I am often asked what led me to want to open a rooftop wine bar? Is it something I’ve always wanted to do? The unromantic answer is that, although I have been enjoying wine for many years, the idea never occurred to me until recently.

With a BSEE (UConn) and an MSEE (Georgia Tech), I worked the bulk of my career as a design engineer, but with a steadily increasing level of business acumen. My prior company was successful for a combination of reasons. I chose a difficult product to create – a telemedicine stethoscope – in spite of the fact that there was very little market for it. What compensated for the niche market size was there was no competition and the profit margins were high.

Developing the product took perseverance and was successful. As a small family company, we maintained our market focus and kept our expenses low. We not only survived, we thrived.

In 2020, COVID-19 hit hard. Telemedicine a big help in response to the lock downs. And since COVID-19 was a respiratory disease, telemedicine stethoscopes became a “must have” accessory. Business boomed. In 2021, I sold the company.

What to do now? Although I could afford to retire, I needed something to do. I had to come up with something fun and rewarding. In business, fun and profits tend to go hand in hand. You can’t have fun unless you can keep the business going, which means sustained profitability. Back to Marketing 101.

I enjoy wine so that was an attractive starting point. To make this work, requires competitive advantages. Along with everyone else, I like rooftop bars with a nice view. That means a two-story building in a good location, which ends up requiring a purpose-built structure surrounded by a garden area with seating vignettes as a bonus. Finding a location in Viera (I am a residents myself so this was very important!) near an I-95 access ramp with no direct competition within a 30+ mile drive created another competitive advantage. Plus the fact that I can drive my golf cart to the rooftop wine bar is a huge plus! It took over 5 years of patient searching to secure our site at the burgeoning Borrows West, but it was well worth the wait.

A final additional competitive advantage would be to use self-pour wine dispensers with user selected pour amounts – a lot of them (120) so we could guarantee to have something for everyone.

So that’s the story! I look forward to this new adventure and can’t wait to experience it with the Viera community!

Rich Abbruscato

Venezia Wine Veranda Founder