Katie Santoro is launching New Kent-based wine delivery service Cork & Courier. (Photos courtesy Sweet Talk Strategy)
The owner of a New Kent administrative services business has uncorked a new venture.
Katie Santoro, the founder of Lift Business Resources, is launching Cork & Courier, a wine delivery service.
Cork & Courier is a monthly service that delivers bottles of overseas and organic wines to customers in New Kent looking to expand their palate and options for wine, which Santoro said can sometimes be slim in the small yet growing county.
After living in Richmond’s Southside for many years, Santoro relocated to New Kent with her husband around four years ago, and quickly realized the lack of wine options in local grocery stores.
“We knew [in Richmond] we could go out and get a good meal and a good glass of wine, and when we moved out to New Kent, we realized we could not,” she said. “It just wasn’t an option out here.”
When Santoro took a trip to Ireland earlier this year to visit a college roommate, she sampled a few Italian wines and noticed they left her feeling better than domestic grocery store wines do.
And though New Kent has its share of vineyards and local wines available, Santoro said sourcing overseas, organic wines with few or no additives can prove difficult. For Santoro, who loves organic wines and had been looking to start another venture alongside her work at Lift Business Resources, the idea of bringing more wine options to her county appealed to her.
“I thought, ‘We need more of this where I live,’’’ Santoro said. “You can get them in the city, but you can’t get them out here.”
That realization led her to spinning up the idea for Cork & Courier in March. Now, a few months later, the startup has launched publicly, and is preparing for its first round of deliveries in October.
Cork & Courier will offer four small-batch organic wines monthly to customers.
“It’s going to solve my personal problem, but I think it’s going to solve a problem a lot of people don’t realize we even have out here,” she said.
With Cork & Courier, New Kent residents can get a package of four wines delivered on the first Saturday of the month.
In any given month, a customer can expect to receive four distinct wines, as a variety of reds and whites, along with an out-of-the-ordinary type of wine they might not typically gravitate toward. Cork & Courier’s calls those “fun wines,” the first of which will be a rosé in October, Santoro said.
“As we go into the winter it might change; heavier reds, less white. Fun bottles could be a rosé, a sparkling, a dessert wine. Something you might not buy for yourself,” she said.
Along with wine, customers will receive a monthly email newsletter on food pairings they can make to accompany each bottle of the month.
Santoro declined to name the distributors she is working with, yet noted that the first three months of Cork & Courier subscriptions will have all Italian-sourced, small-batch organic wines, as a way for her to connect others with her Italian roots. Later subscription boxes will likely switch focus to another country or region’s wines, or may focus on a specific type of grape, for instance.
A Cork & Courier subscription is $99 per month for customers who subscribe between now and Sept. 20. After Sept. 20, a subscription will be $115 monthly.
For customers who can’t do a Saturday delivery, Wednesday evening deliveries are available for an extra fee. Santoro will hand deliver all subscription boxes herself, noting that using third-party shipping and letting wine bottles sit in hot cars or warehouses could be damaging to the wines.
Delivery is currently only offered for those in several New Kent neighborhoods, including: Five Lakes, Patriots Landing, Brickshire, Dispatch Station, Arbors of New Kent, Groves at New Kent, Viniterra, Cottages at Viniterra, Rochambeau, Deer Lake, Greenwood Estates and Pine Fork.
Santoro said that if Cork & Courier is successful, she could look to expand into other nearby areas like Sandston and Lanexa.
Santoro declined to comment on how much she’s invested into Cork & Courier thus far, but noted the startup is entirely self-funded.
She’ll remain on as CEO of Lift Business Resources, which she founded in 2020, while running Cork & Courier solo. She also serves as membership chair of the National Association of Women Business Owners’ Richmond chapter.
As she prepares for her first deliveries, Santoro said her definition of success for Cork & Courier is to provide her community with the options she wishes populated the New Kent grocery store shelves.
“One hundred subscribers in New Kent would make me thrilled, in the first quarter,” she said. “If we’re small and we can’t get the bigger box stores and we can’t get better options, then why not be a small business who provides a service to our small community.”
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