Good place to buy wine. Not such a good place to sit down and enjoy it…read more
We SO want to love Vino, but after living in Pittsboro for 8 years now, we are struggling to really, really feel at home there. The staff is almost always cold and indifferent. Maybe it's us, although we're kind of quiet. We greet, take a seat, order from the menu, and try not to ask too many questions and just get a glass of wine or buy a couple of bottles to take home.
But we have not had a truly welcoming person yet, and we have visited the place innumerable times in all of our years here, first in their upstairs, smaller space and now in the new, street-facing store.
Yesterday we encountered a new cold shoulder when we went in for a glass of wine and some "nibbles" at they call them. There is a menu with charcuterie board offerings at the bar, right next to the wine-by-the-glass menu. So, we figured, we'd order a couple of bites from that menu along with our glass of wine. The bartender stared blankly at us and showed us the shelf in the corner where all the offerings are stored in their original packaging, and asked us to help ourselves from the shelf. We knew about the items on the shelf, but we thought those were to take home. What was the purpose of the menu at the bar then, if you can't order from it, like you do the wine?!
She said, "you can take what you need from the shelf, unless you want me to run around the store and bring them to you." I thought that was rude. Some of the things we wanted needed some sort of silverware (like cheese, canned things, or olives), and she begrudgingly said "sure, I'll give you plates and forks for that." We have been to wineries and wine shops before, but I have never seen anyone anywhere putting a menu in front of you at the bar and expecting you to go fetch from the shelf on your own. If this is their business model that is very much OK, but this was not very clear, and it felt like we were in the wrong asking for something we should instead fetch ourselves.
We do find some wines in there to take home that we can't find anywhere else, and we will continue to buy wine there and support them as a local business. We know it's hard to keep a business afloat in these times, and we want to help where we can. But we would also love to see some effort on their part to actually welcome people in. I think this would only do them good.