Stephen Muse was stationed at Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota when he first experienced Vintner’s Cellar.
“My wife and I talked… and decided if I ever ended up stationed somewhere without a franchise, we’d look into starting a business,” said Muse, who is now a crew chief on a KC-135 at McConnell — and the owner of the Kansas rights to franchise Vintner’s Cellar.
Muse and his wife, Sheila, started their enterprise in Derby a year ago and added a store in the Tallgrass area in Wichita last summer.
Vintner’s Cellar provides wine-making supplies and an environment where customers can sample a variety of wines and make their own. The store also sells wine racks, cork screws, buckets and kits for people who want to make wine at home.
Wine is sold only by the batch and the customer must be the maker. The store does not have a liquor license, so it cannot sell wine by the bottle and customers cannot resell the wine they make there.
Batches of 24 to 30 bottles sell for between $154.95 and $264.95.
Muse said he learned one thing right away about starting a business.
“It’s more work than I thought it would be,” he said.
Initially, Muse said, he tried to do all the books and other management chores.
Sheila Muse took off from her full-time job for the first few months, and the couple struggled to get the business organized so that it could operate with minimum supervision.
The couple now have four employees and Stephen Muse devotes just Wednesday evenings and Sundays to the business. The company now has an accountant to handle most of the financial work.
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