by TM Petaccia

If there’s a soundtrack to the Conrad Hunter’s career path, it could very well be The Beatles’ “The Long and Winding Road.” The founder and owner of Foxcroft Food & Wine never imagined he would become a wine connoisseur and restaurateur.

“From the time I was about eight years old, I wanted to be a musician,” Hunter says. “I never planned on getting into retail.” He studied music at East Carolina before transferring to Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he focused on keyboards, but also honed his skill on string instruments. After graduation, he hit the road with touring bands, later shifting into mixing and front-of-house work for Capitol, RCA, and A&M recording artists. “Eventually, I got tired of traveling and being in bands. I did everything in the business but make money.”

What lead to his eventual departure from music was a mid-1980s detour to help a friend open Artist Café in Uptown Charlotte on Trade Street in the mid-1980s (where the Johnson & Wales campus now stands). “That’s where the wine bug bit me,” he says. “We were always opening bottles, always talking about wine. It just grew on me.” However, he was still going road trips for gigs until one late-night phone call from his wife, Mina. “When are you coming home?” she asked him.

“That’s when I started seriously weighing getting out of the music business,” Hunter says. “It was getting hard to make a living, so I transitioned into being a wine distributor.”

Hunter’s first real foray into the wine business was working for boutique wine distributor Sante out of Research Triangle. When Sante was acquired by a larger company, Hunter resisted joining a larger corporate structure. Instead, he entered into a partnership with Frank Redd, owner The Wine Shop in Dilworth, as Redd looked to open a location in SouthPark’s Foxcroft development in 2004. When Redd declined to add food or stay open past 7 p.m., Hunter saw an opportunity.

“That shopping center didn’t even come alive until seven o’clock,” he says. “I said, ‘let’s put in a wine bar’. He didn’t want to. So I bought him out and added food to our service.”

Those early years weren’t glamorous. “We were like the Rodney Dangerfield of restaurants,” he says. “We couldn’t attract good talent.” For a while, Jim Noble of Noble Food & Pursuits would provide culinary support by sending budding chefs to do stages at the restaurant. Eventually, he hired chef Justin Solomon and that’s when things really began to change. “People started coming to us just for the food,” Hunter says.

From there, the brand expanded to multiple Charlotte neighborhoods and eventually into Greenville and Raleigh. Each location embraced Foxcroft’s DNA: a deep, accessible wine program paired with a menu of shareable, wine-friendly plates.

But as the company grew, its name created confusion. “We’d still have people walk in and say, ‘I didn’t know you had food,’” Hunter says. This year, the rebrand became official. Foxcroft Wine Company is now Foxcroft Food & Wine. “We just tweaked it slightly, but it reflects who we are,” Hunter says. “We’re not just a wine shop. We’re a restaurant, a wine bar, and retail. All of it.”

Today, Foxcroft Food & Wine has four Charlotte-area restaurants: SouthPark, Dilworth, Waverly, and Birkdale — plus locations in Raleigh and Greenville, S.C. Recently, Stephanie Klos, executive chef at the Raleigh location, was named culinary director and will oversee menu development across the brand. “She’s a big seafood person; oysters are one of her things,” Hunter says. “She’s already making great headway.”

In addition to Foxcroft Food & Wine, Hunter co-owns Park Road speakeasy Dot Dot Dot with Stefan Huebner. In a new collaboration, Dot Dot Dot will be creating a number of barrel-aged and batch cocktails to be served at the restaurants. “We’re not reinventing the wheel here,” he says. “I don’t want a full bar like Dot Dot Dot, but we’ll have good, classic cocktails which will be changed seasonally.”

With all the changes, Hunter remains a wine guy at heart, although today, most of the wine duties fall to wine operations director Shawn Paul. Locations typically have a cellar of around 3500 bottles, offering around 40 wines by the glass. “We try to support smaller, family-owned wineries,” he says. “A lot of these people I’ve known for years. We’ve had dinner in their homes. They’ve stayed with us. That’s the difference. It’s not just a product, it’s a relationship.”

Over years, Hunter has seen some changes in Charlotte wine drinkers’ palates. “The biggest change is the drop of Australian wines,” he says. “It used to be huge. At one time, the SouthPark store carried two whole shelves. Today, we barely carry half a shelf. One the other hand, South African wines are coming up. That’s great because they’re delicious. Also Sicily and Croatia are coming up as well.”

As for his own wine tastes, “I’m leaning towards Italian these days, the B’s: Barolo, Barbaresco, and Brunello,” he says. “I also love Sangiovese. I’m also coming back to Bordeaux again. I’d probably be drinking more fine Burgundy if I could afford it. I can’t enjoy a $400 bottle of wine just on a Tuesday. It’s better in the bank.”

Down the road, Hunter looks for further expansion; in particular, Wilmington and Mount Pleasant are catching his eye, but he’s not quite ready to do it alone. “It’s been a bootstrap operation, me and my wife, all these years,” he says. “At some point, I’d like to bring in a financial partner, but there’s no rush. It’s about finding neighborhoods where we can be part of the community. Tourists are tough. You get more loyalty in a place like Mount Pleasant than downtown Charleston. I’m more interested in building regulars than chasing fads.”

Despite the current shifting beverage trends, such asc raft cocktails, THC-infused drinks, and zero-proof alternatives, Hunter isn’t worried about wine’s place in culture. “Wine’s been here for 10,000 years,” he says. “It’s not going anywhere. It’s part of our culture. Wine is about enjoying the moment. It’s about food, family, and conversation.”