We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Madisyn Scribner. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Madisyn below.

Hi Madisyn, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

After spending many years in the hospitality industry, my business partner and I decided to open a wine bar and bottle shop that would focus on sustainability. There are so many ways in which the Seattle hospitality industry is already taking steps towards sustainability — we compost and recycle, there is a growing emphasis on seasonality and local goods and produce, and some restaurants are moving away from serving Chinook salmon in an effort to support the orca population.

We believe that we can be doing more, and that the Seattle community wants to see businesses making a stronger effort to set and surpass sustainability goals. Our goal is to become carbon-neutral and to achieve zero-waste by establishing closed-loop systems which will allow us to reduce our environmental impact while still offering excellent service and high-quality goods.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My partner, Hanley, and I met behind a bar over ten years ago and quickly became close friends. All these years later, we still make each other laugh, and our ability to effectively collaborate has only gotten better.

Hanley spent the last decade working as a wine buyer, while I continued to bartend at craft cocktail bars and fine-dining establishments around Seattle while also honing my culinary skills. We both returned to school and earned degrees — I studied Human Geography with an academic focus in sustainability at the UW and Hanley completed an MBA. We identified an opportunity to combine our strengths, expertise and passions by collaborating on a sustainable wine bar and bottle shop concept. This endeavor would represent the intersection of hospitality, sustainability and high-quality products and would be a culmination of both our academic and professional careers.

With Hanley’s deep wine knowledge, my background in sustainability, and our shared hospitality experience, we wrote a business plan and secured a location in Wallingford. In terms of sourcing, we chose to prioritize transparency over a particular style of winemaking or set of certifications. This approach will allow us to offer a variety of thoughtfully and ethically produced products, while being inclusive of farmers and wine-makers who employ low-intervention methods, but cannot afford to maintain organic or biodynamic certifications.

We plan to partner with purveyors that will enable us to reach our operational sustainability goals, such as becoming the first zero waste and carbon neutral hospitality business in Seattle. We will achieve this by working with like-minded organizations that will help us repurpose products like corks and plastic film and reduce food waste by connecting consumers with surplus food items that would otherwise be thrown away. We will also purchase carbon offsets that promote healthy ecological activities such as reforestation and glass bottle and cork recycling. In the buildout of our space, we utilized used and reclaimed materials as much as possible. For example, the bar shelves are made of Taredo wood which was salvaged from the Salish sea, and we made our tables from reclaimed wood a well. Though it may take time to reach our sustainability goals, we are committed to the concept of steady improvement.

Community-building is another important area of focus for us. We are excited to feature original art in our space which will be for sale and will rotate on a quarterly basis. We will also offer special events, such as special guest chef dinners, winemaker events and pop-ups with other local creative people like clothing designers and ceramicists. Prior to the tech boom, Seattle was known for its thriving art community. We aim to honor this legacy by promoting collaboration and creativity, while also connecting local residents with local artists.

Through our experience in the food and beverage industry, and our commitment to hospitality, sustainability and community-building, we hope to offer a unique experience in our forthcoming space – a respite from the wild world.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Shortly before we began construction on our wine bar space, my mother, with whom I was very close, passed away. I was, and still am, devastated by this loss. Through my grief, Hanley showed me tremendous support. She handled all of the business tasks and communications for weeks so that I could step away and be with my family, and for moths afterwards, she showed me patience and compassion while I slowly became more functional.

The space and support she provided me allowed me to gather my strength and move forward with our project in a meaningful way. This experience affirmed the strength of our partnership and the vital importance of choosing a collaborator who is competent, stalwart and kind.

If you have multiple revenue streams in your business, would you mind opening up about what those streams are and how they fit together?

One important lesson from the pandemic is that businesses, particularly ones that operate in-person and are customer-facing, must be flexible and creative. With this in mind, we chose to get the most out of our small space by cultivating various revenue streams.

Some of these strategies include featuring art that is for sale rather than purchasing our own art. This will save, and earn us money via commission, while supporting local artists. We also plan to offer a consulting arm of our business in which we offer support to other hospitality businesses in two different ways: wine list design and sustainability. The former would be useful to bars and restaurants that do not have a wine expert on staff, but still want to offer a great wine selection. The latter would allow us to share our sustainability strategies with other businesses that wish to reduce their environmental impact.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.respitebottleshop.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/respiteseattle/

Image Credits
Arlene Chambers