Everson Royce

If, per chance, you find yourself on the Gold Line in Pasadena…you’d be wise to hop off at the Memorial Park Station and stroll across Raymond Street to check out Everson Royce. Opened nearly a year ago to a murmur of excited whispers (from those already familiar with Silverlake Wine) Everson Royce has firmly planted roots in Old Town Pasadena and the surrounding area. Everson Royce has three owners: Randy Clement and April Langford (also 2 of the three owners of Silverlake Wine) and their long time friend Joe Capella.

Walking into Everson Royce, the first thing that strikes you is the friendly staff. There are no pretentions here – just a great knowledge of their staggering collection of wines. They stock some 600 varieties of small production wines as well as beer and other spirits. I’d say I was able to “sit down” recently with Randy to discuss Everson Royce, but they have consciously left out seating within the store in order to coax visitors into wondering about, talking and being human. It’s a formula that has served them well at Silverlake Wine, so why not Everson Royce!

Tell me a bit about yourself, your partners and how Everson Royce came to be.

My name is Randy Clement co-owner of Everson Royce and Silverlake Wine. I have two partners in each store. Everson Royce is not just the name of a place but also two people: named after my identical twin 3-year-old sons. Their mother, April Langford, is my partner in both stores. At Silverlake Wine we have a third partner named George Cosette, George and myself being the wine directors at Campanile Restaurant prior to opening Silverlake Wine about 10 years ago. At the new store, we have another partner whose name is Joe Capella. Joe Capella was a longtime customer and friend at Silverlake Wine and we were always interested in opening a business with him.

Tell me about how you came to hear about this particular Building in Pasadena?

There was a wine store in here formally for about 10 years and they had gone out of business. We didn’t know that it had gone out of business nor did we know that there was going to be any type of change over here. The owner of the building had heard of our Silverlake store and had approached us to see if we had any interest in opening a second store in his building. The fact that there was already an existing place here that sold alcoholic beverages is always helpful as it skips a few steps in the permitting and licensing standpoint so we found the place to be right up our alley. It’s the same kind of store on paper as Silverlake Wine, selling boutique small production wine all the way, customer service driven and weekly tastings. We do tastings three times a week, Tuesday night, Friday night and Saturday afternoon. There is one other thing that is very similar in that every Monday night in Silverlake we have Heirloom LA’s food truck that comes and sits out front of our store. They have recently received all the necessary permits and are now in front of our Pasadena store every Tuesday night between 5 and 8pm! We’re super excited to be up here in Pasadena.

Your background seems to come from Restaurants originally, does that help you when suggesting what kind of wines pair best with certain foods? That was always something that impressed me initially walking in here when I was uncertain which direction to go with the wine.

At the end of the day we are kind of classically trained in the sense that we’ve worked in restaurants before. Prior to Silverlake Wine opening, every single job I’ve ever had has been in a restaurant, from varying degrees of fancy to not fancy, Campanile definitely being the most prestigious. You could kind of say that was my “graduate school” of restaurant training. I’ve worked at places where we’ve lined up wearing tuxedos and they look at your nails making sure you’re good to go. The vast majority of people drink wine with food so there is that pairing need and to be able to figure out what goes with what is almost like second nature at this stage. That just comes from years of training. Not like that of a classically trained sommelier, as I’ve never gone to any school for this. I was 26 when we opened Silverlake Wine and back then there were sommeliers but there wasn’t a whole explosion of that kind of service as there is now, where it’s in vogue now to go to a sommelier training school. That didn’t really exist when I started out.

You mentioned you were in New Mexico prior to coming to LA? What lead you this direction?

April and I met in New Mexico, I was a busboy and she was a bartender. I used to mop her floors. We decided to move to California because we wanted to open a business together. We didn’t know what kind of business it would be at the time but wanted to go to a place where it would be super competitive, super hard, really kind of fast pace and I liked the Lakers more than the Knicks so we came to L.A.

What has the response in Pasadena been like for you so far?

The response has been GREAT. When we opened Silverlake Wine, Silverlake was a very different place now than it was 10 years ago, there were days on that block of Glendale Blvd., where…forget people coming INTO the store, people didn’t even walk BY the store. It was dissolute, a completely different world. When we opened this store obviously we knew a lot more people in Los Angeles and a lot more people in Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley (it is my goal to meet every single person in the San Gabriel Valley!) and that knew of us. It’s definitely been busier from day one here than it was in Silverlake. But the great thing about it is that I’ll be standing in here and people walk in and are like: “do you work here?” I’ll say “absolutely!” That’s what it’s all about, right? Helping the people, meeting the people, getting to know the people and getting to know what they are all about so you can truly help them better. So it’s been great. It’s a geographically different area and just far enough away where there is cross over to both stores. It’s exciting because you get to meet new people constantly. It’s fun to know tons of people in L.A. but it’s great to have this entire population where you can just introduce yourself and ask what someone may be up to tonight.

What are some of your favorite spots in Pasadena?

I love Little Flower Candy Company, get on board; I’m a huge fan. You walk in there and it has energy, it feels like something. That’s what it’s all about, building places that feel like something when you walk in.

Love the Armory Center for the Arts, there is no better neighbor to have… they do tons of stuff with kids, and adult classes, it’s a great space and the people that work there are super nice. We have spirit tastings there every forth Thursday. We’ve also hooked up with a great mixologist, Talmadge Lowe from Pharmacie LA, who does all the drinks at those events, which is cool.

I’m a huge fan of John Muir High School which has the Muir Ranch — the largest schoolyard garden in LA and we’re gonna start to work with them and do a lot of CSA stuff. There aren’t a lot of feel good stories about public schools in this country so I’m huge fan of that.

Some other favorite spots include Intelligentsia Coffee on Colorado.

They are going to be having a Farmers Market in Pasadena and be closing College Street on Sundays for the first Farmers Market in Old Town.

I’m also a big fan of the train stop literally right across the street because I’ve taken the Metro to places I never used to.

I love Tender Greens and the restaurant Racion on Green Street.

Juggling their time between 2 stores seems to be running smoother now after 8 solid months of working out the kinks…and to them it’s certainly worth it. Neither store is suffering at the expense of the other. You can tell Randy and his partners have a firm grasp on things and a loyal following is steadily growing in Pasadena, not to mention Silverlake. My guess is that it won’t be long before he DOES know every single person in the San Gabriel Valley! If you haven’t been to Everson Royce, what are you waiting for??

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Photos & Video by: Devin Sarno