We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sonya Villegas Kelsen a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Sonya thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

Taking a risk is not for the faint of heart. The feeling of walking a tightrope with no safety net is one of the most challenging situations you can put yourself in. It is incredibly stressful but what can cause more stress is regret. Regretting not taking a chance on your ideas and dreams is something I will not have to live with. I have had measurable success and disastrous failures in my entrepreneurial career but the lessons I have learned, the friendships I have made and the freedom I have become accustomed to is all worth it.

Sonya, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My husband Mike and I opened Colony Wine Merchant in late 2014. We were both self employed for some time but this was our first brick and mortar, Even though we both had years of experience in hospitality and I had a 20 year career in the wine industry, we still felt like we opened our doors to the unknown. There were days that we wondered what the heck we got ourselves into but we knew we were meant for this.

I love curating wine for our guests and Mike is in charge of a great beer selection. We have a creative chefs that is always coming up with innovative and seasonal dishes that celebrate wine country. We are incredibly proud of our front of the house team as they are so friendly and accommodating and are just a joy to work with. What makes running our wine bar such a pleasure is the incredible community we are in and have built. We always said we wanted to welcome our guests as though we were welcoming friends into our home and they have made it very easy. We are very blessed indeed.

Have you ever had to pivot?

You ask about a time I had to pivot. Well that is an easy one as I feel business owners world-wide had to pivot during the pandemic. I remember thinking that there was so much buzz about this crazy new flu, then during a wine tasting event I started receiving a number of texts saying how sorry people were that we had to close down. I did not understand the severity of things until that moment. We had no plan B so we had to survive the shut down. The news came that Sunday and by Tuesday we had moved all of our on premise sales in ecommerce. We could not have done that without the help of our website creator Kathryn. She got right on it.

With ecommerce set up we had to get busy marketing Care Packages as people were having such a hard time shopping for simple things like groceries. I called my brother who is a meat purveyor and restaurateur and we put together these great packages with freshly butchered meat and fish. I threw in artisan cheese, wine and other fun stuff. That paid the rent for a while. Like a lot of our colleagues in this industry, we got creative with zoom events, home deliveries and daily specials. Looking back it seems like a big blur but wow did we have to stay on our toes.

I have had to pivot many times in my life but never as quickly as I did during the shut downs. It was exhausting but a challenge I am glad I was up for. It was easy compared to what other folks had to go through but it sure built character.

Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?

We now have the pleasure of providing on-premise experiences, off-premise sales and ecommerce for our guests. We are a wine bar, wine shop and online retailer. We found it very easy to do all three with our Clover POS system. We use Ecwid for our ecommerce which is quite compatible with Clover and our website through Wix. Guests can peruse our website which also has a link to The Napa Kitchen which offers wares, soaps, and linens. So we can ship wine and wares most anywhere.

Contact Info:

• Website: colonywinemerchant.com
• Instagram: colonywinemerchant
• Facebook: Colony Wine Merchant
• Yelp: Colony Wine Merchant

Image Credits
Photo credit to Viby Creative