Growing up with Gary Fisch as a father, Mike Fisch always planned to join the family business. Gary Fisch, the president and CEO of Gary’s Wine & Marketplace, launched his first beverage alcohol retail store in 1987 in New Jersey. Thirty-seven years later, in 2018, Mike joined the company on a part-time basis, transitioning to full-time in 2020. Mike Fisch, who has been chief financial officer since 2023, brought financial acumen and a flair for technology to the business, updating systems and introducing technologies that are now being rolled out to the broader industry.
Fisch says he and his dad “make a really great duo” who together are evolving Gary’s Wine & Marketplace to meet the needs of a new generation. “It’s an honor to work with him,” Fisch says. “I value the autonomy and the fact that we focus on parallel things. He focuses on the buying and merchandising, and I focus on the back-office, marketing, technology, systems, and processes.”
For his dedication to family legacy and focus on furthering technological growth at the company, Mike Fisch has been named a 2026 Market Watch Leader.
Early Introduction
Fisch’s first experiences in his father’s retail stores date back a few decades. “The first experience I can remember was handing out lollipops to customers as they walked through the door,” Fisch recalls, noting that he was likely five or six years old at the time. As a teenager, he worked as a cashier and sometimes on the sales floor.
Education and a bit of outside experience was important to Fisch. He studied economics and accounting at Washington University in St. Louis, then joined accounting firm Ernst & Young. A few years later he earned a Master of Business Administration from the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania.
Earning the MBA “was important to me,” Fisch says, “just to have a bit more legitimacy before I joined the family business so that people knew I was coming in with my own set of ideas and experience.
“It was during my time at Wharton when I started actually dipping my toes into working with Gary’s,” Fisch continues. “I was working on introducing a mobile app to Gary’s and working on our business intelligence reporting and our last mile delivery logistics.”
Those tech developments would become crucial in 2020, when the pandemic upended the business. “Soon after I became full time, Covid-19 hit and we had tens of thousands of people downloading the mobile app because that was the only way to order,” Fisch says. “I got thrown right into the fire and was really able to introduce great systems for the business.”
Now, most of the business at Gary’s Wine & Marketplace has shifted back to in-person, but online makes up about 20% of sales, compared to about 8% pre-pandemic. “It grew the pie because we were able to maintain our in-store sales but also increase our online business,” Fisch says. “People know that they can order on an app, they can order for delivery, they can order for pickup and we have shipping throughout the U.S.”
Business Evolution
Fisch officially joined the family firm in 2018, the same year that his father Gary was named the Market Watch Leaders Retailer of the Year. At that time, Gary’s Wine & Marketplace had five locations—four in New Jersey and one in Napa Valley, California—and about $53 million in annual revenue. In subsequent years, the father-son team opted to close the Napa Valley location and sell another store.
Today, there are three Gary’s Wine & Marketplace stores—in Bernardsville, Closter, and Madison, New Jersey—which together bring in annual revenue of about $48 million, Fisch says.
The moves were made to “really focus our attention and refine our operation,” he adds. “We’re hyper-focused on staff training and staff education. We’ve got an excellent wine team that we send on trips throughout the world to learn and bring back interesting stories and wines to our stores. We’re super focused on in-store experiences and engaging with our community—we want our store to be the cultural hub of our community. Then on the ops and systems side, we’ve just continued to refine and upgrade all our systems so that we can do more with less.”
Those three stores range from 8,000 square feet to 16,000 square feet. Together, the three stores employ about 95 people, of which about 40 work full-time and some of whom have been with the company since its launch 39 years ago.
Within the stores, shelves are packed with wines selected from all over the world, spirits, beer, ready-to-drink beverages, and THC beverages, as well as deli items and gourmet foods. Fisch acknowledges a “moment-in-time softening of purchasing across the industry” but says Gary’s Wine & Marketplace “has been able to buck the trend” for now.
“Offering interesting new products that are sparking discovery is a good way to engage with that next generation, which is where I think a lot of the softening has happened,” he says. “Gen Z, I think, wants to hear about stories. We try to foster that community learning environment and not be relegated to a marketplace app where it’s just a point and click. That’s not where we differentiate. We differentiate on our service and our education [approach]. We want to play to our strengths.”
Currently, Gen Z is gravitating away from wine, but Fisch says he “wouldn’t call it a game” quite yet. “There’s an opportunity for us, as an industry, to pique the interest of those younger consumers,” he says. “We could be one viral video away from everyone wanting to try the next ‘other’ European white wine or whatnot. The verdict is still out.”
As for the overall beverage alcohol sector, Fisch says Gary’s isn’t feeling the squeeze the way some retailers are. Sales increased in 2025 and were pacing flat this year. “We think in this market, that’s actually really good,” he says.
Gary’s stores are strategically located in affluent suburbs with easy access to New York City. Typical customers aren’t particularly price-sensitive, Fisch says, and thus far haven’t shifted their consumption patterns to a great degree despite the faltering economy.
Wine Dominance
For Gary’s, wine has always been, and remains, the focal point. Gary Fisch started the business as an outlet for his passion for wine, and that commitment has held steady for nearly 40 years. “Wine is about 65% of the business,” Mike Fisch says. “It’s what we do best, it’s what we know best, and it’s where a lot of our focus goes.”
Gary’s Wine & Marketplace has about 3,800 SKUs of wine, and buyers are always seeking to add fresh, unique offerings to the curated selection of the wine industry’s finest brands. “Right now, there is a lot of excitement with ‘other whites,’” Fisch notes. “People are exploring lesser-known varieties and wines from Croatia, Greece, and Austria.
“We also see rosé continuing to perform well, despite some talk in the trade about it cooling off,” he adds. “Our numbers are telling a different story.”
About 20% of the wines sold at Gary’s are private labels sold through the company’s Gary’s Direct program. “We find and source these wines, and of course clear them through the appropriate channels,” Fisch notes. “It’s been great for both our customers and our staff. A lot of our internal education is focused on coaching them, teaching them about the interesting Gary’s Direct wines that we discover and bring in. It’s also a differentiator for us to stand out from our competition nearby, because we’re finding wines that are harder to find, are more unique, and our team is passionate about.”
Gary’s Direct wines are sold under a variety of labels and are merchandised as Gary’s Direct offerings in stores. The Fisch family also has its own range of wines within the program.
Spirits are the second-largest category after wine at Gary’s, accounting for about 19% of revenues. With just over 1,800 SKUs, Gary’s spirits offering is comprehensive. Like many retailers, the spirit of the hour at Gary’s is Tequila. “Tequila continues to be the standout category in spirits in terms of driving growth,” Fisch says, noting that super-premium and ultra-premium brands, in particular, are faring well. “And I would say flavored agave spirits is actually an interesting exploration area for certain customers. There are a lot of innovations in that area that I think are exciting.”
Fisch adds, “Spirits-based RTDs brands are certainly still doing well. They’re up 12% year over year for us. We’re carrying about 300 different SKUs, up from 270 last year.”
Beer is a weaker point for Gary’s currently. The chain carries just over 2,000 SKUs for beer, but there’s not much dynamism in the sector other than the continuing expansion of non-alcoholic beers, Fisch says. Beer currently makes up about 9% of business but eating into beer’s share are RTDs and CBD/THC beverages, both of which have growing appeal.
Tempting Experiences
The spirit of exploration extends throughout the stores. In-store events are a critical part of the Gary’s experience. “We invest in in-store experience with frequent sampling events and wine dinners and engaging with the community,” he says, noting that the company typically hosts 30–40 sampling events each month across the three stores. “Every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, at the very least, we want the stores to be activated.”
Wine tastings and more elaborate dinners are a mainstay of the Gary’s offerings. But it’s not just wine. Tastings can span all categories, including relative newcomer THC/ CBD. “THC/CBD has been a big growth area for the business and something that our customers want to discover and learn more about,” notes Fisch. “It’s an area where we find sampling intrigues customers and will have them buying more than they otherwise would have.”
To manage the thrum of events across the chain, Fisch created a sampling platform called Samplii. That platform is now being rolled out to the broader industry.
Samplii is a way to bring together all different stakeholders in the industry—tasting agencies, distributors, suppliers and retailers—onto one platform. The system increases both efficiency and transparency, Fisch says. “For retailers like Gary’s, we were able to four-times the number of events that we [could before] just by having a booking platform and sending it out to all of our distributor sales reps and all of our suppliers, saying, please book events with us,” he says. “We were able to fill up our calendar and keep it filled up for months in advance.”
In May, one month into the rollout, Samplii had seven retailers and four brands involved. “We’re having really interesting partnership conversations and we think we can bring thousands of retailers onto the platform,” Fisch says.
Future Moves
In fact, Fisch is seeking to extend his reach in the industry beyond Gary’s Wine & Marketplace. The first avenue is expanding Samplii. The second is a consulting business. “I’m taking the learnings from Gary’s—everything we’ve done so far in terms of operations, finance and accounting—and offering those services to other businesses in the industry,” he says. For Gary’s specifically, Fisch says there’s no imminent expansion but opportunities could arise. “The market is turbulent and other players might not be able to maintain market share,” he notes. “It could be a good opportunity for us to buy a company or expand.”
But top priority now is ensuring Gary’s is positioned for continuing success. “A lot of our focus is refining our existing stores and cementing them as staples in the community,” Fisch says.
