Brooklyn, NY | Wine Shop | Wine Club Subscription (Leon Circle)

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Key Results

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• Hours of logistics offloaded, from member onboarding all the way through to delivery
• Deeper importer relationships, unlocking bottles reserved just for Leon Circle, including full New York allocations
• More bandwidth for member engagement, from classes to deeper curation, since partnering with Table22

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A neighborhood shop that never stopped expanding

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Chris Leon opened Leon & Son in Brooklyn in 2015 with, in his words, an iPad and a little bit of wine. Eleven years later, the shop has been named one of the country's best wine stores by GQ, Wine & Spirits, New York Magazine, and Brooklyn Magazine.

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Carolyn Negri, Director of Marketing and Wine Club at Leon & Son, describes the shop's approach simply. "Everything that we do here is coming from the context of how we would talk about wine with a friend, how we would share it with our inner circle," she says. "It's really the wine that we're drinking ourselves every day, the wines that really inspire us."

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That philosophy has carried the shop well past its original footprint. Leon & Son now runs classes several nights a week, and recently launched New York Wine Auctions, giving collectors and casual drinkers alike a way to find rare bottles at every price point. Through all of it, the Wine Club, named Leon Circle, has remained the throughline connecting the shop's curation to the people who trust it most.

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Small details that add up fast

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Leon Circle wasn't built with Table22; the club had already been running for several years before the shop signed on with Table22 to help it scale.

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While demand was high, the accumulation of small, unglamorous tasks that come with running a growing subscription was becoming overwhelming - customer service questions, order logistics, and the everyday administrative work. "The sheer number of hours required every day on some of the smaller details, the things that seem very simple on paper, can all of a sudden become very complex," Carolyn says. "Five minutes here, five minutes there. It really adds up on a daily basis."

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For a team whose real expertise is curation, not customer support tickets, that daily drain was time stolen from the work that actually differentiates their shop.

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Reclaiming bandwidth for what matters

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Working with Table22 gave Leon Circle the infrastructure to keep growing without pulling the team away from the bottles themselves. Three wines go out to members each month, with the thoughtful touch of note cards cut to the exact dimensions of the bottle so members can tuck them right into a wine fridge. The notes stay high level and conversational: what's interesting about the wine, what it tastes like, what to pair it with, how the team is actually enjoying it at home.

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Table22 takes care of the rest, from marketing support to member onboarding and communication, all the way through to delivering the club to member’s doors. 

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"From day one, working with Table22, we saved actual hours each day on the minutiae of customer service and logistics, answering questions that aren't always easy to answer. Opening up that bandwidth to actually do what we love, which is finding good wine for everybody, has been awesome."

— Carolyn Negri, Director of Marketing & Wine Club, Leon & Son

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That reclaimed bandwidth shows up in how the shop engages members now, with more capacity for the classes and community programming that used to compete with club logistics for the team's time.

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The perks of purchasing power

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The recurring structure of Leon Circle has also changed how Leon & Son works with its importers and producers. A predictable, committed audience gives the shop more room to ask for things a one-off retail order never could.

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"It deepens the way we engage with our partners, especially being able to bring something special in for the club,” Carolyn explains. “Maybe we've bought every bottle coming into New York, or our importer has arranged with the winery to bring something in just for us. It's been such an incredible opportunity to bring things to the U.S. market that we might not otherwise get to explore."

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Members have responded by asking for more. Some request personal curation beyond the standard three bottles, sharing a budget and letting the team build a mixed case around it. Others bring the club into private events. For Carolyn, that kind of request is the clearest sign the curation is landing. "The best is when somebody asks us to curate more wine for them," she says. "It's really a signal that they've enjoyed what we're putting in their glass. And when they say, here's my budget, do your thing, it's not only an honor, but it's so much fun."

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Advice from the inner circle

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Carolyn's advice to another operator considering a club echoes what Leon Circle itself has proven out: "Don't underestimate those small details that really start to add up, and find a way to execute it where you don't get bogged down in that and can really focus on what you're trying to do, the wine that you're sharing with people. That really is the heart of it, and keeping that center is super important."

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Our platform, your curation. Welcome to the Club.

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