There is some good news if you are in a hurry for your $200-a-pound Ibérico ham: Two new gourmet shops in Vero Beach now sell the sought-after product.
To have not one, but two high-end food and wine shops open within six months of each other is a testament to Vero’s evolving food scene.
The owners of Varietals and More on Royal Palm Pointe and Alimentari in the island’s Village Shops both have international backgrounds and savvy retail sensibilities. Their resulting shops reflect that, and are quickly turning into destinations.
Both have been greeted with passionately appreciative customers. Alimentari intended to have an opening of 30 or so people; 250 showed up for the Sunday afternoon event in November. “We ran out of inventory,” says owner Javier Peralta Ramos.
Varietals and More has had a similar welcome. Since its opening, 1,000 people have signed up for the shop’s email blasts, and there is a wait list for the 50-member wine club. Last Saturday, a crush of club members from John’s Island to west Vero converged on the small shop, enjoying cheeses and charcuterie and sipping samples from a half-dozen distributors.
Though the two shops appear to have captured a sizeable share of Vero’s foodie scene, they are not alone. There is the venerable Chelsea’s on Cardinal, which opened in 1982; the Village Beach Market, a sizable gourmet grocery store nicknamed the “Tiffany” market; and the Polo Deli, opened in November by restaurateur John Marx and his partner Kelly Stubbs. It too features an upscale design but targets lower price points on its wines, and offers deli-type fare.
Another local favorite, the Cheese Cave on Miracle Mile, has a large selection of cheeses and Italian foods, in a setting that is more grocer than gourmet shop.
Of those, none has the destination vibe of either Alimentari or Varietals. Within weeks of Alimentari’s November opening, regulars were claiming a daily seat at the farm table, spreading out the newspaper and sipping espresso.
At Varietals, owner Rob Wayne, whom his wife Michele calls a “wine savant” for his remarkable memory of what people buy, is already generating a mental file on his new customer base.
“We have a lot of allocated wines, the hard-to-get stuff, but we also like the idea of wine for everybody,” says Wayne, a 25-year veteran of the wine business.
“Someone will call at 4:30 in the afternoon and say, ‘I’m coming over with a few friends. Can you pick out a couple of nice bottles and put together a cheese platter?’ And we’ll clear off the barrel table in the back room for them. We’ve had 10 people back there.”
Browsers can also order a glass of wine to sip while they shop. “It goes only by color, it’s whatever we choose to open. But it’s always good,” says Michele Wayne.
Alimentari is the dream come true for Ramos, an Argentine architect and entrepreneur who moved to the states with his wife Silvina and their two boys 14 years ago, settling in Melbourne Beach.
A native of Buenos Aires, Ramos left his architecture practice to develop a car battery recycling business. The company’s expansion to Florida kept Ramos busy until last year, when it was sold.
Ramos wasn’t idle for long. With only a two-month timeframe to open in the Village Shops, he set about designing Alimentari. Spare and elegant, the space includes a wall of wine selected by the former wine manager for Chelsea’s. Opposite are several cases of cheeses and high-end meats – including the coveted Ibérico.
His wine prices for the most part are far more affordable than his acorn-flavored ham. “What I truly believe in in this store is value. I look for small companies that do fantastic things, the jams, the honey, the teas. It’s very important to me.”
The back of the shop opens into the rear plaza area of the Village Shops, recently redone by retailer Jay McLaughlin, who has his eponymous clothing store there as well as Citron Bistro.
McLaughlin is also on the verge of a pillow shop, but plans for a pizza place, announced last fall, have been delayed. He’s hoping to open in September.
That leaves Ramos with the only food-oriented business in the plaza other than Citron. While he wasn’t permitted to serve sandwiches, he just installed an espresso machine and sells croissants and baguettes, baked every four hours in the back of the shop. They’ve turned out to be a hot item – people are coming just for bread.
“These are the best anywhere!” shrieked one customer last week, thrilled to nab the last one.
Ramos shrugged and smiled. “It brings them in,” he says.
The other surprise was how fast housewares and kitchen accessories are selling. “They fly off the tables for hostess presents. It’s incredible,” he says. “My mother was a fashion designer with seven stores. I know retail.”
Some 10 minutes away, Varietals too is drawing in customers. Like the Village Shops’ renovation, Royal Palm has gotten oxygen from a number of fresh faces including Quail Valley Club’s new restaurant and lodging, now under construction, and a breezily modern juice bar and sandwich shop, La Tabla.
Across from La Tabla, Varietals is a cozy, French country-themed shop with more focus on wine than Alimentari.
Varietals also has 100 craft beers filling a floor-to-ceiling wall, available as singles or six packs. Like Alimentari, Varietals offers cheeses, charcuterie, olives and sweets. Its housewares and gifts are the domain of Michele Wayne who buys according to her tastes – a blend of Napa and Provence, two places she knows and loves.
She and Rob Wayne were middle school sweethearts in Fort Lauderdale who drifted apart after high school. Michele moved to San Francisco, and Rob moved to France, settling first in Rognes, a village near Aix-en-Provence, and later, after Michele joined him (they got back together at their 20th class reunion), in Lambesc. In both towns, he opened shops that sold wine, cheese and textiles.
In all Rob Wayne spent 16 years in Provence. His knowledge of the region is extensive, and he speaks French fluently. Most importantly, he learned about wines. When the couple moved back to the states, he joined Crown Wine and Spirits, a respected South Florida-based chain selling wines and gourmet food. Wayne managed a branch in west Vero from 2008 until it closed in 2014.
Michele Wayne’s interest in wines started with foodie friends in northern California. “Napa was an hour and a half away. I used to grab a girlfriend and drive up for the afternoon.”
For her, the customer base has become “a gift in itself.”
“It’s lovers of life,” she says. “They’re from the beach to the mainland to out west of town and they’re very loyal. If we have 20 customers come through, 17 will be repeats.”
That approachable feeling is reflected in the wines. While there are bottles at $200, there are also many at $14.
“It’s not a museum,” says Rob Wayne.
Ramos of Alimentari has the same philosophy, though he designed his stylish shop to have a pared-down, modern feel.
“People say this looks like California or New York,” Ramos says. “I’m super pleased.
“I just want to chase pleasure, as much as we can legally do,” he says. “It’s all about pleasure. Wine, food, you put it in, and then it’s gone. I say, carpe diem.”
