Sunshine Foss, co-founder of Happy Cork, joins Cheddar News to discuss her Brooklyn business providing black-owned liquor brands a space in the community. 

Between Bells

Happy Cork Offers Black and Minority Owned Wine and Spirits 

Welcome back to Between Bells all month long cheddar is celebrating black history. Month one wine shop is putting community first. Happy cork opened its doors in Brooklyn back in 2019. Since then it has evolved into a travel destination for all people looking to experience the largest selection of black and minority owned wine and spirits joining us. Now to discuss is Sunshine Fox, co founder of Happy Cork. Sunshine, I love your name, I love this idea. Welcome to the show. You didn't know much about liquor but jumped in the space Anyway, what inspired you to start happy cork. So happy Clarke was started out of, I tell people the wine and spirits industry found me um because happy Cork, we actually purchased the building in 2016, there was a wine and spirits store here before. Um but we just couldn't get the space rented once they left And two years in and the space wasn't rented and I figured okay by 2018 if it's not rented, I gotta do something. Um and there came the birth of happy Cork, but I knew I wanted to give something to the neighborhood that was gonna be something beautiful, a space that they could come in. The community could touch the bottles, talk to the team. Um so again, with the focus of community at the forefront, we wanted to make sure we included a large assortment of black owned, minority owned women owned and run wine and spirits from someone who frequents these kind of shops all the time. Your shop looks absolutely beautiful. I certainly have to make my way down to Brooklyn. You offer more than 200 brands brands. Can you talk about some of the collections that you feature in your store? So we've, and I, I say it all the time, but we have the largest assortment of black owned wine and spirits anywhere, especially for the size of our story. You come in. It's a lot of people say it's like a museum. Um, but we have some of the most amazing brands from john legend's lve collection to mary J. Blige is sun goddess and a ton of beautiful brands that were prior to our shelves. A lot of people didn't know about that. We carry from Uncle Nearest, which is the person who created the formula for Jack Daniels, the slave who created the formula for Jack Daniels. And it's now owned by a beautiful black woman. Um but on top of that, the master distiller is the great great granddaughter of Uncle nearest. I am taking notes. I am so excited. Sun Goddess. My mary J. Blige. Check. I'm ordering that. What are some of the more popular. I can't wait to try it. What are some of the popular wines and spirits that your customers just can't get enough of in your store. Sunshine. Um, so for us, we are definitely huge promoters of anything that is women owned and run. So one of our definitely our biggest brands is probably going to be the black Girl Magic brand by the Mcbride sisters. There you go. Um that is definitely people travel from all over the bottle says black girl Magic, so who doesn't want to drink about that says Black girl Magic. Um and of course uncle nears for us has been one of our top sellers um from the time we opened, that's another one I have to try. You were able to thrive despite pandemic related challenges. Can you talk to me about that sunshine and how you overcame that in the end? So for us, I think from the get go from the inception of happy cork, we knew it was gonna be about community. Um and that has rang true from the time we opened outdoors. And so for us, a huge part of that was definitely the social media aspect. So we've been heavy on social media from the beginning of the store, and then once the pandemic hit um that gave our reach, we were able to reach people from all over the world. Um and then, so we were shut down, we weren't, we weren't shut down, we were deemed essential. So once the shutdown happened, um it was just like everyone was home and everyone was shopping and everybody wanted to support, but then on top of that we had the Black Lives movement that happened literally um two months into the pandemic. So once that happened, you had a huge push for support of all of these beautiful black owned brands and we became that travel destination space. Did you suffer from any supply chain disruptions? Absolutely, I think everyone is going through it right now. We have, you know, we've blasted these brands all over and people are coming from all over the shop for them. And the last thing that we want to tell them is hey, we haven't had this Brandon for a month because they can't find bottles. Um so we have had the worst time with supply chain issues and you know, you're seeing it across the industry from not having bottles too, the juice being stuck in the different countries, so it's definitely been a challenge but we're moving right along bringing everyone some goodness What's next for happy cork, Sunshine, any expansion plans? So I think I get asked this question all the time whether or not we're going to expand and I think because we've been able to have such a beautiful reach, we do shipping um and delivery. So online platform for us has been amazing in terms of our website. Um so we're just really pushing the website as much as we can. Um but also too, we just launched in december. Happy buds, which is a CBD and wellness space right here in bed stuy as well. I have to jump on your website right after the show. Thank you so much for your time. Sunshine of course, please you're welcome back anytime Sunshine Foster, co founder of Happy Cork.