Brewery and Restaurant Success with Inez Ribustello
About this episode:
Inez Ribustello, President at Tarboro Brewing Company & TBC West and Founding Partner of Wine & Dining, Inc., join us on the She Built It™ Experience today. I am thrilled to share Inez’s inspiring journey from small-town Tarboro to New York City, working at the renowned World Trade Center restaurant Windows on the World. You will learn how 9/11 affected her and compelled her to write her book, why she moved from New York back to her hometown, and how she built a brewery and thriving restaurant.
Topics Discussed:
Inez's journey of writing her book, Life after Windows, and her experience working in Windows on the World.
What it was like going from a small town in North Carolina to New York City
What gave Inez the inspiration to start and launch her own brewing company
Why it is so important to listen to your community when starting your own business
Inez's tip on how to find and live your joy
About Inez:
Inez Ribustello got her start in the world of food and wine after moving to New York City from her home state of North Carolina. Though she grew up in the small town of Tarboro and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1998 with a degree in journalism and mass communications, her dream was to pursue a career in cooking. She chose New York’s Institute of Culinary Education to get her started. There, she began to learn about wine, which inspired her to take a job at Best Cellars, the groundbreaking, mid-priced wine store on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
Her wine career took a huge leap forward when she became an Assistant Cellar Master at the renowned World Trade Center restaurant Windows on the World. In a very short time, she was promoted to Beverage Director, putting her in the position as wine buyer for the largest grossing restaurant in North America. It was here where she met her now-husband, Stephen. The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 impacted her both personally and professionally. Having lost friends, colleagues and her job in the bombing, she had to face her future. She chose to throw herself into her work and took the position of Beverage Director for Blue Fin Restaurant in the W Hotel-Times Square. At Blue Fin, she created a 500-label wine list, including more than 50 wines by the glass, and developed a cocktail list that received rave reviews from New York magazine.
Having conquered New York, her next move was to return to her hometown with her fiancé. Together they decided to open their own restaurant, wine bar and retail store called On the Square. The wine list at On the Square holds the prestigious Best of Award of Excellence from Wine Spectator. Inspired by Best Cellars, they created a user-friendly, non-intimidating wine list, which was well received by people and press in the eastern North Carolina region.
Inez’s next big venture was Tarboro Brewing Company, a microbrewery that started brewing in February of 2016. Almost a year later, she and her husband opened a satellite taproom serving tacos in the Rocky Mount Mills. Needless to say, creating businesses in eastern North Carolina keeps them very busy.
Stephen and Inez have two 2 children that they absolutely adore: a 17-year old daughter named Cynthia and a 14-year-old son named Stephen.
In 2009, Inez placed 2nd runner-up in the Best Sommelier in America competition held in New York City. She is a member of the Alumni Hall of Fame for the Institute of Culinary Education and a graduate of the Court of Master Sommelier’s Advanced Exam.
While wine, food & beer is a passion, Inez’s real love is for Edgecombe County Public Schools where she feels the most at home as that is her true alma mater. Having just retired as board chair for Teach for America in Eastern North Carolina’s region, Inez loves the children of her home county and works tirelessly to support the great growth happening right this minute in her community. She knows that part of that work comes in creating businesses that attract talented and loving teachers.
In September of 2021, Inez self-published her memoir Life After Windows, a book she has been working on for the past 20 years.
Resources:
Click here to read a raw, unedited transcript of this episode:
Melanie Barr [00:03:18] Thank you so much for joining me, Inez. Please tell us more about who you are. [00:03:21][3.7]
Inez Ribustello [00:03:23] I am born and raised in a very small town in rural eastern North Carolina where I now live and run a brewery with a satellite taproom with my husband who runs our restaurant. So we started our path in Tarboro 19 years ago, with our restaurant and then about six years ago when we opened the brewery. [00:04:08][44.9]
Melanie Barr [00:04:09] I love that. I understand being from a small town. I grew up in a town of a thousand and a wow, and I now live in Los Angeles. I have since I got lived in L.A. since I was 19, and I know you spent some time in New York. You wrote a book titled Life after Windows. Please share with us your journey in writing the book. [00:04:27][18.3]
Inez Ribustello [00:04:29] Yes, so this book details moving to New York after I graduated from college and going into culinary school and, discovering that I had a passion for wine. And getting my dream job as a twenty-five-year-old running the beverage program for the largest grossing restaurant in North America. [00:05:22][53.0]
Inez Ribustello [00:05:25] Windows on the World in the top of one World Trade Center, which was the North Tower. Being employed there on September 11th, I was not in the building on 9/11, but details the day of and the days, months, years after and the healing that came. And a big part of that was coming back to Tarboro North Carolina, a town I had promised myself I would never return to. And the trials, tribulations, joys of running a restaurant in a small town and opening a brewery that has been one of the hardest things I've ever done. And then, actually getting the courage to put it out there for the universe to read. [00:06:43][78.7]
Melanie Barr [00:06:44] well, good for you. And there's a reason that you weren't in the building on that day and it had to be, I can't imagine going through the experience. Can you share with us why? Why you weren't there that day? [00:06:56][11.7]
Inez Ribustello [00:06:57] Yeah. My sister got married on September eight, so I had come home on the 5th to her wedding and I grew up in a divorced home and I spent time with my dad. I was always to spend time with my mother. The beauties of being from parents who are separated. And so the day after the wedding, the night my mother had made arrangements for me to go and be with her for a couple of days. So I was in the mountains with my mom and her friends and was set to fly back on Wednesday morning, September 12th. [00:07:40][43.7]
Melanie Barr [00:07:42] Wow. How was it going from a small town to New York? [00:07:45][3.5]
Inez Ribustello [00:07:48] I found it the best thing that had ever happened to me, I didn't know it then, but I was so enthralled by the freedom of no one knowing what I was doing and being able to give me their opinion about what I was doing. Because I grew up with lots of parents and grandparents and I was close to all of them. Everybody felt very entitled to tell me what they thought I should be doing. And all of a sudden, I'm in this city, millions of people and I just could go and do freely. And there was not one moment of What have I done? You know, I'm missing my familiarity of the South. I just wasn't my experience. So I fell in love with New York City. [00:08:55][67.5]
Melanie Barr [00:08:56] I remember the night before I moved. Just being terrified. It takes a lot of courage to make a leap like that from such a small town. [00:09:04][7.2]
Inez Ribustello [00:09:05] Yeah. I was really fortunate that my boyfriend was already living. He'd gone up first. We're not living together, but he was there and then four girls from North Carolina were going to come up. Shortly after that, I was there for about a month and a half, two months before they moved. I'm sure I would have been much more nervous if it was only going to be me. [00:09:36][30.6]
Melanie Barr [00:09:37] Yeah, yeah. I didn't know a single person when when I moved, but I had a similar experience to you. I love the energy of the city and the freedom. And I just, you know, I'd hit a point in the town I grew up and where I just was ready for more and I wanted more. It seems like you. You probably hit that point too. [00:09:54][17.4]
Inez Ribustello [00:09:55] There was this when you moved to L.A. or did you live in New York also? [00:09:59][4.0]
Melanie Barr [00:09:59] No, this was what I moved to L.A. It honestly was between New York and California. But I remember walking across campus to a final and it was hailing and the busses weren't going and I had to get to my class and I remember thinking, OK, no more snow. Next year, I'm going to be in the sunshine. I got to Loyola Marymount, where I finished college and someone ran across the campus with a surfboard and I said, I'm in the right place. I've come to the right place for me. [00:10:27][27.8]
Inez Ribustello [00:10:28] You're right. [00:10:28][0.2]
Melanie Barr [00:10:30] You are a sommelier and the owner of a brewing company. Tell us about what you do and what gave you the inspiration to start and launch your company. [00:10:37][6.6]
Inez Ribustello [00:10:40] Stephen and I had opened our restaurant in fall of 2002, we had converted one of the dining rooms into a working wine cellar. And I kind of a combination of working with your husband, being in the restaurant business and finally making a conscious decision to not continue the master sommelier path, which with three of those combined equaled burnout. And I wasn't going to leave Tarboro. We had bought a huge building in July of 2008 where we had hopes of moving the restaurant. And of course, that was right before the bottom fell out in our country's economy. No one wanted to invest in a restaurant period, much less one in eastern North Carolina, and we were really following closely what breweries were doing to transform small towns. And so, Stephen was very supportive of, hey, if you think this is going to work, we should do it and is a big part of, jointly helping the right, the business plan. And the idea was that a. we would create this new business enterprise that would be a lot more accessible than our restaurant, while our restaurant is quite affordable compared to L.A., New York, Chicago standards, it still was not for everyone. Not even lunch was for everyone. And so we thought this brewery would be an added bonus. I mean, my passion is Tarboro getting people not to just visit but to want to live here. That was the vision behind it that we would create a business that was much more accessible to the locals and add another attraction to our small town.[00:13:14][154.0]
Inez Ribustello [00:13:18] I had no idea how hard it would be just because the landscape of local breweries changed so much from the minute we wrote the business plan till the day we actually got the doors open. But a number of breweries in North Carolina had tripled. Our model was all built on wholesale and I couldn't get a distributor. People were like, Oh, you're not that local. There are 40 breweries in Raleigh, you know, just it was really hard. And so we got the taproom open about four months later. But even that Tarboro doesn't have the foot traffic that a Charlotte or a Durham has. And so while I would not trade it for anything, it has been a very different six years than what I experienced with on The Square where people were clamoring to get in. I had never worked in an environment where I was actively trying to get people to like us, I'd come from obviously Windows and a brand new casino in Atlantic City and even on The Square that it was drawing people in. This has been where I've been actively working to get people to enjoy it. So it's just different.[00:14:53][94.9]
Melanie Barr [00:14:54] But good for you for having that tenacity. [00:14:55][1.8]
Melanie Barr [00:15:01] In your book description, you say over time you find yourself again, love is reborn. Children provide a renewed insight on life, and new businesses provide growth and purpose. Do you have any tips or lessons you've learned for making a pivot or a leap to start over whether your pivot is a choice or in your case, when it's not? [00:15:21][19.8]
Inez Ribustello: [00:15:24] Yeah. I've become such a better listener. I know now there was a big void in Tarboro for a community space. Something was telling me that and when we built the brewery while I was telling everybody it was a taproom, you know, really what I have learned is it's a community space where people can come together. I didn't realize how important that was, and I probably wouldn't have known that had I not chosen to listen to people who were at different tables than I was. And I will always say, better be listening to your community, right? And they're going to tell you. And sometimes it's going to sting, and sometimes it's going to feel like gold. But I guess the choice I made in this case, in particular, was to listen to.[00:17:41][136.9]
Melanie Barr [00:17:41] It's great advice, and it's to listen to yourself because you listen to yourself about creating and building a community space and also listening to clients and customers and consumers, which is always important because sometimes we can get so headstrong and doing what we want. At times, we might not be going down the path that our clients and customers necessarily want, and what a great thing for you to do. To create a place where your community can come together because it seems like that was what was needed. And of course, beer, wine and food. [00:18:21][39.4]
Inez Ribustello [00:18:22] Yeah. And then you put meaningful conversation in that mix and it's just like, you know, perfecto. [00:18:31][8.9]
Melanie Barr [00:18:32] Mm hmm. I love that. What is one thing that your business has done for you or taught you and your clients that you didn't realize would happen? Take a minute and think if you want. [00:18:44][12.4]
Inez Ribustello [00:18:46] On the restaurant side, it really was a big part of teaching me boundaries, until realize that the service industry is emotionally taxing. Of course, it's physically laborious, no matter if you're in the kitchen or if you're in the front of the house, but just what you have to do to protect your mind and your heart and your soul, it's very little downtime. People they'll take as much as you'll let them take. While I grew up southern and thinking if I didn't say yes and I was rude just understanding that I, if I want to be able to do what I want to do, then I have to make sure that the life isn't sucked out of me. And I don't think people talk enough about what restaurants can do to the people who work there, regardless of its management owner or whatever role. It's a lot put up those boundaries is super important. And then on the brewery side, I guess the biggest thing that I have learned is how much a label matters. [00:20:31][104.8]
Melanie Barr [00:20:33] Yes. And do you create your own beer? [00:20:36][2.9]
Inez Ribustello [00:20:37] So we have a wonderful brewmaster slash partner, Franklin Winslow, who creates all the recipes for our beers, I have been known to brew on occasion, but I am not a brewer, I'm just a drinker. [00:20:50][13.1]
Melanie Barr [00:20:52] I've had hundreds of interviews and I have not had the conversation come up about the toll on the restaurant industry. So thank you for sharing that because we go to a restaurant and we enjoy the atmosphere, but I can see from the other side how, wonderful, but also how challenging it can be at times. Magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy. What is one tip that you can leave with us today about how you find and live your joy? [00:21:24][31.5]
Inez Ribustello [00:21:27] From my father something's bothering you, go and do something nice for someone and you will instantaneously feel amazing. If we send somebody a text in the morning that says, Have a great day, you're on my mind, like just the benefits of that, it can be something big taking someone dinner, but it doesn't have to be. Like their little things we can do every day that will change someone's mood. The joy is constantly working to do something nice for someone, whether it means a kind word or an actual gift. [00:22:33][65.3]
Melanie Barr [00:22:34] That's so true, and the gratitude is on both sides. You know, you feel the gratitude and the other person makes their day to. Right, right. Thank you so much for joining us today, Inez. Can you tell us how and where listeners can find you, how we can reach out to you? [00:22:51][17.1]
Inez Ribustello [00:22:53] Yes, so Instagram is my thing, I just really enjoy Instagram, my name is @inezribustello. The book I encourage you to buy from an Independent bookstore. All you have to do is ask for Life After Windows buy Inez Ribustello, I am very proud of this book. And of course, you can order it on other places too. Or you can visit me in Tarboro and see small-town life. [00:23:31][37.9]
