Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Becky Atkins. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Becky, appreciate you joining us today. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.

My husband Ian and I got into wine making as a natural extension of owning and operating restaurants for 10 years in El Paso, Texas and Portland. We started Flat Brim Wines 2016 by scraping together 3 tons of grapes and falling upon the kindness of a friend who allotted us production space in his tiny garage converted winery in the hills of Portland, Oregon. We eagerly worked nights and weekends as a side gig to the long days working in our Portland restaurants. We expected to start small and grow slowly, but we were handed a unique opportunity that catapulted our growth and escalated our production volume immediately. A shared wine production space became available to us in 2017 and we had to quadruple our production and navigate the hurdles of becoming landlords to other boutique wine makers overnight.

Our business model from day one was rooted in the investment of adequate long-term equipment and tools that would allow for rapid expansion without the need for reinvestment. Our urban winery was not properly located or designed to be customer facing so we decide rather than sinking funds into remodeling our rented warehouse, we would focus on volume and scale. We worked to acquire wholesale accounts across the country and around the world. This strategy was part of a 10-year vision and the initial first steps fell perfectly into place. We successfully landed small placements in our priority US markets and were beginning to gain traction in South Korea, Japan, Canada, and Denmark. Just as our restaurant bottle sales started to hit a sustainable stride, the pandemic hit and everything came to a drastic halt. Restaurants were closing, distributors were sitting on inventory and not placing order, sales plummeted and nobody knew what the next three, six, twelve months were going to look like. We, like so many in our industry, got creative and worked to make ends meet but we knew the only long term answer was diversification. We couldn’t rely solely on one segment of the sales market, we needed to pivot or energy and capture more of the direct to consumer market by opening a tasting room. We expanded our brand into Texas (our hometown) under our newest label Summer Revival Wine Co and began making small batch wine in the quickly growing Texas Hill Country. By shrinking out production in the Pacific Northwest, we had money to invest in Texas grapes and the freedom to now sell at a higher profit margin directly to the customer. The experience we are creating with Summer Revival is focused on sparking curiosity and sharing our passion for wine. We are incredibly proud of our craft and the intention we exhibit at every stage of the winemaking process. We want our customers to have a chance to hear our story, better understand our relevance, and leave feeling more committed to supporting small and natural.

No part of our journey has been easy, we’ve made incredible time and financial investments and continue to take tremendous risks, but our commitment and passion continue to carry us through.

Becky, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Hospitality is everything to me. I opened my first restaurant in 2004 at the intrepid age of 24 in El Paso, Texas, two months after my husband was deployed to Iraq. Although there was a steep learning curve, El Paso was a forgiving city and our first restaurant enjoyed quick success. Over the next four years we opened two additional full-service restaurants and a food truck. Although we were not native El Pasoans, it was evident that while stationed there we needed to take advantage of the lack of culinary sophistication and make an impactful contribution to the community. Three of our restaurants were recommended highlights in The New York Times “36 Hours In El Paso.”

As my husband and I became more educated wine consumers, we naturally grew passionate about the art of wine production; specifically low-intervention wine making. In 2014, we sold our businesses in El Paso and moved to the Pacific Northwest to immerse ourselves in the wine community. We immediately opened two counter service restaurants in Portland, OR. In 2017, we opened Flat Brim Wines, an urban winery, and began producing natural wines with grapes from partner vineyards in Oregon and Washington state, as well as created a shared production space for multiple winemakers.

We made the heart-wrenching, but ultimately wise decision to close our restaurants in 2020 and moved back to Texas, allowing us to expand our wine business and start building our brand Summer Revival Wine Co in the booming and rapidly changing Texas Hill Country.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

A story and time many can relate to, is the multitude of both quick and drastic pivots we made during the start of the pandemic. My daughter Olive was one year old at the time, and with no daycare and family half way across the country, things were incredibly tricky. We owned restaurants in addition to our winery and it was all hands on deck as we operated with the tightest skeleton crew we could handle. Our entire systems of operations changed by the day for the first couple of weeks and by the summer of 2020 all that was left was the shell of a the flourishing, community nurturing restaurant we once knew. We were digging a hole deeper by the week and I, for the first time in my life, was unable to see the light. I knew that this lifestyle and level of financial uncertainty for both me and my staff was becoming our permanent reality. I made the incredibly difficult decision to pull the plug on our restaurant, negotiate a termination of lease, and sell before we got in too deep and there was no hope for salvation. We re-directed all of our attention that was being spent on our drowning restaurant towards the growth of our natural wine brand Flat Brim Wines and birth of Summer Revival Wine Co and its expansion into Texas.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

An important lesson I had to unlearn is the idea that perceived success is the same thing as actual success.

Owning a business in Portland, OR, where the definition of “cool” is unlike that of most communities, keeps you on your toes. The energy is magnetic and the creativity across industries is inspiring. The chase for innovation and need to shock is ingrained in your psyche. It was an unforgiving race to be constantly bold, unique, transformative. In an effort to be relevant and noticed, you were constantly needing to re-imagine and shake things up in your industry. The media loves something to talk about, and while we need that coverage to inspire people to look on our site or walk in our door, customers at their core crave reliability, consistency, and predictability. I had to learn to stop shooting for an ever changing target and work on being the absolute best in our industry.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.summerrevivalwineco.com
• Instagram: summer.revival.wine.co
• Facebook: Summer Revival Wine Co