REALIZING TWO DREAMS

Following is the newsletter that we sent to our Chip's Wine & Beer Market community.

YOU ARE INVITED...

... to a major celebration!

Thursday, June 17th
4:00-7:00 p.m.
Chip's WIne & Beer Market
MP6 Plaza

Wine, beer and snacks provided

REALIZING TWO DREAMS

What are we celebrating? Now there's a good story. And what could be better than a good story with a happy ending? How about two intertwining stories, both with happy endings?

Most of you already know that Chip's WIne & Beer Market has been for sale. We, Chip and Tammy, opened the store in 2005 to help finance our dream of sailing full time. You have watched and waited with us as we slowly (very slowly) sold our house, our belongings, sold our old sailboat, bought a new one and brought it down from the northern Chesapeake. The last thing we needed to accomplish before sailing away was to find new owners for the wine shop.

It was always important to us to leave our awesome community of customers in good hands, and if we could have magically conjured up the perfect people to leave you with, we could not have done any better.

Introducing Laura and Phil

It gives us great joy to introduce you to the new owners of Chip's: Laura and Phil Wayland.

Laura and Phil had a little dream too: owning their own wine shop, and just as the owners before them, they have done the hard work to accomplish their goal. We know you're going to love them, and they have great plans for improving the store.

Laura has six years of management experience in the wine business as an independent wine consultant. She repeatedly won awards for her work and just so you know how fabulous she is, her peers voted her "heart of the company" in 2008. She has marketing, communications and event coordination experience as well. Laura loves wine and loves hooking people up with wines they will love.

Phil has a degree in Integrated Science and Technology (we don't know what that is either, but he's fun and has a great sense of humor). He works in the information technology industry, but you'll be seeing him around Milepost 6 a lot. He will bring his knowledge of business operations managementto provide some back room financial oversight for the store. You might see him in the beer aisle sometimes too. ;-)

Laura and Phil are young, energetic, brilliant, snob-free and love to laugh out loud. They met in college (James Madison University), have been married 10 years and have two beautiful children, Tyler, 7, and Loxley, 6.

And by fulfilling their dream of owning a wine shop, they have enabled us to launch our adventures at the sea.

We hope you'll join us on Thursday to celebrate two happy endings, or, on second thought make that two happy beginnings. 

The Last Word

Finally, we bid you a big and tearful thank you. In part, dreams come true on the strength of a well-laid plan and hard work, but we know that we've been carried this far on the shoulders of our customers. You made this store a great success, and we have been grateful every day that you chose to shop with us. Thank you for being part of giving our dream life.

If you want to come along for the ride, you can follow us at:
http://ploddingtoparadise.blogspot.com/

Fair winds,