After nearly three months of building out the Haywood Road slot between The Hop West and Instant Karma boutique, friends and business partners Phil Cerrito and Brian Kim had their final inspection at Bebop Bottle Shop on Sept. 26. Cerrito says he and Kim were grateful the City of Asheville kept its appointment despite the driving rain that day.
“We planned to spend that weekend doing finishing touches and open the next week,” he says. “Obviously, that’s not what happened.”
Anyone living in Western North Carolina at the time knows what did happen — on Sept. 27, Tropical Storm Helene shut the city and region down for weeks. Rather than placing bottles of wine on custom-built shelves in their shop, the partners spent the weekend clearing downed trees in their North Asheville neighborhood, resulting in severe cases of poison ivy for both of them. With no water, power or access to medication, they evacuated to the coast to spend a few weeks with Kim’s partner’s family.
When Cerrito and Kim returned, they discovered that their contractor’s shop near the Swannanoa River — Vaden Custom Builders — had been inundated with 20 feet of water, and Bebop’s shelves had washed down the river.
But the entrepreneurs persevered, and on Oct. 26, they opened Bebop Bottle Shop. The intention, says Cerrito, was to fill a niche he had identified on his first exploratory trips to Asheville from the pair’s native New Jersey in November 2023. “I saw room for what we wanted to do — an on-premises retail operation with a bar element,” he says. “We also wanted to be part of Asheville’s vibrant art, music and creative scene.”
Cerrito and Kim first became business partners in New Jersey hosting a pop-up roast pork sandwich venture at farmers markets on weekends. “A friend of mine had a bar, and at midnight Friday nights, we’d go into his kitchen and start cooking the pork to be ready the next morning,” he explains.
Both partners also had full-time jobs at the time — Kim in corporate finance and Cerrito in wine sales. When Kim decided to relocate to Asheville to start a business, Cerrito’s interest was piqued, and they decided to team up again, minus the pork sandwiches.
“We knew of Asheville as a beer town but learned there is a really good wine culture here as well,” Cerrito says. “Restaurants, shops and consumers here have an understanding of what good wine is, and the importance of responsible farming and minimal intervention.”
Due to the shop’s size limitations, the inventory stays around 150 wines, with 90% of them retailing for under $35. “I typically only buy six bottles of anything at a time, so on any given week we have 10-30 new wines in the store,” Cerrito says. Bebop also carries a small selection of nonalcoholic options.
Shortly after opening as a bottle shop, Bebop began pouring by the glass at its small bar. The two go hand in hand, Cerrito explains. “People come in for a glass of wine at the bar, look around at the shelves and walk out with a bottle.”
The by-the-glass list is refreshed daily. People can also pull a bottle off the shelf or out of the cooler, and for a $10 corkage fee, drink it on-site. In addition to the bar, there is seating in the shop’s main room and in the back of the store, where there is also a community table.
Bebop offers its walls to help River Arts District artists who lost gallery space due to Helene. “We don’t curate, we give space and take no commission on sales,” says Cerrito. Artist Greg Carr, aka Tall Greg, has kicked off a monthly Sunday afternoon paint-and-sip guided painting class with Cerrito choosing the wines — the next one is 3:30-5:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 16; tickets are $45 and available at avl.mx/eii.
Local musician Zack Kardon is doing a music residency in the shop — solo and with friends — 7-9 p.m. Wednesdays. Cerrito and Kim are also talking with chefs about starting pop-ups and wine dinners once Bebop has its health certificate.
“The timing to be here in West Asheville is great,” Cerrito observes. “There’s a diversity of new, small businesses in the neighborhood with fresh ideas and perspectives, all supporting each other. Brian and I are really happy we landed here.”
Bebop Bottle Shop is at 723 Haywood Road. Learn more at avl.mx/eif.
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