Business

Meet Rob Hall, New Owner of ‘New Canaan Wine Merchants’

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Rob Hall says fate led him to New Canaan Wine Merchants. Chatting with friends at a local restaurant last summer, Hall mentioned a career change he had in mind, and came to learn that a lease on the Pine Street full-service liquor store was not to be renewed. 

Since graduating from Susquehanna University in 1996 with a bachelor’s degree in communications and psychology, Hall had worked in corporate sales and marketing—mostly in the food and beverage industry with large branded companies such as Dole Foods, Colgate, Palmolive and Pepperidge Farms. 

I was in corporate life for 20 years and got a little tired of it,” Hall said on a recent morning from the newly configured sales floor of New Canaan Wine Merchants. “You know, reporting to someone else, working for someone else and I wanted to make that change to where I can support myself, my family and the community and at the same time be my own boss.”

Since taking over in November, Hall—a 1992 Wilton High School graduate who resides in Wilton with his wife and their two kids—has been working 80 hours per week, putting his own mark on the offerings at New Canaan Wine Merchants as he realizes a dream of owning his own business for the first time. Asked why he chose this specific business and New Canaan in particular, Hall noted that it’s “an established business and the timing worked out right.”

“New Canaan is a local town, that supports local and small business,” he said. “They are about sports, community about their kids and that’s the kind of community and town I want to thrive in.”

He’s already forging connections in the community, joining the New Canaan Chamber of Commerce and working to support area charities and organizations such as the New Canaan Squash Club and Fairfield’s Caroline House, which serves low-income immigrant women. 

Among other changes at New Canaan Wine Merchants (see below), Hall said he is renewing the shop’s focus on warmth and customer service. 

“Our number priority is to cater to the customers,” he said.

Footer Featured Widget

Letter: ‘Thank You’ from God’s Acre Christmas Caroling Committee

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While the carols and the Christmas Eve gathering remained the same, this year marked a changing of the guard in terms of leadership for the annual God’s Acre Christmas Caroling. 

A century ago, when John E. Hersam, then publisher of the New Canaan Advertiser, along with other members of the Town Band, invited friends and neighbors to God’s Acre for Christmas Eve Caroling, he likely had no idea he was helping to launch one of the quintessential New Canaan traditions. Thus, at the start of this year’s Carol Singing, it was fitting that V. Donald Hersam, and the entire Hersam family, was publicly thanked for their 100 year stewardship of this wonderful community event. 

With the sale of the Advertiser to Hearst last fall, the Hersams have transitioned stewardship of this annual event to a new God’s Acre Christmas Caroling Committee. We are each honored to help carry on this amazing tradition. 

Even though this is a free event open to all, there are annual costs associated with hosting it. This year we want to thank Tim Brown, from Brown Thayer Shedd Insurance, for stepping forward to underwrite construction of the bandstand and Rand Insurance for underwriting the cost of the song sheets provided that evening. We thank each individual and local family who sent in donations to help defray the costs.

Board of Selectmen

Glass House Consultant To Advise New Economic Development Committee

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A consultant who’s been working with a prominent local organization will help advise a new committee focused on boosting tourism and economic development in New Canaan, the town’s highest elected official said this week. An area resident who volunteers with the National Executive Service Corps and is “already up to speed on New Canaan” through work done recently with the Philip Johnson Glass House will advise the town’s Tourism and Economic Development Advisory Committee, or ‘TEDAC,’ First Selectman Kevin Moynihan said. 

“We will agree to pay them $6,000, which in the consulting world is really peanuts, to work for the first year with the group to facilitate their meetings, so we can make it easier on the Committee to focus on what they are trying to establish,” Moynihan said during the Board of Selectmen’s regular meeting, held at Town Hall. The Board voted 3-0 to form TEDAC as a 15-member Committee with members appointed for three years. Its mission is “to study and analyze New Canaan’s local economy and commercial and tourism businesses, and to advise and make recommendations and issue reports to the First Selectman, the Board of Selectman and other town officials, boards and commissions regarding measures the town or such bodies might undertake to promote and develop the local economy and the local business community, including tourism.”

Moyinhan and Selectmen Kit Devereaux and Nick Williams voted in favor of establishing the Committee. Its members are to be appointed at the Board’s Jan.

David Rucci

Editorial: P&Z and Downtown New Canaan

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We commend the New Canaan Planning & Zoning Commission for its responsiveness, diligence and care in updating the rules that say what types of businesses can occupy street-level commercial space in the downtown. More than one year in the making and with contributions from individuals within and outside the appointed body, P&Z’s work culminated in two changes recently that commercial property owners are hailing as proactive and timely. First, following several months of discussions, P&Z voted unanimously in April to update the New Canaan Zoning Regulations so that service businesses in the “Retail A” zone—the very heart of the downtown, including Elm and Main Streets—may occupy first-floor spaces so long as there’s a retail component facing the street. The idea for the text change came to the Commission because P&Z actively sought ways it could help the downtown. Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Tucker Murphy advised a P&Z committee led by Secretary Jean Grzelecki, and the Zoning Regulations amendment went into effect in May.

Around Town

Group Works To Continue Christmas Eve Caroling at God’s Acre

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A group of local volunteers have formed a new entity to ensure that a beloved New Canaan tradition, long supported by some of the town’s most generous individuals and families, continues in perpetuity. Though it may appear to spring up spontaneously from the patch of ground on which New Canaan was founded, the cherished Christmas Eve caroling at God’s Acre is in fact the result of multiple coordinated steps and support from families such as the Hersams and Karls, and residents such as Steve Benko, officials say. With the sale in October of Hersam Acorn Newspapers Inc. to Hearst, the multiple “moving parts” overseen for decades by the former New Canaan Advertiser publishers—getting lights on the tree, printing 2,000 songsheets, setting up barricades and the bandstand and making arrangements for the New Canaan Town Band as well as coordinating with groups such as the Congregational Church of New Canaan, New Canaan Police Department and Department of Public Works—all must fall to new people. Enter Benko, Tucker Murphy, Tom Stadler, Steve Karl, Leo Karl III and Scott Gress. Following multiple multi-hour meetings in recent days, they formed the God’s Acre Caroling Foundation, established to collect donations and ensure that the century-old traditional can continue (see mailing info below).