Rachel Buttery

Rui Min
AESHM 474
Partner Interview Paper

Business Description
Della Viti is a self-serve wine bar with a full service bar also. It is a small business located
at 323 Main Street in Ames, Iowa. Since wine is the main drink selection, and they do not carry
common draft beers, their market includes men and women ages 28 to 50 who are not a part of
the stereotypical college bar-goers. Della Viti was established in February 2012 under former
management. The current owner, Beth DeBries, has been managing Della Viti for about three
and a half weeks now.

Personal Background
Beth DeBries has received a Bachelors Degree in Genetics from Iowa State University.
She was a volunteer accountant for six years at a nonprofit organization. Her work experience
as an accountant has made financing at Della Viti a simple job activity. She does not have any
family background experience in owning a business. However, her husband owned Cys Roost
bar on Welch Avenue in Ames, Iowa for five years while they were in college. Beth was the
accountant and kitchen manager for Cys Roost. Unfortunately, Beth did not have any
suggestions for college courses to take that had helped her become a successful small business
owner because she studied genetics.

Business Start-Up
Beth was laid off from her previous job so she was actually in need of a job when she
came across the opportunity to work at Della Viti. She knew the former owner of the bar which
helped her acquire the job. She says it is important to build your network so you are able to
get help and opportunities from people you know. She was able to identify her niche working
for Della Viti and capitalize on it. So when the former owner was ready to move on and open a
second Della Viti, Beth was there and ready to expand her horizon. Beth began her ownership
and used her own capital as well as loans to continue this business in her name. She is the sole
proprietor of the business. Beth is in charge of the Human Resources and the Accounting
completely. She did create her own, extensive, twenty page business plan before she was even
able to see the financials of the business. She mentioned how difficult it was to build her
business plan not knowing the hard numbers, the income, or the bills that go into and out of
Della Viti. She had about eight or nine different people look at her business plan before
showing it to the bankers. She took advantage of the people she knew who were educated in
accounting and ownership. Beth did not necessarily give anything up to become an owner of a
small business, however, she does have to bring this job into her lifestyle and work around it
and her family. Starting this new type of job is still difficult for her. Her husband is a traveller,
which makes it hard for them to have the same time off. Her son is in high school and does not
have a car yet, so she still needs to drive him around town and to school sometimes. Her
education is completely unrelated to owning a small wine bar. She also used to work during the
day and a bar ownership is a night job, so she had to switch her schedule around completely.

Business Growth
The former owner of Della Viti had expanded their bar area a little bit to include craft
beers and some new products recently. In the last three weeks, since Beth has been there, she
has not expanded on any products or utilities yet. Unfortunately with their location on Main
Street, there is not room for expanding the physical area they own for the business, so it is
difficult to expand the interior as well. She did hire on two new employees, setting a total of
four part-time employees, not including Beth. Of course Beth had to train the new employees
based on her ethics and experience, but also the other employees are going through training on
proper ways to serve this weekend. This training is more of a refresher rather than retraining.
Beths goals regarding businesses have changed since she used to work for someone else and
now she works for herself. She is working on networking more for the business. They currently
have a Facebook page, website, and advertisements in Juice Magazine. She is working on
getting advertisements on the 105.1 radio station during football games because that radio
station broadcasts the Iowa State University games. Her first major success since working at
Della Viti was the Main Street Cultural District event of Octoberfest. She was able to participate
by sponsoring a European wine tasting tent. She hopes to find ways in the future with the Main
Street Cultural District to expose her business more to the Ames public.

Future Business Goals
Looking into the future is hard to do with a wine business. Since they get their products
from California, where the environment is unpredictable, a future harvest could be
compromised by earthquakes and wildfires (like the recent ones will affect falls harvest, but
they do not know how badly.)
The future of this particular property looks positive at the least. Beth has not foreseen far
enough into the future to decide how long she wanted to stay with Della Viti. She has not yet
thought about leaving, so that is good. Beth does not have a plan for succession since her son is
only 15 years old. Since she has found that she really likes this clientele at Della Viti, Beth has
had dreams of moving this property to its own building still in the Main Street Area. She can
also see herself opening a second Della Viti and owning the two of them.

Advice
Beth gave us some final advice to end our interview on. She wants to pass on to us that
our interaction with our customers is very important and could make your business fail or
succeed. She also suggests that we show our business plan to as many people as possible. This
includes but is not limited to, friends, family, business connections to help find any grammatical
errors, math errors, etc. She lets us know that starting a business takes long hours and many
days. She has not had a day off yet. She plans to have a couple days off in about three for
months. Beth ended on the note to make sure that we do something that we love.

Insights and Conclusions
Beth loved what she was doing, had great customer connections, and used people who
were willing to help to her advantage to succeed. These are all great rewards to starting a small
business. Some of the challenges seemed pretty predictable when becoming an owner of any
business. The hours are long and they take over your weekends and home life. We could tell
that Beth was always working hard and always had something to do considering during the
entire interview with her she was putting together the chalk boards with their new weekly
specials to put them out on the sidewalk. We did not think about how difficult it might be for us
to create our business plan for class when we have a fictional business with no hard numbers to
look at. We also did not think about showing our business plan to other people to double check
the whole thing. We though it was very informative that she had to create her own business
plan for Della Viti, even though the business was already running. It surprised us when we
found out that she only had five total employees working for a bar. The specifics of their bar
really explain a lot though. With the self-serving aspect, the bartenders are not needed nearly
as much as a regular bar. Our last thoughts about owning a small business is how important
location is regarding the type of business you want to own or take over. Della Viti is very lucky
to have their location on Main Street surrounded by small local businesses and an organization
that throws events constantly for the Ames community. Just through their location on Main
Street, their clientele and networking is pretty much taken care of already.


Interview Questions
1. Business description:
Name of business owner:
Name of business:
Location:
Year established:
Focus of business:
Target customers?

2. Personal background:
Highest level of Education?
Most helpful classes for owning a business?
Relevant or most helpful previous work experience?
Family background in owning a business?
Role models for business ownership?

3. Business start-up:
How do you identify an opportunity?
What motivated you to start owning a business?
How did you fund for the start up?
Who is in charge of human resources?
Do you have any partners? Or are you a sole proprietor?
Did you create a Business plan of your own?
Did you take advantage of any outside advisors (accountant, attorney, SBDC, etc.)?
Has your family situation contributed or been effected by the business start up?
Number of families or households supported by the business (owners only)?
Did you have any personal trade-offs/barriers that you had to give up or prevent you from
starting to own a business? ( Risks taken? )

4. Business growth:
Have you gone through any growth stages since owning?
Have you needed to hire on new employees since you started?
Have you had to retrain employees based on your personal business goals/ethics?
Have you changed any of your business goals recently?
Environmental influences (economic, market, etc.) on your product or property?
Expansion funding?
Networking?
A few major successes? (what do you consider as being successful?)
Limitations for growing and how they were solved?

5. Future Business Goals:
Do you plan on staying with the business for how long?
Long-term goals for the business?
Do you have a plan for succession?
Do you have any formal future planning documents?

Advice?

6. Your Insights and Conclusions:
Summarize your major insights gained from the interview related to the rewards and challenges
of owning a small business?
What did you learn regarding unique aspects of running an independently owned
business?
Discuss what you found meaningful from this interview?