By FAY SIMMONS

Tribune Business Reporter

jsimmons@tribunemedia.net

Graycliff yesterday unveiled ambitions to triple its daily cruise ship visitors to 5,000 through expansion that involves “taking over” the nearby Mountbatten House and adding up to 42 new jobs.

Paolo Garzaroli, president of Graycliff Cigar Company, speaking at the opening of its new Moonshine store said the company’s latest amenity will offer blending classes and lead to the opening of more classrooms, a full distillery and bootlegging museum via its plans for Mountbatten House which is also located on West Hill Street across from the resort’s existing property.

“The very next step is we’re going to be doing blending classes, so you’ll be able to come in and blend your own moonshine with your own different flavours,” said Mr Garzaroli said of Graycliff’s new offering. 

“Then we’re taking over the old Mountbatten House, and we’re going to create a full distillery there, and also a bigger classroom, a couple of different classrooms, and incorporate the museum. We’re going to turn it into sort of like a bootlegging type of museum, so that’s all part of the experience.” Mountbatten House, built in the 1950s, houses the Heritage Museum of The Bahamas.

Mr Garzaroli, meanwhile, said Graycliff has spent $400,000 to $500,000 on its moonshine expansion and will further invest a “couple million bucks” on the Mountbatten House venture. Some 12 staff have been hired to work in the moonshine shop and a further 30 will be needed for the new facility.

“Right now, we’re probably at about $400,000 to $500,000, and when we go into that other facility we’ll probably go into a couple million bucks. Basically, we’re kind of doing it as we move along,” said Mr Garzaroli. “We’ve added about 12 [employees], and then when everything is fully staffed out in the new facility, probably another 30.”

Mr Garzaroli said Graycliff’s next venture will most likely involve producing cheese, which will be used to create pizzas and served in platters at the winery. He added that the resort’s plans may have to be expanded as the volume of guests per day has increased significantly since the addition of the chocolate factory and winery.

“Once we opened our new facility for the chocolate factory last year in November, our volume of traffic went from about 400 or 500 people a day to today, on a four-ship day, we’ll probably do about 1,200 people,” said Mr Garzaroli.

“Tomorrow, on a six-ship day, we’ll probably end up doing between 1,500 and 1,600. When we planned the expansion at the winery, we had no idea that was going to happen. What’s happened was we had to not just do an expansion but sort of blow that up by ten-fold.

“And if this is as successful as it looks like, the plan that I have to do that is probably going to have to get changed and expanded even more, just simply to handle the volume of traffic.” Mr Garzaroli said the majority of Graycliff’s visitors are cruise ship passengers, and he credited the resort’s recent success to the taxi drivers and tour operators that transport guests to the property from Nassau Cruise Port.

“Our number one client at all the factories are the cruise ship clients,” said Mr Garzaroli. “We depend on our taxi drivers, our tour operators. I can tell you they are stars, and spectacular guys and ladies. They are the heartbeat of our operation, and without them we couldn’t exist.

“A real huge thank you to them, because we owe our success 100 percent to them. Our team does a great job, but if it wasn’t for them bringing people here. It’s bus loads of people, and it’s just a whole machine.” Mr Garzaroli said it is humbling to see so many guests traverse his property daily and, with current expansion plans, he aims to facilitate up to 5,000 visitors daily.

“To sit here on a six-ship day, and you just look at and reflect back to when we first started. We’d have 10 or 15 people on property. On a busy day, you’d have like 20 or 25,” said Mr Garzaroli.

“We’ve had to expand. We have a parking facility at the end of the street, and it’s a matter of just the sheer volume. Some days it’s so many people that are here and my lofty goal is to have 5,000 people a day here. With all the stuff that we have planned here, and all the future projects that we’re looking at doing here, I’m just so proud, because it is an authentic Bahamian experience, and that’s what we’re going for.”

Mr Garzaroli added that Bahamians have been a major source of support by participating in classes and recommending Graycliff to visiting friends. “The local population has really embraced us, and it is unbelievable the amount of locals that are doing all of our classes and come to do blending,” he added.

“Any time they have people in town, they bring them here. As a Bahamian, if I wasn’t the owner, I’d be proud to bring my friends here, because it is a world-class facility. It is accessible to everybody. We have everything from really the inexpensive things to super-expensive. There’s the whole gamut of everything.”