Meet Nancie and James Lewis of Crush Wine Bar in Castle Rock

Today we’d like to introduce you to Nancie and James Lewis.

Nancie Lewis grew up in Littleton and has always been passionate about food – so much so that she left a corporate career 15 years ago to embark on a new path as a caterer and personal chef. Her focus on making clean, healthy and delicious food quickly earned her a very loyal clientele in the South Denver metro area. Crush has presented for Nancie her next opportunity to expand her culinary horizons and she enjoys sharing this new adventure with her Castle Rock neighbors.

James Lewis, happily married to Nancie for 17 years, grew up on the Western Slope of Colorado and moved to Littleton as a teen. He worked in restaurants from that point until his early twenties, when a lucky career detour took him into the wine industry. He’s spent the last 20 years traveling the US and the world working for wineries from California, Australia, Italy and France. He’s a certified sommelier and he loves what he does!

In the rare moments that they aren’t at Crush, Nancie and James enjoy exploring the Colorado outdoors and spending time with their three dogs: Imogene, Angus and Shayla.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
HA! While starting Crush has been the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done, it’s also been the most difficult. Early on, we had to get used to the seasonality of our business. We never expected that guest flow at a wine bar would be so highly influenced by the local school calendar. In our first year, things were rolling along nicely all the way up to spring break, when business dropped sharply. We weren’t prepared for it and we had some cash flow issues. We made it through, then struggled through the summer months, which were slower than expected. Lots of lessons were learned and, now in our second year, we have come to better understand and plan for these seasonal fluctuations.

Please tell us about Crush Wine Bar.
We take a great deal of pride in offering wines from family-owned wineries and distributors. We offer 50+ wines by the glass, half-glass and quarter-glass, all of which we purchase based not only on price/value but on relationships – with the winemakers, winery owners, importers and/or distributors. When our guests ask us about a wine, we can not only give them insight into what they’ll find in the glass but also into the people that were behind creating it.

As with the wines, our food menu is becoming well-known in our community for the freshness of our ingredients and the myriad flavors that we offer to accompany the wines. While food makes up a much smaller portion of our revenues, there is rarely a review posted that doesn’t mention how much the writer enjoyed their meal.

Additionally, we are always extremely happy when someone takes the time to mention that the service they received at our establishment was top notch. We try to make it very easy for our staff to “do the right thing” by our guests. This is a small community and repeat business is vital to the health of our venture. We are also, for the moment, the only bar/restaurant that has implemented a 21 and over policy. We’re known for being the place in town where adults can come and relax, enjoy a date night, ladies night out, teachers escape, etc.

We feel proud, every day, of the team we’ve built. All of our servers/bartenders have guests that come to see them specifically and we’ve developed a very loyal base of regulars. Our staff gets along better than any other group of people I’ve ever worked with – they spend time together outside of work and earlier this year, we started what will be an annual “staff field trip” to a working winery. Educational and a really good time.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
Start with a larger “bank” of working capital. We’ve had some moments when we weren’t sure we would make it, and if we had planned our finances a bit better, it would have saved us a heap of stress!

Pricing:

• Wines by the glass range from $7 to $24, with about half under $10 per glass.
• On average, our guests stay for around 1-1/2 hours and spend about $24 per person.
• Happy Hour pricing consists of $2 off all (6 oz) glasses of wine, small plates & flatbreads

Contact Info:

• Address: 3911 Ambrosia Street, Castle Rock, CO 80109
• Website: www.crushwineandfood.com
• Phone: 720-361-2121
• Email: info@crushwineandfood.com
• Instagram: @crushwinecr
• Facebook: @CrushWine
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/crush-wine-bar-castle-rock

Image Credit:
Nick Lucey

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