By CARA LORELLO
Staff Reporter
Call it new management with a familiar face.
Medical Lake Liquor and Wine, formerly located downtown at 108 North Jefferson Street, will be open for business soon at its new location at East 211 SR-902 next door to Denny's Harvest Foods with extended hours.
Keep an eye out for the store's new sign, which owner Mark Bahr of Medical Lake said he expects to arrive at the end of the month, along with the store's first shipment of inventory to fill the new display cases already spaced tactically around the airy, 20-by-60 square foot store.
Carpeted flooring customers won't find in the store's new digs, the porcelain and red grouted tiling makes for easier cleaning and has a longer durability according to Bahr, who said the material is the same used in auto show rooms.
The dark green, red and vanilla color selection for the interior Bahr and wife Barbara picked out together based on the scheme at Denny's for the interior walls and storefront façade of dark-colored brick, timber, concrete awning and stone base.
It may be his first venture as owner of a retail store, but Bahr is hardly a stranger to the service business, having started in the hotel industry at age 17 and advancing to upper management positions at a number of well-known Spokane venues, beginning with the Gateway Hotel, now known as the Shilo Inn, the Red Lion, Ramada Inn and the Double Tree Motel, when it was known as the Sheraton.
“I've done a variety of things in my career. Besides the hotel industry, I've done work in government contracts and consulting service,” Bahr said, who ran his own consulting firm, M.L.B. Professional Services, for several years.
His 16-year absence from the service industry, coupled with news that Medical Lake's liquor store was looking for new management, was enough to interest Bahr to inquire about the position with the state.
In Washington, there are two kinds of liquor stores: state owned and operated stores, and contract stores, like Bahr's. Of the 23 respondents for the position, only two were interviewed. Bahr was one of the two.
“Experience is really a deciding factor in the interview process, because there's a lot of accountability in the handling of inventory of the store,” he said.
“I'm sure [the state] wanted someone with some degree of understanding of accountability and of inventory control, and I received the unanimous vote.
I think the separation factor between myself and the second applicant was my association with this community,” Bahr added, who's lived in the Medical area since 1968, and is a former president of the Medical Lake Merchant's Association (later the Medical Lake Chamber of Commerce), a position he held for 10 years before the group disbanded in the early 1990s.
Plans have moved rather quickly since he got the news on Sept. 26, and the time since then Bahr's spent putting up new store furnishings, placed product orders and produced a business plan to the state, a large selling point for which is the new location on 902, which averages 1,500 cars a day.
“That's about 5 percent of [traffic on Jefferson].
With that short window, the store really couldn't commit to all state vendors,” Bahr said.
The state currently limits the amount of advertising contract stores can do outside of relocation information and hour change details, including no specific product promotion.
Outside of regular state-selected wine and spirits, the store will also stock product-related merchandise ranging from glassware, pour spouts, jiggers and other bar supplies, which Bahr said he has plans for expanding. The store has already added two-dozen new items not previously carried at the old location.
Extended hours for the store are Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Friday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. For information on the store's opening date, please call 299-3442.
Cara Lorello can be reached at [email protected].
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