Meet Byron Collett, Grocery Outlet’s Wine Expert
Treating Wine Right at Santa Barbara’s Bargain Store on De la Vina Street
Credit: Daniel Dreifuss
About a decade ago, around the time that Byron Collett had sold his audio company and was working part-time at Esquin Wine & Spirits in Seattle, someone told him about the cheap wines on sale at Grocery Outlet. The discount supermarket chain, which was founded in San Francisco in 1946, was rapidly expanding into the Pacific Northwest at the time. So Collett checked one out and quickly found a $50 bottle of Bordeaux wine from France that was just $10. He was hooked.
“I couldn’t pass one in my car after that,” said Collett, who was already flush in wine due to his job and years of collecting, but he couldn’t skip out on the bargains. “It was the thrill of the hunt.”
Today, Collett plays the warden of that hunt for shoppers at the Grocery Outlet on De la Vina Street in Santa Barbara, where he oversees the store’s ever-changing, always discounted wine section. Prices range from about $3.99 to $19.99, with most wines sold at a 50 to 70 percent discount off the original retail price. That drops even 20 percent lower during annual sales in the spring and fall, when Collett recently sold 2,000 bottles on the sale’s last day in November, on top of multiple 1,500-bottle days.
