Help April & Mark Open a New TOFINO WINES

After 10 years on Geary Blvd, we are being forced to close TOFINO WINES, the Wine Shop and Bar that we opened in 2015. We have failed to reach a fair lease renewal agreement with our landlords, who have pushed us to sign a new lease at higher rate and without any opportunity to sell our business in the future. In February, they also broke earlier promises and demanded thousands in rent that had been deferred during the pandemic, as an attempt to evict us with a 10-day notice. We paid that rent but can't re-sign under their new terms. We have made the incredibly difficult decision to leave the space that we created and love, and hope to restart our business as a small, natural wine retail shop and pick-up location for our online site, tomorrowswine.com. We will offer a large selection of highly-curated wine in a new location, where we hope to continue bringing you the best, most sought after natural wines and provide fantastic wine winemaker tastings and educational seminars.

We will use the funds raised with your support to help pay our legal bills related to our current landlord dispute, offset the cost of moving, pay for minor renovations to a new space and purchase a new retail license. Our current license is a type-42 Beer & Wine On Sale (bar) license which we cannot transfer to a new retail-only location. We cannot apply for a new license until we have signed a new lease which will take 3 to 4 months to review and process by the California State liquor authority (ABC). During this time we cannot sell any wine.

While we will be out of the bar business and miss pouring amazing wine for our customers, we will be able to focus on what we do best... finding the very best, small natural wine producers making both funky wines from grapes you've never heard of, and more classic wines that are highly allocated and sought-after.

We have always been a family run, self-funded business but now we are reaching out to our community to ask for assistance in taking this step to build a new operation in a new location, as a continuation of everything we have been working for the past 10 years. We plan to give everyone regular updates on our progress to get re-open, please consider coming along this journey with us.

If you can help us with a donation of $600 or more, we would love to host you (and 3 friends) for a tasting of 4 natural wines of our choosing, in our new location, and if you don't live in the Bay Area we will be happy to send you our chosen wines and our tasting notes so you can enjoy a tasting at home. Please remember there will be some waiting time before we will be back in business.

We are heartbroken to be closing TOFINO WINES but plan to take many of the beautiful things that we created forward with us, including the invaluable relationships we have built with our customers, who have been at the very heart of what we have done for the last 9 years.

Thank you for supporting us and we hope to see you again soon.