Spokane North Rotary Club Bulletin
December 16, 2019
Happy Holidays!!
Rotary calendar:
Dec. 23 and Dec. 30: No meetings during the Holidays.
Jan. 6: Luncheon meeting at Nectar. President’s report.
Jan. 13: Rotary Connect, 4:30 p.m. at Helix Wines, 824 W. Sprague.
Jan. 20: No meeting on Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday.
Jan, 25: Rotary Serves, 2nd Harvest Food Bank “Big Build,” 10-11:30 a.m.
Feb   3: Lunch  Nectar, Karene Duffy, Newtech Skills Center
 
Briefly:
 
“Big Build”:  Save the date…for Saturday, Jan. 25, 10-11:30 a.m., for our Rotary Serves packaging session at 2nd Harvest Food Bank’s “Big Build” campaign.  Our members and friends will be joined by GU Rotaract members.
Cruising with Aurora:  Rob Allen, of Spokane Aurora Northwest Rotary, stopped by to sell that club’s annual raffle tickets for charities.  Prizes include a choice of a cruise and three other items.
 
Spirits of the times: Nectar has many
             If you want to try a new wine or beer, Josh Wade can help you.
 
            Wade’s Nectar Wine and Beer offer 300 wines, including 32 by the glass, and 100 beers, including 16 on tap.
            The many wines are varied in shelf fulls of varietals and the craft beers include adventuresome quaffs like “Gummy Beer Apocalypse” from Payette Brewing Co. and “Frambozen Lambi” from Hood River, Ore.
 
            Wade’s store, at 1331 W. Summit Parkway in Kendall Yards –and our club’s luncheon home – joined us Dec. 16 to share his remarkable story.
In 2007, Josh was among the number of reductions in force casualties at the Bank of America,  where he was a communications staffer. He described the office as “corporate propaganda.”
 
            Simply put, Wade said, “2007 was not in a great place.”
 
            Josh got a real estate license and was hired back at BOA, but was now more inclined to “follow my passions.”  One passion was wine and beer, so Josh started a wine blog.  When Twitter and Facebook and other platforms grew to thousands of views, he started Nectar in 2015 to capitalize the opportunity.  With the right stock in the right place at the right time, he said, “we doubled our expectations.”
 
            Of the craft beer, Wade says, “Anyone can get drunk (on cheap beer).”  Now, some customers pay up to $33 for a two beer container for a specialty brew cited on Instagram.
 
            Wade then added the catering business, opening the historic 1889 building at Main and Stevens in 2016, when he replaced a bridal store.
 
            The catering business also has grown fast, with 268 private events at Nectar Downtown this year and a variety of off-site weddings from 11 to 200 people attending.
 
            Always the entrepreneur, Wade now is working on opening a Nectar store in the South Perry neighborhood and he is developing a “beer and donuts” specialty item.
 
            Of his rapid-style list of ideas, Josh said, “I am an addictive person.”  He is bullish on long-term growth in Spokane, and, thus far, he mostly has been addictive to success.
 
The bulletin producers:
 
Bulletin editors: Chuck Rehberg and Sandy Fink
Photos: Lenore Romney