Local Business Spotlight: Bella Vino

Hey Patchers, here's a quick question: how well do you know your local business owners?

With dozens of great businesses in the Windham community, we are giving you the opportunity to know some of them a lot better.

Starting today and running every week, we will feature a brief question and answer session with somone who operates a business in Windham. It can be anything from real estate to retail to the food industry.

The purpose is to give you a better outlook on who is operating in town, how they came to be where they are and what made them choose Windham.

For our first conversation, we stopped by Bella Vino in the Cobbett's Pond Plaza where we spoke with owner Paula Doucette about her local wine and food shop:

Patch: How long have you been operating in Windham and what made you choose this town?

Paula Doucette: I have owned Bella Vino – it’s been a viable business – for almost five years. So I was in Londonderry for about two and a half years and I have been in Windham for two years now. I decided to open in Windham and move from Londonderry. These communities are all connected in some way to each other. The location was important to me when I moved to Windham. So I moved from a smaller shop to a larger shop in a location that I thought was suitable for the business.

Patch: What's the first thing that people should know about running a wine shop?

Paula Doucette: It just takes knowledge of the industry, but also relationship-building with wine industry leaders (and) wine reps.

Also, a wine shop I feel is all encompassing. A lot of people feel that wine is a vehicle for food. So I have some food products here as well so that people can enjoy the whole experience of tasting wine and eating food.

Patch: What made you want to get into this industry?

Paula Doucette: I’ve always loved wine (and) loved learning about wine. I think that was my biggest introduction to the industry. But also I was very interested in specialty wines that you couldn’t get in the grocery store or liquor store. To me, after a while of drinking (grocery store wine), I always tasted chemicals. I always tasted that there was something in the wine I didn’t want, so I really got interested in sustainably farmed wines and small family owned wines so that people could be drinking a more organic style of wine.

Patch: What has your relationship been like with the surrounding businesses?

Paula Doucette: The businesses in this plaza have been very helpful. We all try to work together. We try to recommend each other. A lot of the businesses compliment each other. We have cupcakes that go great with wine. We have food that goes great with wine. 

Patch: How important is it for a town to foster its local business community?

Paula Doucette: It's very important. It really is difficult. It’s a difficult economy. As a person who has children and a home I understand how money is tight, but if people don’t visit and frequent and support local businesses there’s probably a point where we can’t sustain being here. It really does take a community to build a community.