Jan 21, 2008

Boutique wine shop now at Stony Point mallBy Gregory J. GilliganInRich.com

Wine stores in shopping malls aren’t all that common.

But Tony Vadella wants to change that.

He opened Bella Vino wine shop at Stony Point Fashion Park in South Richmond two months ago.

“Wine shops generally are destination-type businesses,” Vadella said.

“What we are finding at Stony Point there is more impulse buying,” he said. “Customers walk in, and it strikes them that they would like to have a bottle of wine with dinner. We also get a lot of folks who are at the mall and want to buy a gift, and wine makes for a great gift.”

Vadella isn’t sure why more malls don’t have wine shops. But he hopes Bella Vino becomes a destination shop.

This is his second store. The first Bella Vino opened a year ago in the South Shore Pointe shopping center off Hull Street near the Woodlake community in Chesterfield County.

Vadella said he got the idea of putting a wine shop at Stony Point as he walked through the mall several months ago.

Read complete article.