April Club Newsletter 2026
- Gary Parker
- Apr 1
- 3 min read
Here are some excerpts from an interview I had from Canvas Rebel Magazine. Thought you might like to get to know me and how we got here a little better. This is a two-part Series:
MEET GARY PARKER (Part Two)
Canvas Rebel: Gary, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Gary Parker: I was studying architecture at San Diego State College when one of my professors told me to get a job in the industry or transfer to a Cal Poly school. I had just moved here from Los Angeles (1973) and did not want to leave this fabulous city, so I got a job doing graphic illustration work for a mid-sized company. That was very part-time, so I found myself supplementing my income working every position I could at a French Restaurant in Solana Beach, Mon Ami.
With my first sip of a great wine, I was hooked. I looked into finding everything I could about wine (this was pre-internet) and decided I was going to dedicate my life to wine and food endeavors. I fantasized about owning my own restaurant and booking myself to play jazz in it. I was studying the saxophone at the time but only play sporadically anymore.
So now, we are in our 38th year of business and have built a loyal following of those who live and love wine and fine dining. We have special wine dinners every month, special wine tastings weekly, and provide lunch and dinner service to the area of Sorrento Mesa.
Canvas Rebel: What is one of things you are most proud of?
Gary Parker: One of the things I am most proud of: we have four different levels of wine of the month club memberships, with 400-500 subscribers. We provide educational tasting notes for each wine, recipes, an epicurean related newsletter, and a free tasting of the wines each month in our restaurant. All the wines in each level of the wine club are sold below their suggested retail prices and come from all over the world’s many wine growing regions. We have people who signed up for the wine club when we started in 1999 who are still in the club today, twenty-seven years later!
Canvas Rebel: Can you open up about how you funded your business?
Gary Parker: In 1988, I was committing to move in to the yet to be built building we still occupy today. I needed $120,000 to assist with the building and furnishing the restaurant, to include outfitting a new kitchen and inventory for the wine shop. I had never raised money before. Again, pre internet days, there was little available reference material on how to go about attracting investors to put their money in my dream.
I collected a few different prospectus I could find designed for larger companies and used those as a general outline for an investment package. I put in working projections based on certain amount of diners coming in daily, the food cost, beverage costs, labor, rent, utilities and potential rental income from the wine storage lockers; everything I could imagine as cost factors and sided that up against the projected revenue stream.
The investment package was about 20 pages long. I put a bit of romance into as well, with photos of other restaurants and wine bars and retail wine shops.
I had all the money raised in three months.
Canvas Rebel: Do you have multiple revenue streams – if so, can you talk to us about those streams and how your developed them?
Gary Parker: Having multiple revenue sources at The WineSellar & Brasserie has been the key to our long-term existence,
In the beginning, we had a full-service wine shop, a French restaurant serving lunch only, and a wine storage facility for private collectors to house their wine correctly, safely. We later opened The Brasserie Restaurant to serve dinner as well as lunch, and introduced winemaker dinners and specialized themed wine tasting events.
In 1999, we began selling wines through an online Internet wine auction which increased our wine sales $500,000 annually. In 2000, we began our three separate levels of wine of the month wine clubs, still going strong today with hundreds of members.
In 2001, we began conducting wine tours for small groups (16 people). We now conduct two of these tours every year, and have been to South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Tasmania, France, Italy, Spain, Chile, Argentina, Greece, Sicily, Portugal, and this year Croatia. These wine trips also involve local cultural features as well, and we have a lot of repeat travelers each year. You should go!
So much fun!
Comments