Hillary Zio, owner of Isola Wine & Tapas, as she navigates the complexities of motherhood, the pandemic, and the wine industry. Hillary discusses her vision for a wine bar and tapas place that came to fruition after overcoming various obstacles, including her initial struggles with consulting and building a customer base in an older community.
Hillary reveals how she discovered the perfect building for her wine bar, owned by her ex-husband's father, and the extensive renovations that transformed the space into a cozy retreat. She reflects on the challenges of launching a business during a harsh winter, the importance of community engagement, and the growth of Isola Wine & Tapas into a bustling hub. Join us for an enlightening conversation filled with insights on entrepreneurship, resilience, and the love of wine.
00:00
Welcome to the Best 5-Minute Wine Podcast with Forrest Kelley.
00:15
So after you're done traveling, you realize another adventure is coming.
00:20
Did that lead to a restaurant?
00:22
Well, yeah, but not immediately.
00:24
So I knew that I wanted to have like my own little wine bar, tapas place.
00:29
I always kind of knew, but I got pregnant, which changes things, in 2019.
00:37
And then obviously the pandemic.
00:39
So I was basically trying to figure out what am I going to do in this in the wine industry?
00:44
Because in America, people don't really drink wine till after five o'clock.
00:47
And that's when most mothers are feeding their kids and putting them to bed and everything
00:53
I really had to be patient until she went to school and I could like see, okay, now
01:00
I have some time for myself and figure out what I'm going to do.
01:03
At first, I tried consulting like different restaurants, you know, building wine lists
01:09
And it was really unsuccessful.
01:11
And I think that's because the wine reps kind of do this for them anyways.
01:15
They kind of do this for free.
01:18
I was a little bit discouraged.
01:20
And then finally, there was a real estate opportunity in a town called Kinderhook, which
01:25
is where my wine bar is.
01:27
And it was like, kind of perfect because it's an affluent, retiree kind of community.
01:35
And so I knew, hey, if I open a wine bar from five to nine, I don't have to have cocktails.
01:40
I don't have to stay open late.
01:42
I don't have to be with all the young people.
01:45
So that made a lot of sense for me in my life.
01:47
So I could still get up early enough to take it to the bus and not feel like I slept for
01:52
And then you got it.
01:54
How did you find the building?
01:56
So it was actually owned by my husband at the time, now ex-husband, his father, the
02:03
winemaker in California.
02:05
So he owned this building in Kinderhook, like he bought some real estate in Hudson Valley.
02:10
He had this building and I was like, let me just rent the downstairs space, which there
02:15
was actually a little restaurant in it, but when he bought the building, they didn't have
02:20
So he was like, all right, you can do it.
02:22
And I renovated it with my ex-husband, who's a designer.
02:26
And we took four walls out and made the bar from four seats to 11 seats and did so much
02:32
work and it took about a year, all the renovation, but that's exactly how long it took to get
02:37
the liquor license.
02:40
And then finally I opened and it was a very slow, I guess because it is an older community,
02:49
nobody's on Instagram, like they're not seeing me.
02:52
So it was really a word of mouth type of process.
02:55
I wish I would have known that, like to be patient and that this is not a failure and
03:00
you just literally need to keep going and go to book clubs and go to the library and
03:05
just introduce yourself and go to the farmer's market.
03:09
So the first like nine months, because I opened in October and then it was one of the worst
03:17
And then in like April, May, then people started figuring me out.
03:23
Definitely a huge hit after my one year anniversary, which was October.
03:27
So we're about to hit two years.
03:29
Now it's like there's a wait every night.
03:32
I can hardly find enough staff because like I told you about Kinderhook, it's a little
03:36
bit older, but we're like a small tight knit team, just rocking and rolling.
03:42
And it's just been busier than ever.
03:44
The building was built in what, 1757?
03:50
In 1787, if you wanted to build something, you had to probably build it out of wood or
03:57
But you grabbed, literally grabbed an ax, walked into the forest, cut down a tree, dragged
04:02
the thing home, spent X amount of hours turning that one log into boards.
04:08
And then you turned it into the, you sent me pictures of this place and it's just, wow.
04:13
The architecture, just the whole thing is, I can see why you are where you are now.
04:19
To renovate that whole thing, how long did that take and a ballpark of money?
04:24
So it was a process because, you know, I didn't own the building until January.
04:30
So I just bought it this year from my ex's dad, but we only renovated the, the kitchen,
04:40
the bar, that like downstairs area.
04:44
And that was around 80 to a hundred thousand, just like getting, moving all those walls.
04:51
And obviously I had to put a huge commercial kitchen with a hood and a range and the, you
04:57
know, everything you can think of, that was, that was pretty massive.
05:00
There was no one else in the building for like an entire year.
05:04
And then in January, I had made a deal with him to kind of buy the building using what
05:12
I would have had for like child support and maintenance.
05:15
So it was like a really tricky, like no lawyers ever seen this kind of thing.
05:21
You know, situation, it was, it was a little risky for sure.
05:25
But I just knew that I had so many ideas of what I could do with the rest of this building.
05:29
So after that, I put an apartment upstairs and now I have a tenant.
05:34
I had to build out a whole kitchen, bathroom, shower, you name it.
05:37
And on the other side, downstairs on the left, I have an esthetician that just moved in.
05:42
So she's doing facials.
05:44
She has a nail tech.
05:45
She has a masseuse and there's three rooms down there.
05:49
And then upstairs, I have a hair salon and she's moving in in two weeks.
No lines match your search.
