BY GREG HELLER-LABELLE
PHOTOS BY OLAF STARORYPINSKI AND SHARON MERKEL
IN 2011, WHEN TAYLOR MASON AND HIS WIFE, LEEANN, OPENED MA(I)SON, their first restaurant in Pennsylvania, they were disappointed that it had to be BYO.
They had moved from Napa Valley, where their passion for wine had been nurtured as a vital part of food preparation and service. That culture had been fostered there for decades thanks to wine-loving California’s bottle-friendly liquor laws: To obtain a liquor license, you simply pay a fee. Pennsylvania, though, is a “control state,” meaning that the Commonwealth controls all sales of liquor and wine through the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB). Here, the licensing is much more limited, complicated and expensive.
“The fact that we moved back to a state where the laws are so archaic is … ironic, strange and heartbreaking,” says Taylor. He and Leeann ran Ma(i)son for a while, but still dreamed of curating a wine selection both for service and to-go. “Our passion for wine and fermented beverages never faltered.”
Then, in 2016, the Pennsylvania Legislature passed Act 39, a sweeping series of changes designed to modernize alcohol sales in the Commonwealth, including adding wine and beer to grocery and convenience stores. One of the other changes was the Wine Expanded Permit (WEP, pronounced the way it looks), which allowed restaurants to sell bottles of wine to go. In fact, WEP permits have grown in number from 296 in 2017–18 to 1,749 in 2022–23. While much of that is an explosion in convenience stores, 360 restaurants in PA have WEPs.
Since 2017, the couple has operated Luca, a restaurant with the first bottle shop in Lancaster. Not long after Luca opened, bottle shops began to pop up in Philadelphia, which inspired Mason.
“It’s been a personal passion of mine to get better wines in our community,” Mason said.
Jason Hoy has spent 30 years in wine retail, including running a wine store in Australia and that country’s largest Riesling festival, Summer of Riesling. When he opened Kabinett in Easton in 2022, he knew he wanted to bring his love for German and Austrian wines to not only a robust wine list (which earned the restaurant a Wine Spectator Best of Award of Excellence in 2024), but to the public, as a carry-out option. That is, in part, because he understands that consumers are frustrated and desperate for a better selection. “As someone who loves good wine, it’s not there,” he says.
BRINGING CHANGE TO A COMPLICATED SYSTEM
While an exhaustive list of the steps necessary to establish a bottle shop in Pennsylvania would seem endless to print, it includes the following:
First, you need to purchase a liquor license (usually an “R,” or “full” restaurant license, or an “E” or “cash-and-carry” pizza shop license that allows beer and wine). In Pennsylvania, there are only so many of these, which means you need to buy that license from someone else. Licenses typically cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, many of them financed with loans like any other business asset.
Then, after you’ve found a license and the resources to acquire it, you have to clear any hurdles with your municipality and county (fees, inspections, codes, etc.). Next, you acquire a WEP, and then meet all of the licensing restrictions for that. You’re required to use a dedicated cash register for the to-go sales, record and inventory those sales separately, and then pay those specific taxes accordingly.
In the case of Kabinett, which sells grocery items and wine in a separate space adjacent to the restaurant, Hoy needed to further separate the space. He was required to install four-foot posts no more than 10 feet apart, to delineate alcohol from his non-alcohol licensed premises.
“There are a lot of barriers to entry to opening a wine store in PA,” says Hoy. “We’re all muddling through this process with the PLCB.”
Here’s How Your Favorite Restaurant Buys Alcohol
Hoy or Mason or any of the other restaurant owners we talked to could easily buy wine from the PLCB, which is still one of the largest purchasers and sellers of wine and spirits in the country (though Total Wine and Costco have surpassed it in recent years, in terms of overall volume). Many restaurants do just that. However, if you have a WEP, you likely want to offer some products unique to your restaurant and bottle shop. So you are probably talking to independent wholesalers and importers, many of whom still see Pennsylvania as an impossible market. And then they have to sell you their product, and then you have to coordinate all of that paperwork, as well.
And if you’re tired just from reading that, there’s more. We haven’t even gotten to the financial regulations that underpinned Act 39, all of which drive up costs for bottles sold by independent bottle shops. There are also significant taxes and fees these licensees must pay to the state; this means $10 per bottle of wine in the state stores and about $15 in a private shop. (Also, there are volume limits; if you’ve tried to buy more than two bottles of wine at the grocery store, you’ve encountered this.)
The owners we spoke to, though, are committed to making high-quality interesting wines approachable and affordable. Some are strategic about what wines they offer in their bottle shops vs. their restaurants.
For example, some create wholly different lists, and others offer some overlap. Mason’s wine list for the restaurant is “designed to complement what is happening on the plate,” and features mostly Italian and many natural wines, all selected for pairing. But Luca’s bottle shop selection, on the other hand, has “no rules, and is more whimsical,” says Mason, and the markups are designed to be smaller (usually $10–$15 over wholesale) in order to encourage people to take wine to go.
“There are a lot of barriers to entry to opening a wine store in PA. We’re all muddling through this process with the PLCB.”
—Jason Hoy
Furthermore, these laws are newborn by the standards of most governments, which adds another layer of complexity. The PA Legislature passed Act 39 in 2016, but putting the mechanisms in place to regulate and enforce those procedures was not easy.
“In this case, we had to stand up a new wholesale division in 90 days,” says PLCB spokesman Shawn Kelly. “The team worked very hard to stand up a brand new process and procedure.”
While 90 days may seem like light speed when it comes to government action, that was only the first step. Education, enforcement, and oversight introduced more work.
BRINGING NEW WINE TO A NEW MARKET
It all makes you wonder why a restaurant owner would want to jump through these hoops to begin with.
For some proprietors, it’s about building a wine culture in and around their operation—many are within high-traffic areas with residential and retail components.
Kyle Sollenberger, owner of Passerine in Lancaster, says their location on “Gallery Row” tied in well with their plans as it’s primarily a retail destination.
“I also think a small retail component makes the space feel a bit more inviting and provides an inviting way for people to check out the restaurant without feeling obligated to stay for a drink or food,” he says.
In Allentown, the downtown population has helped grow PA Rye House’s adjacent bottle shop. Co-owner Jesse Haik says opening their bottle shop shortly after the restaurant opened in 2022 represented a move toward community engagement. They saw an opportunity to bring something different, and they’ve become very attuned to their customers. “If someone asks us to order something, we will order it,” he says. He also mentions that they see a lot of repeat business from United Airlines personnel, too, among other groups.
Like Hoy, Marc Devlin is a veteran of wine and hospitality. The owner of Bar Torino in Easton, Devlin worked in New York and Boston before opening the restaurant and its subsequent bottle shop, which opened in November, eight months after the restaurant. It was always his vision to include bottle sales to go, culled from experience.
“The concept behind this is curated,” he says. “I don’t want to have 400 wines; I want to have 70 good wines.”
Devlin uses the small space to showcase his hand-selected products, aiming to “keep the inventory limited and fresh,” largely with affordable but interesting wines.
“We preach education here as well,” Devlin says. The restaurant offers Saturday tastings aimed at getting regulars to try and enjoy new products. This outreach is especially useful because their wine selection leans toward biodynamic and organic.
Like Bar Torino, Passerine showcases wines that are produced with organic/biodynamic farming methods, and they, too, offer tasting series on Thursdays, open to the public. More than 60% of its wine selection comes from the American East Coast. “It pays homage to the innovative and persistent fermentation community in the region,” says Jen Splain, Beverage Director. Their very diverse list fluctuates from 80 to 100 bottles including wine, cider, vermouth, aperitivo, non-alcoholic beverages, and so forth.
WINE + BEER + BAKED GOODS = COMMUNITY BUILDING
In November 2024, Lee Chizmar and Erin Shea, owners of Bolete restaurant in Bethlehem, opened B-Side, next door to their noodle shop, Mister Lee’s. As a bottle shop and larder, B-Side focuses on natural wines and locavore fare. You can find beer by Human Robot, a Philadelphia brewery renowned for lagers that does not distribute outside of its taproom. It also includes local purveyors such as Wishful Thinking and Bonn Place breweries, Galen Glen Winery, High Point Kombucha and Valley Milkhouse cheese.
You can also find in-house to-go options, ranging from Mister Lee’s dumplings and mochi to the sought-after butterscotch pudding by Bolete’s pastry chef Amy Palmer. The space, according to Shea, is very much a work in progress. It’s designed to serve the community beyond the needs of just wine and sourdough bread and cheese. They’ve held parties there along with cocktail making and cookie decorating classes.
The wine bottles have strong graphic appeal and the space is loaded with antiques and vintage furniture from artist and entrepreneur Chaz Hampton—all of which are for sale. “I’m a sucker for packaging,” says Stephen Pekarik, Bolete beverage director and B-Side general manager.
It shows in the wide variety of formats available in B-Side’s products. Large-format liter bottles of chilled red wine, tiny sealed glass cups of sake, and eco-friendly 4-pack holders make the cooler a dazzlingly diverse visual experience.
B-Side opened in November and putting Pekarik in the space was key to maintaining the personal touch that people have come to love about Bolete and Mister Lee’s. “This has to be me hand-selling, getting into it, [telling customers] ‘I drink it, I use it, I pair with it,’” says Pekarik.
That personal connection—along with the demand for Bolete’s high-end goods—enables a place like B-Side to be aggressive in its selection. They feature beverages that go beyond traditional selections—but are never really out of reach.
“I’m tired of ‘Don’t spill the sacred wine,’” Pekarik said. “This is conversation wine. Pizza wine.”
Hoy, meanwhile, is putting his extensive knowledge to good use in his wine shop. You don’t have to be a wine aficionado to shop there, but he’s also catering to those who know and are passionate about great wine. This is especially true when it comes to his large selection of German, Austrian, and Australian wines, many of which are exclusive to him in the state (and sometimes the country). Within his creative display area, tucked into a former garage bay, Hoy will be relying on shelf talkers (small cards with wine descriptions) for nearly all of his 500 bottles, along with “a couple of core staff with great wine knowledge.”
While the hurdles of Pennsylvania’s unique position in the wine market are frustrating, Hoy also sees a way for these bottle shops to make it work.
“The difference, and our competitive advantage, is that no one else is asking [the wholesalers] for these incredible wines in Pennsylvania,” Hoy said.
Wine merchants often allocate their relatively scarce bottles by state or region. A small French winery, for example, might allow for two cases of their Bordeaux to be sold in Pennsylvania. But because the PLCB is a mammoth operation with hundreds of stores, selling small brands often just does not happen without a specific request. Consequently—and paradoxically—the same wine that New Jersey stores would fight over might go unclaimed or be there for the taking in Pennsylvania.
And, if you’re a salesperson for a wine merchant who sells in New York and New Jersey, Easton and Bethlehem are just across the border.
“I think, if we were in Ohio, we might not be getting a lot of this,” Devlin said. “A lot of these are family-owned wineries,” who do not have the marketing staff to rep the product locally.
But even the 90 minutes between Easton and Lancaster can make a difference. Mason, for example, has worked hard to find his selection.
“We have access to much less… a lot of wholesalers don’t want to deal with Pennsylvania,” Mason said.
Fortunately, most people with the requisite passion to open a bottle shop here are willing to work a little harder to support the producers they believe in—and bring those unique finds to consumers.
“We have this incredible patchwork of indie distributors and vendors,” Mason says, which he described as a “band of kindred spirits.” “All it comes down to is the fact that working with small producers takes a lot more work.”
But that work is well worth it. After all, Mason says a “foundational principle” at Luca is to seek out what’s different. “We will not sell, serve or pour any wine that the PLCB has in their stores.”
