Needham's Bin Ends is Now Open

The doors at 65 Crawford Street are open again, and Needham's newest wine store is doing business. 

Bin Ends, the Braintree-based fine wine store approved 3-1 by the Selectmen, is now open. There is a grand opening still to come, but they are doing business now. 

When you first enter, you meet the bargain bin containing "bin ends"--survivors of broken cases, or end-of-vintage leftovers which are themselves fine, but are sold at cost to shops like Bin Ends, which sells them at a discounted price.

Next to that, shelves filled with craft beers, leading to a fridge with more cooling inside. A display of 12-pack cardboard boxes stands in the center. 

Behind the bargain bin, the service center, where Owner John Hafferty stands talking to customers from behind a new iMac computer. An iPad point-of-sale system is set up at the far corner, next to where six wines for tasting have been set out.

The shop does wine tasting every day. In addition to the email newsletter, the store can also keep track of the wines and beers you purchase--so that customers can easily find names of wines they have picked up in the past.

Behind that, a stack of wine cases--another of Bin Ends' features--discounted boxes. Around the walls, a number of bays with boxes of wines organized loosely based on geography. American-made wines along the back wall, and other displays with wines from Italy, Germany, Australia along the storefront. 

The far wall carries a wide selection of spirits, many from smaller, local distilleries, all in 750 ml sizes. 

Patch met with Hafferty a few weeks ago to learn more about Bin Ends is. He told us that he decided to take the existing model for wine shops and "blow it up."

"What stores do I like shopping in?" he asked himself. Stores like Williams Sonoma, where all of the products were out on the floor to play with, or the Apple store, where "everyone does a little of everything." 

See Patch's full interview with Hafferty. 

Hafferty said the selling point of the shop is, "Great wines, serious savings. Even the name of the company shows that we run away from the highbrow concept… it’s Bin Ends! The original concept was to fill a niche like a Marshalls of the wine retail world but over the four years since we opened, we have become a lot more."

Bin Ends was the fifth shop approved at the February hearing. Although it was approved in a 3-1 vote, each of the Board of Selectmen praised the store's concept.