Hand-painted murals, glass display cases and decorative art light fixtures draw upon a mix of art nouveau, art deco and French provincial design influences. The look of the shop tells a visual story designed to take suburban shoppers back in time to an earlier age of refinement when the art of the cocktail was appreciated and celebrated.
An online version of the bottle shop with national distribution is in the works. Schmidt recommends the single-barrel batches made for other CH Projects properties, including a Reposado tequila from Polite Provisions, Elijah Craig bourbon from Neighborhood and Maker's Mark bourbon from Born and Raised, all in the $40 to $90 range.
"It's just such an egregious waste of money," Schmidt said. The bottle shop begrudgingly carries a few $3,500 bottles of Pappy Van Winkle, the hard-to-find boutique brand that gives whiskey drinkers goosebumps. The rare bottle collection includes a Cordon Bleu from the 1970s, a Johnny Walker Black from the 1960s and a vintage Chartreuse, all in the $500 to $1,500 range. "I don't want to go too far into how we're sourcing these, only because it really is something I need to keep close to the chest." "We get them wherever we can," Schmidt said. Prices range from $26 for Old Overholt rye whiskey to $5,000 for a 12-year-old Very Old Fitzgerald bourbon.īeverage director Anthony Schmidt has a team of bottle hunters that scour estate sales and old liquor stores across the country for defunct brands and rare finds. The highly curated bottle shop features decades-old liquors and liqueurs, limited-editions from around the world and hard-to-find boutique labels as well as cocktail recipe books and barware. Opened in mid-April, the boutique aspires to be the Williams-Sonoma or Sur La Table of the bar world. Located across from a gleaming Apple store and an aromatic La Colombe coffee stand, Raised by Wolves evokes the feel of a late 19th century European storefront with a slate-blue French nouveau facade and stained glass entry panels. "We want you to lose perspective on where you are." "We want to create our own world within this world," Tafazoli said. The boutique's elaborate backstory references Roman mythology and the story of Romulus and Remus, brothers who founded Rome after being raised by wolves.
The big picture concept: Entice shoppers into the cocktail lounge and turn bar patrons into impulse buyers.įrom a design aesthetic standpoint, the goal of the new hybrid concept is to transport shoppers from a bustling contemporary outdoor mall to another world full of escapist fantasy, mythology and wolves. The dual-concept Raised by Wolves pairs a 1,500-square-foot cocktail-centric boutique with a 2,000-square foot hidden bar at the recently remodeled UTC. "Now it's time for them to do their jobs in a different way again and drive traffic to earn the rent they charge." "Operators got a bit lazy and expected the anchor stores to drive all the traffic," Rosenblum said. "As anchor stores like Macy's struggle, it makes sense for mall operators to return to creative ways to drive traffic," Rosenblum said.ĭata shows that higher end food and beverage offerings like Raised by Wolves drive traffic to suburban malls like UTC, according to Rosenblum.
Paula Rosenblum, managing partner of RSR Research, believes the risks for CH Projects and Westfield are minimal. "When that comes together that's when you can actually do some real good." "In my world, people with the resources don't have the vision and people with the vision don't have the resources," Tafazoli said.