1937, our founder, Leonard Greenbaum, opened Green's Package store on a street front location on Ponce De Leon Avenue in Midtown Atlanta. He operated the store for years as a standalone business - until his son Jerry joined the buisness after serving in the military in the 1960's. After some fits and starts, Jerry opened an additional store on Buford Highway just North of Lenox Road. At that time,
Dekalb county was "dry" and the Buford store sat adjacent to the county line, so you can imagine how busy it got. After Buford Highway, a series of stores were opened across town, North and East mainly, over the next decade. Eventually, there were 6 stores citywide. However, in 1990, our company and the State of Georgia signed a deal that included the sale of all of our stores but two. In 1977, while in Myrtle Beach, SC Jerry noticed a lack of any large format "discount looking" stores and decided to fill that void. Our Myrtle Beach store opened just before Christmas in 1977 and it quickly became the leading volume store in South Carolina. Tour buses, Canadians and vacationing South Carolinians all enjoyed the low prices and, at the time, the most massive liquor, beer, and wine store around. Greenville followed in 1983 and was the first store built as what was for 2 decades our prototypical store - larger (around 8,000 square feet), high ceilinged and brightly lit. Downtown Columbia, built adjacent to California Dreaming, opened in 1984. Almost an afterthought, Jerry never imaged that the restaurant and liquor store block would be so busy. Incidentally, the opening of California Dreaming and its subsequent success were the beginning of Jerry's move away from the liquor stores and towards building and opening restaurants. Good call - that company, which is still 100% family owned and operated, has 20 restaurants across the southeastern US, including the aforementioned California Dreaming. In 2003, we found an opportunity to open a new type store - Green's Beverage Warehouse - near Harbison Blvd in Columbia. A 15,000 square foot warehouse full of pallets of wine, beer and miscellaneous goods. I became the President of Green's in 1996 and serve in that capacity today. And that’s our history in a nutshell – not what you would call “fancy”. We remain a small, family owned and operated business. We have employees that have been our associates for 40 years and are like extended family. I am an active buyer in the company, and we do not have a grand corporate suite, just offices in the basement of downtown Columbia’s California Dreaming! Who knows what opportunities will present themselves in the future - but I do know that we love what we do and plan on doing it as long as possible in both GA and SC.
- Lock Reddic, President
