Zeeland gift shop seeks new permit to sell bottled wine
Zeeland — Shelley Walters was shopping downtown this fall when she told a shop owner about her own Saugatuck business.
“It was pretty serendipitous,” Walters said of My Favorite Dish and Gifts. “She was excited about my store.
“She said, ‘We need a store like this in Zeeland.'”
Within weeks, Walters and her husband, Bob, opened My Favorite Dish and Gifts in the former Zeeland Floral building at 137 E. Main Ave.
“We redid everything” inside the building,” Walters said. “We did two weeks of work on the store and took one week to set up.”
The Walters’ Zeeland business sells gifts, decorations and various items for entertaining guests, including dishes, European-made glassware and even gifts for teens and pets. Items start as low as $4, with most costing $20 to $30.
Now, the Walters want to sell bottled wine, a move that has city officials thinking about reworking the alcohol policy.
Under present zoning, Walters can sell alcohol for consumption on-site, but can’t sell wine by the bottle to take home.
The City Council last year changed the alcohol ordinance to allow takeout licenses for liquor, but only allows them for a grocery, food market, deli or drug store along the Washington Avenue mixed-use zoning district or the highway commercial zoning district.
“We would have to amend the alcohol ordinance to enable their type of store to sell off-premise alcohol and to enable us to zone properties within the central business district for off-premise licenses if we want to consider granting them a license,” City Manager Tim Klunder said.