EXPANDED EXCLUSIVE: Zachys to be reimagined in 'dream space' in Port Chester

“I think we’re going to change the face of retail in Westchester dramatically with this location,” said McMurray, who heads up the retail and experiential side of the business.

Though he was excited to have the opportunity to build his dream space, there was a hint of mixed emotions. The new store wouldn’t be on East Parkway in Scarsdale, the location the third-generation family-owned business has called home for more than 75 years. Though it wasn’t originally the intention when they signed their lease in July to occupy the 70,000-square-foot facility in Port Chester, the owners knew it would be best for the business to house Zachys under one roof, which meant they would leave their Scarsdale retail location behind.

“If we could have found a way to stay in Scarsdale we would have,” said McMurray, explaining that the village didn’t have a space large enough for the company to stay.

The company’s growth was far more than the Zacharia family could have ever imagined. Starting out of a 327-square-foot shop on East Parkway, Zachys has become a multimillion dollar wine retail, auction and storage behemoth. With 130 people on the payroll and more than $100 million brought in annually from wine auctions alone, consolidating the business was not only going to help the company have easier access to thousands of cases of wine spread across three floors at its corporate headquarters in White Plains, but would also help decrease shipping times and streamline the business.

“We grew out of our spaces and we’re so fractured right now,” said McMurray. “The ability to do everything under one roof for us; we didn’t want to pass up on it.”

Zachys had been looking for new space for three years before it found the facility in Port Chester — dubbed by McMurray as “the gateway to Zachys” — in January. Originally, the 70,000-square-foot facility on Midland Avenue, which was formerly owned by the Strauss Paper Co., was only going to be used to expand the company’s warehouse space. Though it was difficult, after months of consideration a decision was made around Thanksgiving to include the retail store in the mix, which meant closing the location in Scarsdale and relocating it to the new Port Chester complex.

Owners thought through many different potential scenarios, such as keeping the retail location in Scarsdale, having a smaller space in the village or even opening up a wine bar to maintain a presence in the village they have called home since 1944. But New York State Liquor Authority prohibits licensed wine stores or liquor store owners from having more than one store, making it legally impossible for Zachys to have retail stores in both municipalities.

“We didn’t take it lightly,” said McMurray, who added that the decision to leave Scarsdale was the hardest decision the family has ever had to make. “It took four months for us to come to the conclusion that this was the best move for the growth of the business.”

The company will close its corporate headquarters and storage facility in White Plains, a 10,000-square-foot warehouse in Mamaroneck, an extra refrigerated storage unit in Hawthorne and its Scarsdale retail location to bring the entirety of the business together in one unified space. The new facility will house an auctioning space, corporate offices, warehouses, storage facilities and a two-floor 3,500-square-foot retail location. Construction will start the first week of July and is expected to take three to four months to complete. Zachys plans to move out of its retail location in Scarsdale in January 2022.

“It’s bittersweet,” said Zachys president Jeff Zacharia, who remembers growing up in the store and working there many holidays and summers. “Scarsdale is an important part of our DNA and our community and while the store may be leaving Scarsdale, Zachys will not be leaving Scarsdale.”

The expansion was “the largest investment the family has ever made by far,” according to McMurray, though he couldn’t provide a specific dollar figure just yet. To get the warehouses set up for refrigeration alone, he said, would cost approximately $1 million.

The new warehouse space will also help Zachys reopen its wine storage business, which houses approximately 30,000 cases of wine. Zachys stopped taking in new clients five years ago because of lack of space and the expansion will help resolve the company’s Tetris-like storage struggles, which has caused delays on shipping. McMurray said the company has two employees who currently have to drive to multiple warehouses throughout the day to consolidate orders. Having the larger space will help to centralize orders and improve shipping times, he said.

“We’ve already done the math [and] we think we’ll be able to increase our shipping volume by three or four times,” said McMurray about the improvements he believes the new space will bring to the business.

Even if Zachys were to keep its retail location in Scarsdale and expand its warehouses and corporate offices in the Port Chester branch, the business would still struggle with maintaining two separate inventories.

When McMurray first started working in the family business almost 30 years ago, all the wine they needed was at their fingertips. Employees worked above the store, the warehouse was across the street and everything customers needed was stocked in the store’s basement.

But things have changed since then. Zachys’ retail store on East Parkway in Scarsdale accounts for just 10% of its retail business, with the remaining 90% attributed to orders shipped throughout Westchester, New York and all across the United States.

In 1995, the business expanded into wine auctions and currently handles independent auctions throughout the world, from New York to Hong Kong and London. In 2019, Zachys did $125 million in auctions alone. Zachys also sells out of a separate location in Washington, D.C.

Though the pandemic hurt many local brick-and-mortar shops around the country, COVID-19 actually didn’t play a role in Zachys’ choice to leave the village. During the pandemic, McMurray said Zachys was doing “insane” volume and “it was like Christmas every month” though most of those sales weren’t happening onsite in the retail space, but rather through online orders and local delivery.

The decision to leave Scarsdale was also painful for Don Zacharia, whose father Zachy Zacharia first opened his East Parkway Wine & Liquor House (later renamed to Zachys) in 1944.

Though initially Don Zacharia had little interest in taking over his father’s shop, he bought the business from his father in 1961 to support his family and transformed it into the wine powerhouse that people recognize as Zachys today. Customers would line up outside the store for purchases, taking to heart the company’s slogan to “take a drive to Scarsdale.”

Over the years, the retail store continued to expand on East Parkway. In 1966, the store expanded to 800 square feet, then to 1,300 square feet in 1974 and to 4,000 square feet in 1983. Eventually, Don Zacharia’s son Jeff Zacharia and son-in-law McMurray joined the business and the three shepherded the company into online sales, wine auctions and wine storage.

McMurray, Don Zacharia and Jeff Zacharia still live in Scarsdale and have no plans to separate themselves from the community.

“We’re going to do our damnedest — we’ve all sworn to this — to maintain as much as we can,” said Zachys chairman Don Zacharia, who is celebrating his 90th birthday this month. “We know we’re not going to have walk-in traffic from Scarsdale [in Port Chester]. But we think we can retain a large part of our business. We’re still going to stay involved with the community of Scarsdale.”

McMurray said he will continue to serve on the board of the Scarsdale Business Alliance and Zachys will continue to be a part of local community events.

Marcy Berman-Goldstein, co-president of the Scarsdale Business Alliance, told the Inquirer that Zachys has already expressed a desire to play a role in the next Scarsdale Music Festival in 2022.

“Although we will miss Zachys and the contribution they have made to the SBA and to our village and community, including the support of various events, we are hopeful that any new tenant will enjoy a similar mutually beneficial relationship,” said Berman-Goldstein.

Many questions remain about what will replace the wine store’s prime 4,000-square-foot space on East Parkway after Zachys relocates in January.

DJ Petta of Scarsdale Improvement Co. said the company, which owns the building that houses Zachys, hadn’t zeroed in on a tenant yet, although it’s expected liquor and wine stores will show interest in the space.

“We don’t want to be pigeonholed into one kind of business right now and I think that there’s a lot of opportunity there with it being a very large space,” said Petta.

Since signing the Port Chester lease last summer, McMurray’s full-time job (on top of his running the business’s retail operations) has been reimagining the company’s new facility and opportunities, while reconciling mixed feelings about leaving the village that’s been a large part of his professional career.

“When you talk about such a large part of your work career — 25-plus years — identifying with one location, it’s hard,” said McMurray. “But the other thing is … this is my opportunity to create a dream space. So, at the beginning I was mixed, [but] now as I’ve kind of gotten into it … I’m really excited.”