Steve Boyer, a leading wine entrepreneur on the Reno scene, who showed resilience as a local businessman during the pandemic, is now bringing oysters to a wine bar and brewery near you, including his own, Archive at West Street Market.
What pairs the best? “Champagne always, always sparkling wine,” he told Our Town Reno during a recent interview, before opening Archive on a weekday. “I think a lot of people focus on white wines with oysters or beer with oysters. There's some amazing beer and oyster pairings, but there's also some beautiful, fresh, vibrant reds that'll work well with oysters. It honestly probably depends more on the weather than on the oyster. Although there are definite pairings we will be featuring with each oyster.”
Most conversations with Boyer, who has more than a quarter century experience in the wine and service industry, turn into mouth watering propositions. Oysters have long been only available inside casinos in northern Nevada, but Boyer is coming up with the concept of a mobile oyster trailer called the Mini Pearl Oyster Company.
“We’re going to go around, serve freshly shucked oysters and a couple of other fresh seafood alternatives. It’s going to be a lot of fun. I think it'll be something that Reno hasn't seen. It will be a way to get access to fresh oysters without having to go sit down at a fancy restaurant,” he said.
The name for this new oyster venture comes from Minnie Pearl, the American comedian whose real name was Sarah Cannon. She appeared at the Nashville country music stage the Grand Ole Opry for more than 50 years.
“My wife [Amy, the co-owner of Archive and a wine distributor] and I met in Nashville, Tennessee, home of Minnie Pearl. She was a tremendous asset to her community, as well as a tremendous comedian, for her time. And we thought it represented making [oysters] more approachable. It just sounds like a lot of fun. And then of course, oysters and pearls, they're a natural combination. So I think, I think it'll be a lot of fun to, to see how people react to it.”
Archive can be found through one of the West Street facing doors of the West Street Market in downtown Reno.
For Boyer, it will be the latest in a series of entrepreneurial ventures, some of which failed, including when he first moved to the region and opened a restaurant in what was then Squaw Valley in 2007 just as the Great Recession hit. He was out of that business after two years. Boyer opened Archive (“a repository of great things that represent place”) just six months before the pandemic started.
“We were were building a lot of momentum, right before the pandemic,” he remembers. “We closed down a little bit for, for just a short period of time. And then we opened up [again]. we do have a retail license here, so we can sell bottles and cases to go. So we tried to pivot to some retail sales, but our location downtown made that a little bit more difficult. Honestly, people were just scared to get out and about for a long time.”
He said the plan was never to prioritize sales though but the experience and interacting with guests. “We firmly believe that great wine is a conversation, not a product. For what we do, it's important for us to be able to really interact, and explain what we have and find out what it is people are looking for. And so that made it really difficult, but, you know, we're resilient. We got some support from the community and then honestly it was just buckling down and making our minds up that we were gonna keep going, even if we weren't making money.”
Boyer says the pandemic reinforced the importance of supporting small local businesses.
“I think we are feeling that love a little bit now, which is great,” he said. That support is also giving him new confidence, despite the many current challenges of inflation, supply chain strangleholds and climate change to name a few.
“A lot of that depends on how we treat it, whether we treat it with respect, and treat Reno with respect,” Boyer said of now succeeding with the oyster venture, at least in terms of what he can control. “I think it also depends on how much work we put into it. And then there's always a lot of luck involved [with] timing.”
Outside of work, Boyer is an avid snowboarder who during the winter volunteers at Sky Tavern, where both his boys have been going since they were four. He advises other entrepreneurs to keep a healthy balance.
“It’s easy to get so caught up in the day to day grind,” he said. “And, you know, one of the commitments that I made to my wife and that we made to each other when we opened Archive was that this wouldn't become so important to us that we would sacrifice our family, or sacrifice ourselves and the things that we love to do. We moved to Reno to raise a family and we moved to Reno to be outside and to enjoy what Reno has to offer. I think it's really important to maintain that sanity and that balance. It's okay to sacrifice a little bit of growth financially to be able to grow in other ways. And I think that's a balance that's hard for entrepreneurs to do, but I think you have to find a way to do it.”