This city has produced some of the best wine minds in the world. Honestly, the team is the announcement.
On the store side, Ben Niedelman comes to us from Morrell and Tribeca Wine Merchants. Devon Elting joins from management roles at Verve and Rosenthal. Santiago Villasis spent years as an operational leader at Astor Wines. From California, Keith Mabry, who has been with K&L since 2007 and serves as our Rhone and Loire buyer, relocated to help lead the wine program here. Operations Manager Will Langi and John Bilodeau made the same move, bringing years of K&L experience with them. Supporting the New York launch at the leadership level, Tom Zacharia, our VP of Strategic Growth and Partnerships, and Josephine Zacharia, who leads our marketing team, bring the perspective of one of New York's most storied wine families.
There are others we haven't named who are equally essential to what we're building. The bottles are great. The people are why you'll come back.