The Norm’s Beer and Wine/Fresh Market Kerfuffle

Posted by The Editorial Desk / Thursday, May 19th, 2011

Norm's Beer and Wine in Vienna (Image: Kris King/Northern Virginia Magazine)

A new Fresh Market moving into the Danor Plaza shopping center on Branch Road in Vienna has caused an uproar among local beer and wine drinkers, as a non-compete clause within the grocery giant’s contract will mean that local favorite Norm’s Beer and Wine and its owner, Norman Yow, will need to vacate its location of 13 years by the middle of 2015.

Since the situation became public over the past couple of weeks, the explosion of press and local attention has fallen overwhelmingly in Norm’s favor. It’s a standard David v. Goliath story that riles up the locals and demonizes a big corporation as a carpetbagger out to bury a beloved small business and its customers, an accusation not at all unfamiliar to Fresh Market.

Yow first heard about the situation back in February, and has tried to keep things quiet in an effort to negotiate with Fresh Market and his landlord, Finmarc Management. According to Yow, Finmarc tried to keep his business in mind while negotiating with Fresh Market, but ultimately folded in an effort to fill a space that’s been vacant for years. “The landlord did imply that it was something that they felt they had no choice to do,” said Yow.

A Facebook group titled “Save Norm’s Beer and Wine,” established last week, quickly gained over 1,500 members as word spread, and a petition on Norm’s counter to keep the store in place started to rack up the signatures. According to Yow, his longtime beer and wine vendors were shocked by the situation, and even the mayor of Vienna, Jane Seeman, had dropped into the store to lend her support.

When we spoke with Yow, the business owner seemed steamrolled. “I don’t think it was a fair clause to begin with,” he said. “I’ve been a loyal tenant for 13 years, and the shopping center has had a lot of vacancies and we’ve been a constant throughout. We’ve been growing our business and drawing more and more people to the shopping center in general. So, I don’t think the situation is fair at all.”

Beer and wine drinks of the area have reason to be up-in-arms, especially in regards the mediocre beer and wine selection that The Fresh Market offers versus the niche insanity held within Norm’s tiny walls. Norm’s loses out because he’ll be forced to make a costly move, and consumers lose because their access to specialty beer and wine will be considerably diminished.

A selection of Fresh Market's beer section in Newport News, Va. (Image: Gregory Jones)

Fresh Market has six locations in Virginia, with stores in Midlothian, Newport News, Richmond, Roanoke, Virginia Beach and Williamsburg. When we first heard about Norm’s getting pushed out, we had someone pop into the Newport News Fresh Market location to scout out their stock and snap a few pictures (to the chagrin of management).

Going by the pictures, Fresh Market offers a stock consisting mostly of the same InBev, SAB Miller and Diageo six packs that you can buy just about anywhere, with little consideration for the nerds. The selection only goes about as deep as big national craft brewers like Sierra Nevada, Harpoon, Victory and a few others. Virginia brews are barely an afterthought, featuring only a couple of six packs from Williamsburg AleWerks, and as far as specialty imports go, well, they had Samuel Smith’s Nut Brown and… that’s about it. Their wine selection is similar, featuring a serviceable range of wines but hardly anything bold or imaginative.

Norm’s Beer and Wine is a different story altogether, with a carefully considered, specialized stock filling up shelves. There is hearty support for local breweries and wineries, rows of hard-to-find imports and six-packs from craft brewers from throughout the country, big and small. Norm carries a stock that favors beer slightly over wine, but both sides are strong. Yow prides himself on supporting small production breweries and wineries, saying “We have an awful lot of six packs from breweries that are too small to go into chain stores because they don’t have a large enough production for it… There are sometimes bottles that we get our hands on from some micro-brewery where a total 12 cases comes to the entire state, and we get our hands on a case.”

Norm’s is known for being able to special order anything they don’t carry in stock, as long as the beer or wine is available in the wholesaler network. Customers can also order kegs from Miller Light to German imports or California microbrews. The store has a friendly atmosphere, a helpful staff and, hey, Christmas lights.

Norm's Interior (Image: Kris King/Northern Virginia Magazine)

To use a somewhat strained analogy, if Fresh Market is a Barnes and Noble, Norm’s is the comic book shop that has weekly “Magic: The Gathering” tournaments. It’s a specifically niche store with very little overlap with the big chain. Fresh Market may be a step up from most chain grocery stores, their beer and wine section has little to offer. Norm’s selection is light-years ahead of Fresh Market’s, judging by their Newport News location, and nudging the small store out of the shopping center in an effort to better shill its mediocre selection is about as pro-corporate, anti-competition, to Hell with the little guy as it gets.

Speaking objectively on the topic proves difficult, and it hasn’t helped matters for Fresh Market or Finmarc that they’ve distanced themselves from the situation. Finmarc forwarded request for comment to the Danor Shopping Center owner, who, as of press time, has not returned our call; and Fresh Market has limited their comment to a curt press release: “We are excited about opening our new store in Vienna; however, we are unable to comment further at this time as it is our practice not to discuss the terms of our lease.”

One fact that should be stressed in the midst of this hubbub is that Norm’s is in no apparent danger of closing. When asked if his business would survive moving shop, Yow replied that it could, though he has yet to start working on the logistics of a move. If Norm has gotten anything out of this deal, it’s time. Yow’s current lease with Finmarc expires in 2013, but he does not need to vacate his location until two years after that in June, 2015, giving the store owner four years to find a new home.

“I do give my landlord credit for that, that’s something that wouldn’t have happened with a lot of landlords,” Yow conceded.

While the support generated by the plight of Yow’s little store has been overwhelming for the merchant, he’s not confident that he will be able to stay put. “It doesn’t seem like right now… that they’ll be giving in. That’s just a gut reaction.”

Still, with as much support that he’s gained over the past couple of weeks, Yow can rest easy knowing that, while he may have to move, his customers won’t be going anywhere. “Part of the reaction has been that if we have to move, then people will follow us wherever we have to go.”

- Kris King

Tags: beer, capitalism, Fresh Market, gut wrenching reality, Norm's Beer and Wine, wine