Mark Handelman has a passion for pairing.
Handelman, who moved upstate from Pennsylvania and New York City, launched Good Taste Epicurean Food Market at 438 Main St. in Franklin in December 2023. In late May of this year, he opened the neighboring Good Taste Fine Wines and Spirits as a complement.
Handelman, whose food market was driven by his love of artisanal cheeses, said the plan was always to expand into wine. The shops, he said in a 2023 interview with the Daily Star, were retirement projects that followed a career as “CEO of many large nonprofit human service agencies for over 50 years.”
“I was a bit of a novice in terms of understanding what the rules were … because I lived in Pennsylvania before I came up here and you could buy wine in the supermarket,” he said. “But I did the business plan and I had included wine, because wine goes with cheese. And nine out of 10 people who walk in here to buy cheese say, ‘Where’s the wine?’ and that was the case from the very beginning.”
Handelman said he reconfigured his space to accommodate state specifications, but the launch is significant for Franklin.
“This was a very large space, but we were able to create a totally separate, walled-off store in about a third of the space, and you have to have the facility before you can get a license,” he said. “We had applied for the license even before we opened the food store. We have the beer license for in the food market, and we got that in about three months and we sell local beer and cider … but, with the wine and liquor license, this town was dry for a very long time.
“In 2007, there was approval for off-site consumption, and that’s why you can get a beer license to buy alcohol and take it home,” Handelman continued. “I got the license (to sell wine and liquor) as recently as two weeks ago, even though we applied so very long ago, and for the first time, we did, this past Saturday, when we had a celebration of the opening. We’re going to have a grand opening some time in the summer when everything is exactly right.”
Handelman said he’s hopeful the shop’s singularity in the area will generate a broad clientele.
“I expect there will be more people from outside of Franklin coming for wine and liquor, because, quite frankly, the closest liquor stores are miles away,” he said. “It will be a convenience for the community. People will find it convenient to come and shop here, and that’s been true of cheese, too. Maybe you can get the same cheese at Wegman’s, but you don’t want to have to drive to Binghamton.”
Handelman said the soft launch saw strong support.
“We had 250 to 300 people here,” he said. “We had a food spread in the food part and Those Darn Cats, three very seasoned musicians, played. The people who were here were delighted. And not all of them were from Franklin; we had people here from Owego, Cooperstown, Oneonta. Customers who come for the food stuff are not exclusively local; they come from surrounding towns, and it was the same kind of crowd and people bought both.”
Such support, he said, goes both ways.
“We have tried to support local operations from the beginning, even with the food,” Handelman said. “The roasters I’ve used for coffee beans are all local … so, we support local makers and sources as much as we can. And we use this as a place for local artists to show off their work; the walls are full of artwork, and it rotates and it’s in both rooms. In the back room, we’ve actually had real, months-long art exhibitions.”
Handelman said he plans to let customer input guide selection.
“My philosophy was to let the customer lead, in terms of what I should stock in the food market,” he said. “I wasn’t in the food business before I started this, but people know what they like, and when they say, ‘Can you get something for me?’ I try, and a lot of times, I do, and people like it. There’s a pattern here of people bringing stuff in, and I get it for them to satisfy a single person, but it’s often the case that then everybody loves it.
“I had a discussion with a distributor to stock the (wine and liquor) store for the first time, then I’ll see what people like,” Handelman continued. “I’m telling people, ‘Give me your wish list,’ but we had a very good response to this fellow’s order, because he and I had a discussion about what people here seem to like and also price points. He was very good about holding to that, and people came to me after and said we were right on target; most of it was right where they wanted it to be. But this is a store where you get products that you can’t, for the most part, buy anywhere else.”
Handelman said he plans to adjust hours according to summer demand, but will likely have Good Taste Fine Wines and Spirits open from “about noon through 7 on Wednesday and Thursday, then 5 to 7 every other day, which includes the weekends,” with the market open “from 10 to 5.”
For more information, find “Good Taste Epicurean Market” on Facebook or visit the “Village of Franklin NY” page.