Open Container, a wildly original new concept in the Orlando food and beverage landscape, will be debuting its second location tonight while eyeing serious expansions into the future.
“We’re a shipping container wine bar franchise, created after 20 years of experience in the wine industry.” says Open Container’s enthusiastic owner, Haik Khachatryan. “Being in the wine business for half of my life, and with my parents in the food and beverage industry too, we wanted to finally run our own business, tell our own story. So, we decided to start Open Container.”
Open Container, apart from referring to the uncorked bottles of wine essential to any wine establishment, refers to the brand’s unique premises: containers “made from actual shipping containers that can last for 30+ years…fabricated and built out in Armenia, a process that takes roughly 2 months to construct and a month and a half to be transported and delivered to your land or retail site selection,” according to the brand’s official site.
And in an industry dominated most visibly by nations such as Italy, France, and Portugal, readers will be surprised to find that Open Container sources their wine from the nation that gave birth to the origin of wine itself.
“We focus on Armenian wine given our own background. It’s a way to stay connected to our cultures and our ancestors,” says Mr. Khachatryan. “Our wine comes from the village that held the very first winery ever run, as confirmed by institutions such as National Geographic.”
Mr. Khachatryan explains that the brand serves seven types of wines, all grown in Armenia, receiving the newest shipment just three weeks ago. He is proud to share that Armenian wine culture goes back seven thousand years, and that he had recently visited the oldest known winery in human history, back home in Amenia.
“This winery was in a cave, bro. The ancients knew that this cave had the exact temperature and the perfect humidity to make and ferment wine.”
Apart from tonight’s opening at 8200 Vineland Avenue, readers can anticipate a fully-fledged downtown brick-and-mortar by the end of 2023 or early 2024, and expansions across the state of Florida in 2024, according to Mr. Khachatryan.
