Growing up in Baltimore, Jeryl Cole and his wife, Tyrekia Cole, saw the impacts of alcohol on their communities. They opened Off the Rox Wine and Beer in Highlandtown in 2018 to offer a different kind of experience.

This Saturday, they plan to open a bottle shop and tasting room in Lauraville called Beverly House.

The Cole family is in the retail wine and beer industry, but they don’t sell high-proof malt liquors or spirits. Instead, the Black-owned small business provides a range of wines and beers from other small businesses.

“Maybe the neighborhood doesn’t have a coffee shop, maybe they don’t have a wine shop or maybe they don’t have a restaurant,” said Jeryl Cole, 34. “Why don’t we create in neighborhoods that don’t have these things and we can be a part of the growth?”

Jeryl Cole once thought he’d be a Baltimore council member or go to law school or get his MBA. Those paths aren’t out of the picture, he said, but as a husband and father to three boys while running a family-owned business, for now he views his time as better spent being a voice for his community through entrepreneurship.

What was the inspiration for starting Off the Rox?

Jeryl Cole: Baltimore, at one point in time, had the most liquor establishments per capita out of any city in the country. There’s a lot of alcohol here. Growing up in Northeast Baltimore, you see all of the corner stores, stores with bulletproof glass, and even convenience stores where you only buy chips and soda. It just seemed like there was not a lot of connection to the community.

We wanted to create great spaces in our neighborhood that we would shop at even if we didn’t own them. If someone else created Off the Rox, I’m pretty sure we would be their No. 1 customer. So, our idea was that if we’re going to be in a neighborhood and if we’re going to be in the community, we want to put things in the community that it’s lacking. We thought a wine shop would be great somewhere around Patterson Park.

I understand that you have feelings about certain types of alcohol. Could you tell me more about that?

Growing up, we called them “shorty and 40 spots.” You’ll usually have cats outside sitting and drinking. It’s an unpleasant thing for neighborhoods. And it’s usually those malt liquor big brands targeting a particular group of people. They go into neighborhoods, and they encourage retailers to carry the product.

It’s the abuse of alcohol that we don’t want to be a part of. We want to sell products for everyone in the sense that alcohol is a privilege, not a necessity.

We’re not aggressively targeting someone to get messed up. We don’t want to be a part of degrading our communities and our neighbors.

There are many different aspects to running a business. What’s your favorite part?

When I wake up, I simply look forward to opening the doors at Off the Rox. I love the opportunity to be able to conduct business.

We’re very optimistic people. We love to believe and to create. It keeps us going. And we like to bring that to our staff, employees, and people that are involved with Off the Rox.

We do tastings every Thursday and Friday, and those are always fun because we get to sample products with customers and teach them new things. We do events and collaborations. We take pride in training our staff about this and say, “Hey guys, have fun with it because you’re going to learn just as much as you’re teaching the consumer.”

What’s something that you wish people knew about Off the Rox?

I think a lot of people have this misconception that we’re a high-end shop. That it’s too expensive for you to come to the shop to buy wine or beer. I think that narrative is totally wrong. I think we’re very fair in the products we have. We carry products at the same price points, but they’re family-owned and have a smaller production, which we believe is higher quality.

We don’t have Yellow Tail or Sutter Home, but if you like moscato, we have a moscato. If you like cabernet, we have cabernet.

Anything you’d like to add about the industry?

I’ve been in the industry for over a decade now and it’s never been more diverse. I feel like it’s in a state where you see more minorities joining in creating and producing, which I think is phenomenal. I think that the industry calls for more collaborative work.

What’s next for you? What’s your biggest ambition?

The sky’s the limit. I truly believe in everything we want to do.

We started a wrestling club about six months ago called the Baltimore Wrestling Club. We’re growing to become a nonprofit and working with Uplift Alliance for our fiscal sponsorship. That’s our idea of giving back to the community — teaching wrestling and mentorship to kids.

We have a couple more concepts coming into Baltimore. In the next few months, we have a cafe and bottle shop coming to the CARE community in East Baltimore sometime at the top of 2025.

We want to create within neighborhoods, and we want to work with communities to create.

This is chapter one for the Cole family and we have so much more to give.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and concision.