Originally published on October 24, 2011.
A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: Oh I remember those days. One of the huge perks of owning the business is that no one can tell you not to bring your kids to work. The kid in the picture actually drinks wine now. And has a pretty decent palate!
This installment of Things You Need to Know doesn’t really apply to all potential wine store owners. Just the ones that think it would be a good idea to open a wine store six months or so before having a third kid. Because if you, then eventually there will be a day when your manager has the rare weekend off, your newest staffer has a delayed start date due a nasty bronchial infection, your backups all dare to have lives outside of being your backups…and one of your kids will have a birthday party in the wide-open space of a Brooklyn park that guarantees at least one of your other kids will wander off into the Brooklyn wilderness if your husband attempts to take all three of them to the party.
Which is a long way of saying that if you have three kids and a wine store, eventually you’ll wind up with one of them in the shop in need of a couple hours worth of entertainment. They want to have fun. You want to get some work done. But there’s only so much work that can get done when the kiddo can’t even reach the counter.
Here are some tips:
Stock the Bottles Game
Shocking how well this one works. Probably because the kids aren’t usually allowed to touch the bottles. But in this game, not only do they get to touch the bottles…they get to MOVE THEM! To play, each shelf section is assigned a letter (another use for the indispensable Post-It Note.) Then the grown up calls out “yellow tops, Section A” or green tops, Section C,” or whatever. The lucky kiddo gets to PICK UP and MOVE THE BOTTLES from the wherever they’ve been piled to the assigned section. Once all the bottles are lined up, the lucky kiddo gets to yet again, PICK UP THE BOTTLES and HAND THEM to the grown up who puts them on the shelf. And if the kid is very, very lucky, he may even get to PUT BOTTLES ON THE SHEFL ALL BY HIMSELF! (Unless you’re 3 – 7 years old, you probably can’t imagine how exciting this is.)
Make a Display Game
First, you need to explain that a “display” is something you set up to be eye catching so people will stop as they walk by and want to learn more. Then you let the kiddo loose with various, often forbidden goodies, in this case, corks, plastic cups, flower pots (from the actual spring window display, fake autumn leaves, and yes….BOTTLES!
Photo Shoot
Give him the phone. Let him take pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. Delete as needed. (Although some may turn out to be sort of cool, in an abstract impressionist sort of way.)
Last Resort
Let Angry Birds and Red Remover get you through the home stretch.
Today, we actually didn’t need to get to the Last Resort phase. The plastic dinos came out of the rolly bag (yes, we packed a rolly bag even through the apartment is right round the corner.) They took over a few wine boxes and the husband and other two kiddos returned just as they were about to annex the Australia section.