The Wine Rack brand name has been bought out of administration and will continue trading in London and the south east.
Venus Wine & Spirit Merchants, one of the UK’s leading wine and spirit wholesalers, has purchased from KPMG, the administrators of First Quench Retailing, the trading name Wine Rack as well as 14 of the top Wine Rack stores.
Laki Christoforou, the chairman of Venus Wine & Spirit Merchants, has established a new company LCL Enterprises, trading as Wine Rack, to run the business.
Vice-chairman of LCL Enterprises will be James Rackham who is chairman of Emporia Brands – another leading independent UK wine & spirit distributor and independent wine merchant Arthur Rackham.
Laki Christoforou said: “The shops we are purchasing were all profitable, with excellent hard-working staff and managers and are well supported by customers in their areas.
“As one of the leading wine and spirit distributors in the London area, these Wine Rack stores will fit well into our existing retail and wholesale business infrastructure.
“We are confident that Wine Rack can soon become a growing and thriving business again which is why we were interested to purchase the trading name Wine Rack along with these 14 stores.”
The 14 stores included in the deal are: London: Salusbury Road NW6; The Avenue W4; Lupus Street SW1; Highbury Park N5; Elgin Avenue W9; Southfields Replingham Road SW18;
Berkshire: Ascot: High Street; Reading: Lodden Bridge Road; Essex: Epping: High Street;
Hertfordshire: Harpenden: High Street; Kent: Bromley: Westmoreland Road; Oxfordshire: Henley-on-Thames: Market Place; Surrey: Farnham: Ridgeway Road; plus one further store to be confirmed.
Despite the Wine Rack sale KPMG last week announced the closure of a further 391 First Quench stores with the loss of more than 2,000 jobs.
Richard Fleming, a joint administrator at KPMG, said: “Unfortunately, despite the initial high level of interest, it remains difficult for buyers to complete deals in the current tough market. However, we are still in talks regarding the sale of over 100 stores.”
