hundred different labels. So SKUs. SKUs, and we work more or less with the five six hundred producer. So, but how do how do the producers get listed? How does it work? Lisa, you know, of course, we have our our, not preference, but what we work with the producer. And usually, we wanna continue to work with the producer. That's trust us when we were not famous. We started in Tarino and a lot of producers say, what is this cause umbrella? And we wanna continue with them. And and also after that, we do a lot of, in and out. For example, Now every month, every Friday night. In this store, we do Bruno night seven more than seventy, Bruno by the glass, and a wine tasting. Few weeks ago, we did Barbara. And those wine, they are in and out. You can come and for one month, you see all those wine then we change. We go we go through the season. You know, Brunello is good and barolo during in Barbarisco during the winter, but during the summer, we got with Roset maybe more in the south. This is what we like to do. There are some item SKU that you can find always, but there are also a lot of in and out. Let's make our customer very happy because they come. They always see something new and different. This is how how we work, and we can involve more and more producer. Thank you for listening to Italian wine podcast. We know there are many of you listening out there, so we just want to interrupt for a small ask. Italian wine podcast is in the running for an award. The best podcast listening platform through the podcast awards, the people's choice. Lister nominations is from July first to the thirty first, and we would really appreciate your vote. We are hoping our listeners will come through for us. So if you have a second and could do this small thing for us, just head to Italian wine podcast dot com from July first to the thirty first and click the link. We thank you and back to the show. So I met Cole before. Yeah. And he said he he's the he's part of the education program. So what is that? Tell me a little bit of is it something new? No. He's, you know, since we You have the scholar. Right? Yeah. This is, you have to remember our payoff is eat a shop learn. The teaching component for real is our most important component. Every aspect of our business, there is a teaching moment. But not just in the store, in the restaurant, every sign that you see. If you see our menu, if you see our retail is different than the other one. There is always the name of the producer. A little story about from where they are coming, who is the producer. We don't do private label, for example, either in the wine in the past and the cheese because we wanna tell the story, but the school is important because in every city, in every store where where we go, we have the primary location, a school where the producer are coming to, teaching the morning, our staff. Is important to sell a products, you need to know what are you drinking or eating. And in the morning when the producer are coming, staff training. For example, in this restaurant, we did some classes for three hundred people. Masima Vaturra was cooking here and we did a wine class and food over here. It's depend. Usually, we do thirty people because we thirty people is a small, intimate enough to have an interaction with the public. But but not during, like, lunch or dinner. Right? Yeah. We do we do lunch dinner. Every night in the school, not during the weekend because Too busy. You know, what we did do during the pandemic because the class was closed, we did that, virtual wine tasting, for two thousand people. We prepared the box. Like the samples or the bottles? No. No. Battels, cheese, and ham, and there was, like, aperitivo, Italian style. So who was teaching the course. Our fine expertise expert, our chef, everybody. That's that's great idea. Are you still doing this? Yes. Yeah. We just did another one. That's it was for cheese. So listen. So what have you seen, like, five things, five trends that you've seen in terms of wine the past couple of years? I mean, obviously, the wine, like, the e commerce online. Yeah. Right? That that's pretty important. Yeah. The the I think the commerce became, a huge not a I don't wanna even call e commerce. I wanna call, and we call more like a digital because digital is different than the classic e commerce because e commerce, you go online on your app, and you choose stuff. The digital is like, I know what Italy has, but I leave just a few blocks and I ship from the store today. It says more like a delivery service. The delivery service. This is what I saw that the people when they wanna buy They use our staff and they use this service, like the digital delivery service. That's became huge. What about the, the younger generation? Do you see that is more aware of the the wine consumption or I or preferences or because, I mean, the beer was very big and it still has, like, the craft beer. But the big the I was going to say that. I think when I move here, the beer, movement was huge. Yeah. This was, like, where we are now, for example, it was it was a Bitteria. Yeah. But, you know, the beer is still, but, you know, I think a one point beer became, like, a trendy, super trendy, and, at one point, it became less trendy. Right. The wine became more and more, like, lifestyle. Even now it's not impossible anymore to see people at lunch, drinking. When I moved here, it was very weird. I'm Italian, and we drink the transfer. Right. Right. But there was not a lunch, with wine, because it was more like a let's drink. Let's drink alcohol now. They understand it's a glass of wine can be part of the meal. Be because it's not like to get drunk or get wasted. Right. Right. Is that is a trend that I see. So, like, in terms of, like, sales in your, two things, in your grocery shop and also for the restaurants. In terms of percentage, how much is attributable to beer and how much to on? Ninety nine percent wine. I don't know the number in my mind. But it but it's very unusual. Right? I mean You know, it's not unusual because we are an Italian restaurant everywhere. And the people wanna drink wine, you know, when you do the research about what the people think about, Italian, and thermo food, they always say pizza pasta, you know, pasta for Magivino. Vino salumi pasta. Wine is always that. Absolutely. So listen. You're going to open also in Verona. Right? Yes. When is that happening? It's going to happen this year. Yes. We don't have the exact the date yet. Is there going to be anything special about Italy Verona? I cannot tell you how A little bit of Of course, what I think, first of all, what I think is unique, is the location, not just because it's in front of, Verona Fier and Venita, but even because that's Gia Chaya, that is the name, is such a unique architectural, building, and that is, I think, was the most unique. So and are will there be any, additional openings, besides verona this year? No. Verona in San Jose. We are trying to do every year. You know, we were, because of the pandemic, we we slowed down a little bit, one in US and one in Europe. This year, we do those two. And, we are looking for some new location in North America. And in Europe as well. Is that more of a problem now? Because, you know, of course, there is that, so many people are quitting their jobs since they started remote working. Yeah. And they're they're pivoting their careers. How has that affected the hospitality? Especially you're running like forty, you know Yeah. Divisions in a lot. We are no different than a normal restaurant normally grocery store. We were eat a lot because the people after spent two years at home, they say, I don't wanna have that life anymore because this business is a hard business. You work at night, you work during the weekend, you never stop is hospitality business. Some people decide that's, was not anymore their life. That is one aspect. Another aspect, the people can travel less. And, of course, there was a lot of, a lot of people that's were moving from one country to another. We have a lot of Italian guys working here, but sometimes in our story, Italian, they wanna have an experience, in US, and we transfer them. But for two year, the visa was almost impossible together. Not because, no, they don't wanna give the visa, but because it was complicated. And, you know, that is another thing. You have to find people local but luckily everybody are are looking for people in reopen, you know, is is a very complicated, but this is complicated everywhere in the world in every kind of, business. Yeah. I think that's true. I mean, personnel is is this key. Right? Yeah. It's a it's a key. You know, the company are made by people. And Italy cannot be this company without all Michael league. We are All colleague. We are writing more than six thousand worldwide right now. Italy is made by people and by the producer. Alright. Thanks for listening to this episode of Italian wine podcast. Brought to you by Vineetli Academy, home of the gold standard of Italian wine education. Do you want to be the next ambassador? Apply online at benetli international dot com. For courses in London, Austria, and Hong Kong, the twenty seventh to the twenty ninth of July. Remember to subscribe and like Italian wine podcast and catch us on SoundLab, Spotify, and wherever you get your pods. You can also find our entire back catalog of episodes at italian wine podcast dot com. Hi, guys. I'm Joy Lemings Denon. I am the producer of the Italian wine podcast. Thank you for listening. We are the only wine podcast that has been doing a daily show since the pandemic began. This is a labor of love and we are committed to bringing you free content every day. Of course, this takes time and effort not to mention the cost of equipment production and editing. We would be grateful for your donations, suggestions, requests, and ideas. For more information on how to get in touch, go to Italian wine podcast dot com.