Amazing Grapes

What happened after

Wine/beer retailer and wine bar in Rancho Santa Margarita shut down in early July 2017 per local paper.

Closure date on record: 2017-07

What happened on the show

Amazing Grapes was a textbook case of absentee ownership. The wine and beer retailer was mostly run by its staff, and its most profitable piece, the bar and restaurant, was jammed into a poor corner of the building with too little floor space, while unsellable inventory clogged the rest. The employees were knowledgeable and experienced, but whenever the owners did turn up they overruled them. Marcus offered $300,000 for a controlling 51 percent, carving out 25 percent for the staff who actually kept the place alive. He remodeled the store to hand the bar and restaurant the room it needed, shifting the display shelves to illuminated side walls to open up the space. There was initial resistance, but by the relaunch he was pleased with the result, one of his more straightforward interventions on a business whose main disease was owners who would not get out of the way.

After the cameras left

Amazing Grapes did not survive, and its ending is tied directly to the show. The wine and beer retailer and wine bar, located in Rancho Santa Margarita on Aventura, shut down in early July 2017. The Orange County Register covered the closure and explicitly connected it to the Lemonis aftermath, framing the store as one that had been spurned by the television millionaire. So this is a rare case where the paper trail links the failure back to the episode itself rather than to ordinary market forces. Confirmed closed as of July 2017, high confidence.