Bottleshop boosted in new Main Street location

Since it relocated to Main Street in Kalispell, Brix Bottleshop has been bubbling over.

The specialty beer, wine and food shop moved from the Loading Dock building on Center Street to its new space at 115 S. Main St. in February and immediately saw an uptick in business. Now the shop is preparing for the holiday season ahead, while continuously drawing more customers via tasting events and new classes offered at Flathead Valley Community College.

At its former location — just two blocks away — customers generally had to be aware of Brix already because it didn’t have a lot of sign exposure and there were other businesses occupying the building. But on Main Street, the shop catches people just strolling the streets.

“We knew we had to get serious about it,” Brix Bottleshop owner Karen Sanderson said. “It’s a good thing, and it all worked out great.”

The change was a little overwhelming at first, she said. Foot traffic exploded and she had a few new staff members in transition. She also got a concussion and missed two months of work.

“It was challenging to say the least,” she said. “But the staff handled it fine.”

Brix Bottleshop still has the same inventory of specialty beers and wine, plus gourmet foods, so it’s pretty much the same place, she said. The layout is a lot different, with one showroom instead of three open rooms. There’s also a tasting room now, The Nook, which is a separate business entity so Sanderson can host events to let customers taste the wine or beer.

Since The Nook has been installed, Sanderson’s wine club has been becoming more and more popular. After the first few months she had to schedule a second monthly meeting so the 20-person capacity event space wasn’t getting overcrowded. She’s now looking at adding a beer club to test new brews imported from all over the world.

Sanderson’s expertise in the wine world has been applied outside The Nook, as well. Earlier this year, Suzie Burch, executive director of economic development and continuing education at Flathead Valley Community College, reached out to Sanderson to do a wine class on campus. It was a two-session class called Wine 101, laying out the basics of wine in terms of region, history and vineyard management. She said the people in attendance represented a broad cross-section of Flathead residents, including a lot of young people, as well as two farmers thinking about growing their own wine. Sanderson herself enjoys light wines, but has found that a majority of the Northwest Montanans she has spoken with prefer heavy wines.

Sanderson talked about her career at an Oregon vineyard, where she said developed her expertise about wine and the regions well-known for wine production. Discussions included pairing wine with food, as well. She really enjoyed seeing the light bulb go on for people once they had learned to identify different reds and whites.

“I loved teaching,” she said.

Sanderson will be going back to teaching beginning this winter, with another three classes, each two-day sessions, scheduled at FVCC. She’ll have another Wine 101 class in February, followed by an Italian-focused wine class in March and a French wine class in April. Sanderson said she’s already working on the curriculum.

“It will do a lot of the same thing, but more in depth,” she said. “The two-day work session is good because we get to go more in-depth.”

Sanderson opened Brix Bottleshop in 2012 when she moved back to Kalispell, her hometown, after working in the distribution arm of the liquor industry. She spent years in Oregon working in vineyards, learning about wine and how to make it. She was a student of the business side while she worked in distributing, before the opportunity to move home presented the chance to open her own shop. She said moving back to Kalispell meant she could spent time with her father again and raise her kids in the Flathead. Funding assistance from the Kalispell Business Improvement District’s façade improvement grant gave her high hopes that she could do bigger and better things with the bottle shop and contribute to the blooming downtown.

“It ended up being a blessing,” she said. “There are businesses doing well on Main Street. That’s the most exciting thing.”

Sanderson said she’s excited to get back to the full swing of things with the holidays coming up. Sales in August at the new location were just below last year’s Christmas sales at the Loading Dock, while Christmas usually doubles August sales that year. She’s hoping Christmas this year on Main Street to double any previous holiday sales period.

Brix will turn 4 years old in December, but Sanderson is getting ready by ordering as much product as she can and readying displays, preparing to handle the holiday shopping season.

“It’s so exciting to grow a small business in a small town,” she said.

Reporter Seaborn Larson may be reached at 758-4441 or by email at slarson@dailyinterlake.com.