Midtown Liquor Depot Co-owner Vinny Albano.

Midtown Liquor Depot
751 Centre of New England Boulevard
Coventry, RI

Square footage: 14,000

Years in operation: 5 months

By Sara Capozzi

After 10 years in the package store industry, brothers and business partners John Wilson and Vinny Albano recently celebrated the opening of their latest business venture, Midtown Liquor Depot.

The brothers opened the 14,000-square-foot store in July, the size of which gives them the opportunity to give customers “what they are looking for so they don’t have to drive somewhere else,” Albano said.

“We want to be the biggest discount store in the state,” Wilson said. One of the brothers’ goals is to appeal to a broad range of consumers. “We don’t specialize in [just] anything—we’re trying to specialize in everything. We don’t go crazy on high-end wines. We want to be the Walmart of liquor stores.”

Wilson and Albano had both previously been involved in the restaurant industry, owning and running several local pizzerias. They decided to try a career change, entering the beer, wine and spirits industry in December of 2014 by purchasing their first shop, Fat Barrel Liquors in Providence. They then went on to purchase a 2,400-square-foot store, West Greenwich Package Store, which was damaged by a fire in May.

They weren’t able to salvage any of that inventory when they went on to purchase Midtown, but the brothers used it as an opportunity to stock their new store with exactly what their customers were seeking: mainstream, big-name brands. “Customer service is No. 1,” Albano said. “We have to bring in all the varieties [of different brands] because that’s what the customers are looking for. That’s why we still have a lot of room on our shelves because we’re trying to see what the customers want. So, we can bring them the right price and it’ll be the cheapest one around here.

“We offer the best prices all around. Nobody can get our prices,” he said, explaining that, at Midtown, they buy and sell products in bulk for cost savings. “We have a lot of customers buying more than 12 packs of wines for instance. We try to offer the lowest price to try to pull the customer in. It’s not just for me, it’s for who’s living in the town. We have good competition here, so we offer really sharp prices.”

Midtown has four employees serving shoppers who hail mainly from Coventry and neighboring towns East Greenwich and West Greenwich. Besides low prices and great service, customer perks include plenty of in-store tastings on the weekends and special ordering. The brothers mentioned that many customers from their previous store have shown up to support them in their latest endeavor.

“We’re a family business,” Wilson said. “We started from a 1,000-square-foot store to a 14,000-square-foot store now. We love to work and take care of each customer individually and try to be a nice community business. We love our customers and appreciate that everybody has supported us.”

Wilson is opening a restaurant next door, Midtown Pizzeria, so the location will be “a one-stop shop for customers who can pick up a bottle of wine and dinner all in one trip.”