Oct. 20, 2021

This paid piece is sponsored by JJ’s Wine, Spirits & Cigars.

The team at JJ’s Wine, Spirits & Cigars hit the road one recent Sunday.

First stop: the Slattery family homestead and Century farm, just outside Vermilion, where they greeted owner Tom Slattery’s dad and walked the farm where he grew up.

Second stop: Toby’s, the iconic watering hole known for its broasted chicken in nearby Meckling.

If they’d been there for a drink 30 years ago, likely Slattery would have been the one pouring it.

Toby’s, which belonged to a longtime family friend, was where he poured his first drink – 30 years ago this month.

“Toby Larson was a friend of my grandparents, and he told me ‘if you come back now, I can have you work as a bartender,’” said Slattery, who was living at Arizona at the time and working at a bank.

“So I moved all my worldly belongings to Vermillion and started working at Toby’s, and as a foreshadowing of my future career, not long after that my friends and I expedited an event by the river at Clay County Park where there may or may not have been adult beverages.”

And, technically, Slattery may or may not have been quite of age yet.

“So one ticket for underage consumption later, Toby calls me and says ‘That was really stupid. Now I’ve got to let you go until you turn 21.’”

Fortunately, it was only a matter of weeks delivering pizzas for rent and beer money, and then he was back behind the bar for the next three and a half years as he finished his degree in accounting at the University of South Dakota.

In those days, craft cocktail culture was decades away. Customers asked for the basics: Windsor Coke, Canadian Club and water, and a whole lot of Bud Light and Miller Lite.

“It wasn’t too tough to be a bartender. What was tough was learning to manage people,” Slattery said. “Not employees or co-workers, but managing the patrons and learning the quirks. Like how to de-escalate a fight over who gets to pay the bar tab.”

He instituted a rule he maintains to this day: “Whoever gets the money out first wins.”

Career path

After a not-so-stellar college career and few job opportunities, Slattery moved to Sioux Falls. While waiting for a job to start installing accounting systems, a temp service hired him to work as a bartender at Theo’s Great Food at 33rd and Spring.

“And that was the next step in my progression, learning more about fine dining and wine, food and event service and getting into the craft cocktail world,” he said. “But the fun thing was many of the people I knew at Toby’s also were patrons at Theo’s. It was a strange crossover culture, but they would drive to Toby’s for broasted chicken, and I’d be serving them escargot and filet mignon at Theo’s.”

From an adult-beverage standpoint, Theo’s is where Slattery poured his first glass of chardonnay, learned to manage events with beverage service and discovered the balance of “making sure the customer is happy, whether it’s engaging in conversation or getting them their drink faster.”

He left Theo’s in 1998 after being recruited by Tom Howes to open “this new, interesting, chic adult-beverage store called JJ’s.”

Why JJ’s?

Howes’ “oldest daughter is Jessica and his oldest nephew is Jack, so that’s the JJ in JJ’s.”

While Slattery went on to buy the business in 2011, “I had always run it like I owned it,” he said. “That was just how I did things. So when Tom gave me the opportunity to buy it in 2011, with limited resources and a great bank, we did everything we could to make it happen. And in doing so, out of respect for the Howes family, we didn’t want to change the narrative for a name.”

There were multiple good reasons for that. But this one is nothing short of meant to be.

Slattery’s great-great-grandfather’s name was John Joseph “JJ” Slattery. He had 13 children, one of whom was Slattery’s great-grandfather, Michael Edmond “Ed” Slattery. In 1901, JJ purchased 450 acres of farmland and a 13-room hotel in Spencer, relocating the entire family to the South Dakota prairie after stints in Rapid City, eastern Iowa and Nebraska. The hotel and hospitality business boomed for a bit before JJ sold the hotel on contract, only to get it back after a period of time and turned over operations to Ed.

Ed and his wife, Porah — born Elizabeth Zipporah Crelly — raised 18 kids in Spencer through operations of the hotel and farming. The fifth youngest of those children was Slattery’s grandfather, William “Bill” Wendel Slattery.

“So while we maintain the history of the name in retail as an homage to the Howes family, the service and hospitality component I credit to my lineage because it was always about hospitality and making sure people around you were comfortable, and that’s a credit to my family,” Slattery said. “We’re all like that.”

Generational changes

You see a lot of industry evolution in 30 years in the adult-beverage business – despite the fact that the industry historically has been slower than many to change.

That’s partly why Slattery brought the team to Toby’s to celebrate his three decades in the business.

“I wanted them to understand that places like that don’t necessarily change, but the people still will,” he said.

“The baby boomers might be drinking what they drank 30 years ago – whiskey – but maybe it’s an Old-Fashioned instead of whiskey and water.”

The Generation X customer “is experimenting in a lot of realms,” he continued. “They’re drinking wine, craft cocktails, craft beer. Our biggest demographic at JJ’s is probably 38 to 55, so we’re exposing them to a lot, and they’re open to trying new things.”

The millennials “are pushing the envelope on craft cocktails,” he added. They aren’t afraid to spend time and money on quality cocktails.

And the generation after them – Generation Z – is just coming of age, “and we struggle with grabbing their attention. They are an enigma of a demographic, so we are constantly trying to find ways to connect.”

For a lot of people, beverage choice is influenced “by how much they travel, how much they read, and pop culture drives everything,” he continued.

“And since we started JJ’s, we’ve done things differently, and people see that. They recognize the effort to constantly offer a new experience, and I think that connects with more people than just any other liquor store.”

And, because he doesn’t think he can ever retire, it’s certainly possible Slattery might be at only the midpoint of his career.

Mention that and you get the sense he might want to reach for a beverage himself.

“But it’s the people who keep me here. The relationship-building. Knowing people since they were kids and now serving their wedding,” he said. “Being able to take that relationship we built through retail interaction and wrap it into a service or experience component is why I would find it very difficult to forge a different path.” And for him, that’s OK — for now.

Stop in to wish Tom a happy 30th anniversary in the adult-beverage industry! JJ’s is offering a birthday month wine sale through Oct. 23. Take 35 percent off the list price of all 750 ml wines when you purchase at least 12 bottles. It’s the perfect time to stock up for the holidays!