Meet Wendy Buckley

When Wendy Buckley, 32, decided to leave her six-figure a year job to start her own wine bar during a recession, her friends and family naturally thought she might have been sampling a bit too much of the crazy juice. Or maybe she was overworked, and that was what was driving her to do something so foolish. After all, not only was she making a solid salary, she liked her job.

Dreams are funny things, though. They don't always listen to the rational part of the brain. And Buckley wasn't being reckless. She knew her husband, David, 49, an attorney, would keep their household finances from detouring into utter destruction.

Meanwhile, Buckley, who lives in Arlington, Virginia, makes a good argument that it was actually the right time to leave (more on this later). And if luck is really with her, and all of us, maybe the recession will be easing by the time she has her grand opening in October or November of 2009.

Leaving a Steady Job During a Recession

Buckley worked for -- full disclosure alert -- AOL before departing her executive job. As much as she says she enjoyed toiling as a director of programming, she ultimately decided, "I'm a workaholic, and that's not going to change. It's bred into me. And I finally decided I'd rather work and benefit myself rather than a large corporation, and that I'd rather do something I enjoy and benefit my family first-hand, as opposed to shareholders."

And being in her early 30s, Buckley felt she could wait a couple more years before having children -- she didn't want to start a business and give birth simultaneously -- but she knew she couldn't wait indefinitely. And so a few weeks after the Great Recession began in full earnest, while the President was warning of another Great Depression, and as 401(k)'s tanked, Buckley quietly gave two months notice to her employers. She then began to lay the groundwork to open the Screwtop Wine Bar, which she describes as a place where casual wine lovers will be able to go and have a favorite glass of wine and perhaps a little snack.

Buckley just enjoyed the occasional glass of wine, and the camaraderie and culture that goes with the drink. She had never run a wine bar, or any sort of hospitality establishment. Starting a business in something with which you have no experience in is generally frowned upon by experts.

So Buckley got some experience.

Crash Course in the Wine Industry

A week before Buckley left her job, she interviewed for a part-time position at a wine bar/cheese shop called Cheesetique. She landed the position, even after explaining to the owner that she wanted the job so she could gain knowledge to open her own place. She was working there for six months -- and picking up every bit of information she could about how a wine bar should operate. The owner, Jill Erber was kind enough to giver her business advice and consultation as well.

Six months later, she added another job to her day-to-day routine as a wine representative with a distributor. "I wanted to know how the wholesale side of the business works," says Buckley. "How the wine got from the winery to the distributor to a place like what I was envisioning."

At the time of this writing, she is still working as a wine representative and plans to keep the job until a few weeks before she opens her wine store this October. But that isn't all: since cheese goes well with wine, Buckley will be soon taking a cheese certification course in New York City.

"Cheese boot camp, they call it," she says. In any case, when she opens for business, some industry veterans may say that she still needs more experience, but nobody will be able to say that she hasn’t taken this venture seriously.

The Upside of the Recession

In fact, one might think that with all the time Buckley has put into working in the business that she may have had no time to work on her business. But, in fact, she has been engaged, interacting almost daily with an architect, a mechanical engineering firm and bankers, trying to jumpstart both the financing and construction of the property where her wine shop will be.

She almost signed a lease earlier this summer, but that's where hiring a mechanical engineering firm -- an idea that came from her architect -- paid off. The firm discovered that the building she was going to lease didn't have enough electrical power to run her business. It only had 150 amps, and her wine bar would need 250 amps. Buckley asked her future landlord if he would upgrade the electric, and his reply was, "If you pay to upgrade it, I might pay you back in a couple years."

Buckley decided not to sign the lease, and ultimately found some property just 500 feet from her house, much to her and her husband's delight.

But the reason that Buckley feels that the recession can be an opportunity for an aspiring entrepreneur is that contractors, vendors, or just about anyone you'd want to do business with, are actually excited to return your phone calls. Deals can be made much easier when you call a contractor hungry for your business. Buckley may have a tough time convincing customers to come out for a glass of wine, but the startup costs for a business during the recession are more reasonable than ever.

And if any entrepreneurs feel like celebrating the silver lining of a recession with a glass of Chardonnay, come this October, at the Screwtop Wine Bar, Wendy Buckley would be happy to have you drop by.