Where Are They Now – Brent Sloan BA Culinary 1994

Editor’s note- A great source of pride within the NECI community are the success stories from among our thousands of graduates. An inspriring note recently arrived from Brent Sloan (1994), one of NECI’s very first BA Culinary grads. Links and photos have been added, but it is otherwise word for word. Enjoy.

Things are well here in Houston, just a bit too hot even for our standards.

After selling my interest in Wine Works (Burlington) I moved to Houston and was working for a foodservice consulting group where I did a lot of work overseas, a good portion of that business in the Middle East.  My work was mainly with independent operators.  Most of my years before high school I lived overseas so I really enjoyed the travel.

Currently, I am co-owner of a neat business called Nos Caves Vin.  It’s a private, off-site wine storage facility and lounge.  My partner builds custom wine cellars in homes and has for years.  We linked up about 3 years ago when we met through my uncle who is contractor in the area.

Our building is quite large, 10K square feet, to which half is devoted to large wine lockers.  Our smallest is 32 cases ($225 per month) and largest custom locker holds 4K bottles.  The room is always kept at 55 degrees and sensors throughout to notify us of any changes.

The ‘other side’ of our building is a self service lounge.  We provide the glassware, decanters, etc. and cool environment.  The lounge has loads of couches and private rooms, a cave look and feel, lots of other cool stuff.  It’s all biometric entry so all you need is your fingerprint to get in to our building.  We have a wine retail license so we can clear purchases for our customers. We also accept FedEx / UPS deliveries of wine and place them in our customer’s locker. We have weekly tasting events and many other wine related activities.  It’s a really neat wine centric community.

We formally opened two years ago and we’re building out our second location now.  We’ve been very happy with the way things have turned out.  With all the basements in VT, I doubt good wine storage conditions are as difficult to find as they are here in TX.  Plus, as I’ve learned, the storage business is great in that people move in and rarely move out!  The economy here in Houston has been pretty solid which has certainly helped.

We are in talks with a major investor who would like to help us grow more quickly in Texas.  We hope to conclude our meetings next week.  We have our eye on two more spots in Houston, then we’ll work our way west to San Antonio and perhaps Dallas / Ft. Worth soon after.

We did have a large national storage company show some interest in having us work with them on adding a wine storage component to their business model but we didn’t get far.  Nevertheless it was flattering they came to us and thought we were on to something.

I can honestly say the entrepreneurship classes I took at NECI have had such an impact on me.  As you well know, watching something develop from an idea to an accepted product or service people enjoy is pretty neat.

I’m not sure how often you come to Texas, but if you ever do please let me know.  There are NECI graduates in this town doing great things.

Take care and please send some of that cool Vermont air down here.

~Brent