Bin Ends Coming Soon to Needham

The only thing better than a bottle of wine... is two bottles of wine--or so says a meme posted to the Bin Ends Facebook page.

Braintree-based Bin Ends is coming to Needham along with four other liquor stores. Patch recently met with Owner John Hafferty to find out what exactly Bin Ends is, and what the store will look like in Needham. 

"People will come into the Needham store and recognize it as Bin Ends. It has the green and purple walls and the Big Ass Fan," Haffery commented. 

He adds that the Braintree store already attracts people as far away as Boston and Cambridge to the north, and Duxbury to the south.

And yes, that is the name of the company that makes his fans. 

Shoppers will find a selection of wines, representing most styles and a range of prices. At the center of the store, a single kiosk that serves as information desk, customer service, and cash register all rolled into one. Hafferty said the store would be bigger than his Braintree location, and added with excitement in his voice that spirits and craft beers would have their own sections. 

When the store opens, Needhamites will be able to meet the man himself. Hafferty and his "top team" from Braintree will run the store after it opens. He tells us there will likely be a soft opening in mid-August, followed by a grand opening during the weeks prior.

The store's opening will coincide closely with the relaunch of the Bin Ends website, BinEndsWine.com. Customers will not only be able to see what wines are available in the two stores, but even place orders for pickup.

Hafferty said he had always planned to expand the store, and Needham became an option as he started hearing about the town's plans to allow liquor stores. He says these discussions were among the "worst kept secrets" in the retail liquor industry. 

The business model he uses, he has compared to Marshall's in the past, the aim is to be a non-pretentious, welcoming wine store. While working as a wholesale rep and portfolio manager with wines, he saw a number of other wine stores and how they operated--he decided to take that model and "blow it up."

"What stores do I like shopping in?" he asked himself. Stores like Williams Sonoma, where all of the products were out on the floor to play with, or the Apple store, where "everyone does a little of everything." 

Typical liquor stores carry a vast array of products--sometimes as high as four thousand types--and sell large volumes of staple products at a lower margin and more expensive products at a higher margin. Bin Ends brings the price to the middle, and avoids what Hafferty calls a "shotgun blast" approach. I.e., shoppers can expect around 480 products, usually about 20 percent less than the recommended retail price.

"Wine is a great equalizer." Hafferty said that in his post-college job days, he found he could pick up a cheaper wine than some of his former colleagues, and have "every bit as satisfying an experience."

Bin Ends, Hafferty told us, has a triangular concept. At the top is value, supported by customer service and selection. While the value drives customers to the store, the other two are what customers talk about. On Yelp, the Braintree store has received rave reviews--and it's his customers that bring others to the stores. Hafferty calls them "brand apostles."

His favorite wine, he said, was "whichever one is in front of me, with good food and good company."

[Corrections: A few details in the above article have been corrected from the version that ran today. 11 p.m.