We choose a region and promote it for a year, so I’ll travel there ahead of time. Mine is definitely more European centric, and that’s naturally what we sell most of, especially French and Italian. It's an educational facility that's separate from the retail space but we clearly feed off each other. We also have a sister company called Astor Center. We do a lot of promotions, which requires a heavy amount of planning, sometimes 6 to 10 months in advance. We need to maintain a competitive edge, because it’s an incredibly competitive market. We keep track of vintages for all those wines, we do the buying, we track inventory of what's selling or not, and we keep track of what everyone else is doing. There’s a lot of paperwork and a lot of time in front of the computer, communicating and disseminating information to sales staff, which is very important because they’re the ones in contact with clients. What other tasks are included in the job? I have three assistants who help me, one helps me taste, another is more administrative, and another focuses more on spirits. We carry about 3000 different wines and 1500 spirits, and I oversee all the purchases. I became the head buyer less than five years after that. The same job was open again at Astor, and I returned to it less than a week before September 11. Having that “full circle” experience of wine is very important. Had it been a pristine vintage, I wouldn’t have learned nearly as much. I worked the 2000 harvest in Germany, which was an awful vintage. I had an opportunity to go with my husband to Europe, who was doing research for his PhD in Berlin. To support our journalism and get unlimited access to our coverage.How did you gain practical experience in wine? Want more stories like this one? Subscribe now If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the September 26, 2022, issue of Thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism. “Job security, that’s a huge deal for me.” “First and foremost, I still have a job,” Ascencios said. In contrast, Astor’s employees will be even more integrated with a store that was already an anchor of the neighborhood. The transfer of ownership is striking given the decision by Trader Joe’s in August to shutter its wine store in Union Square just as its employees were reportedly preparing to unionize. The Fisher family oversaw multiple expansions and relocations, culminating in the 2006 move to its current home in the historic De Vinne Press Building on the corner of Lafayette and East 4th. Doug Yacka, Astor’s operations manager, likened the plan to a superior form of 401(k).Īstor has been in operation since 1946. They can expect to take home modest dividends in good years and sell their shares when they leave. The Fishers, whose father, Edwin, purchased the shop in 1968, said in a statement that “the best succession plan is to entrust Astor to the people who have been so instrumental in building our enterprise.” The sale was made through an ESOP (employee-stock-ownership plan), which allows employees to hold shares in the company and makes them the owners. “It was utter shock,” Lorena Ascencios, Astor’s wine buyer, said. Astor became a pillar of its Noho community, a rare vestige of the old world.Īstor underwent another transformation this past summer, announcing on September 12 that its owners, brothers Andy and Rob Fisher, had completed a sale of the company - not to another set of owners but to their employees. The last time Astor Wines & Spirits appeared in the news came during the early weeks of the pandemic, when the beloved store tweeted images of a business transformed: boxes of wine piled on the floor, snaking shopping carts full of booze, all waiting to be shipped to customers who suddenly found themselves trapped in their apartments. From left: Vince Grace, Chung Park, Andrea Fraccari, Josh Mizrahi, Bill Kenny, Ling Li Ding, Simon Gouldstone, Erfan Himel, Urszula Przedwojska, Kayla Marcos, Claire Fishman, Doug Yacka, Charlene Perez, Alfredo Cantillo, Devanand Chanilal, Victor Boddie, Bilmar Morales, Veronica Martin, Juan Cintron, Jordanna Douyon, Steve McGregor, John Wilber, Taliek Weeks, John Johnson, Bambi Ray, Eric Moore, Esther Collins, Nima Ansari, Shawn McLaughlin, Andy Fisher, Varvara Pokaeva, Michael Dougherty, Rob Fisher, Lorena Ascencios, and Wil Reed.
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