Owner of Olympia Hair Co. is opening a wine bar in downtown Olympia

Happy hour is a distant memory, except maybe on Zoom, but Happy Hour Olympia — a wine bar celebrating its grand opening Saturday, March 13 — is here.

The bar, in the Capitol City Press building at 122 Capitol Way N., opened for retail sales in November, but will seat its first customers at the opening event from 3 to 10 p.m. Saturday.

“Finally,” said Michelle Larson of Olympia, who owns the bar with her friend Chelsea Beckman. “Finally, after a year.”

It’s actually been close to a year and a half since Larson started planning to open Happy Hour, which will focus on wine but also serves beer and cider and a menu of small bites, including blue cheese-stuffed dates, hummus and charcuterie.

Larson, who owns and manages Olympia Hair Co., also in the Capitol City Press building, has no prior bar or restaurant experience. She simply woke up one day with the idea of opening a wine bar, a place with that was warm and friendly with the feel of a boutique.

She told her husband, Noel Larson, what she was thinking.

“He said, ‘Do it,’ so I went to Barnes & Noble and got ‘Running a Bar for Dummies,’ ” Michelle Larson said. “That’s really how it happened.”

Larson and Beckman signed a lease for the space, formerly occupied by Volcano Vapor Café, and hired Olympia sommelier Ben Clark to curate the Happy Hour wine list, which features an international selection of wines not commonly found in local restaurants.

That might have been the whole story — except for the timing. It was February 2020, and everything was about to change.

“It was really hard,” Larson said. “We drained our savings accounts.” They were lucky, she added, that they got a couple of grants and that their landlord worked with them on the rent.

Family and friends pitched in to work on the space, too. “My husband has done a lot of the work, and he definitely has supplemented my income,” Larson said. “He’s been a big supporter.”

Now that the bar is opening, will she be popping over for a glass of wine after a long day of hairstyling?

“Now, I’ll pop over and start serving,” she said. “We’re going to be hopping from one full time job to another until we find somebody who can work here pretty much full time.”

Happy Hour Olympia

• What: The new wine bar, opening for inside dining Saturday, also serves beer, cider and a menu of appetizers, snacks and sweets.
• Where: 122 Capitol Way N., Olympia
• Hours: 3-9 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays and 3-10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays
• More information: http://www.happyhourolympia.com/, 360-915-8241

This story was originally published March 11, 2021 at 5:45 AM.