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at a bar,” he explains. “We do freshly squeezed fruit for
cocktails, muddled herbs and bitters. All of our recipes
are one-liquor cocktails, so if you bring in a bottle of
vodka we’ll send you to the vodka page showing recipes
we’ve developed. It’s $5 for a cocktail, a $15 corking fee
on wines and liquors, and $2 per beer. We’ll save you
about 30 percent on beer, and for high-end liquor the
savings are exponential.”
BUTTS IN THE SEATS
The first few months were slow, but the duo stuck to
their plan. “We started leaning on our friends and fam-
ily to come in and support us, which brought bodies in
here—as I like to call it, ‘butts in the seats,’” says Cap-
pelli. “Then people start looking through our windows,
seeing that we’re busy.”
In and around Philadelphia you find an interesting
combination of pride, humility and a strong work eth-
ic. The Cappelli brothers seem to have applied all those
qualities in making a name for themselves.
“We are what I would call an ‘experience-driven
retail store,’ which is something the entire retail indus-
try—not just cigars, but retail in general—needs to start
thinking about if they want to stay a brick-and-mortar
[business],” says Cappelli. “We are not innovative from
a cigar bar standpoint, we’re just a normal cigar bar—
we have cigars in a bar. We are innovative from a retail-
ing standpoint. We offer coffee, tea and espresso. We do
all Illy [brand] coffees, and high-end loose-leaf teas. We
even implemented hookah, which was more for the ex-
perience [than for sales]. A cigar guy might not like hoo-
kah, but when that same cigar guy sees four girls walk in
and light up a hookah, they love hookah.
“You’re going to pay a bit more per stick here, but
you don’t mind doing it because we’re going to invite
you into our store and we’re going to show you what we
know,” he adds. “We will give you the best deal we can.
If you want to sit down and experience what we’re offer-
ing, we do feel that we are entitled to make a buck, and
earn a buck.”
THE GROWTH GAME
Once established, their business picked up quickly,
helped by five-star reviews on Yelp and Google. The
company’s Facebook page grew very active. “We are
in the center of the Washington Square West district
of Philadelphia,” says Cappelli. “It’s a bustling part of
town, a lot of nightlife. It’s a very liberal section of the
city, too; [it’s called] the ‘gayborhood.’ We’re proud to be
part of this neighborhood and the diversity of it. We’ve
worked hard to gain respect, and earn the LGBTQ
community dollar, even though my brother are I are
both straight guys.”
The Cappelli brothers knew how to navigate the lo-
cal scene, but finding their way into the cigar industry
without any connections was an early obstacle—in part
because the owners that preceded them had earned a
reputation for ignoring their bills. “My brother and I
I had some
money saved
up, my brother
had some money
saved up. I said,
‘Andrew, I think
we’ve got a good
concept here.
Where Art Thou?
[ T O B A C C O B U S I N E S S . C O M ]
TOBACCO BUSINESS
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