By Carla Zanoni
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
INWOOD — Vino Verso restaurant and wine bar has temporarily closed its doors after waiting fruitlessly for more than a year for a liquor license.
"We’re closed because we can’t afford to be open," Vino Verso owner Felix Fermin said, explaining that he had laid off his staff and shut his doors earlier his month. "It costs less to just pay rent than wages on top of that."
The restaurant, on Henshaw Street, between Riverside Avenue and Dyckman Street, had tried to stay open while it awaited approval for a liquor license, but they routinely lost customers when they learned that the wine bar had no wine.
Fermin said he regularly lost $300 to $500 in projected sales every night he was open. Earlier in the year, he had already reduced operating hours from seven nights a week to just Thursday, Friday and Saturday in a cost-cutting move.
"...if you don’t have alcohol on your menu, nobody wants to stay," Fermin said. "The food is secondary to most people who come out at night."
Early in the summer, Fermin publicly complained that he had been unfairly denied a license because of a backlash against new restaurants in the neighborhood.
"He absolutely still got caught up in the situation and bad timing," Community Board 12 chair Pamela Palanque-North said in July.
But she added that Fermin's situation points to a larger problem: board members and business owners who need to better understand how to navigate the complex liquor-license approval process.
Fermin said he is currently in the process of filing a new application for a license with the State Liquor Authority and hopes to reopen by Thanksgiving.
The SLA did not immediately return requests for status of the Vino Verso application.
