Iconic, homegrown wine bar Postino celebrates 25 years

Lauren Bailey never stops. Standing inside the dining room of the historic brick post office that houses the original Postino, she adjusts the latest vintage install.

The geometric stained glass was found by the team from the retro showroom Modern Manor, one of her go-to pickers of unique, quirky finds that fill 34 locations of the wine bar and restaurant around the country. The glass slats, set in resin, create a light-catching screen between two sections of the Arcadia restaurant’s dining area.

Bailey co-founded Upward Projects, the restaurant group behind Postino and a slew of popular Valley eateries. She makes her way across the room, hugging servers and bar staff and quickly catching up before walking over to a curved yellow velvet couch in the mid-mod lounge at the edge of the restaurant. Bailey straightens a few of the framed prints that hang over the couch before taking a seat.

“This has just been a special place that we’ve tried to replicate in all the cities that we’ve gone to,” she says, looking around the room that was the catalyst for one of the state’s most recognizable chains.

This month, Postino marks its silver anniversary with 25 years of serving wine and dressed-up bruschetta.

A serendipitous partnership

Before she got involved with Postino, Bailey studied fine arts and communications at Arizona State University. That included a year abroad in Italy, “where I fell in love with food and definitely Italian culture of just connecting and having time with friends and family in a casual setting,” she says.

To help pay her tuition, she got a job serving at P.F. Chang’s. She’d never worked in a restaurant, but embellished a resume to get a foot in the door. To keep the gig and prove herself, Bailey absorbed the restaurant’s entire handbook overnight. She soon rose through the ranks in the hospitality industry, working for some of the most lauded restaurants and owners in town, including the now-shuttered House of Tricks, as well as chef Mark Tarbell and prolific restaurateur Sam Fox.

With time in Europe and at Valley eateries under her belt, Bailey graduated in 2002 with a clear dream: to launch her own restaurant.

“It really was all the things I loved about life,” she says. “The people, the environment, the music, the food, the wine and bringing all that together to create these pretty awesome experiences.”

Bailey scraped together about $30,000, thinking that could get her toward two restaurants.

“It was 2002,” she says, commenting on her youthful naivete. “You couldn’t Google how hard it was to do stuff back then.”

A year prior, Craig DeMarco and his wife, Kris, succeeded in their own plan to build a restaurant from few resources. They opened Postino in the historic Arcadia post office after cobbling together funds and even using their own couch as furniture. A year later, they were upgrading some of the interiors. Bailey drove to the original Postino with plans to buy the wine cafe’s tables for one of her own would-be restaurants.

DeMarco, intrigued by her plans and their shared appreciation for Europe’s laid-back cafe culture, invited Bailey to take a seat and share some of the ideas she had in a binder she’d filled with images clipped from food and design magazines — her version of a low-tech Pinterest board. Bailey conceded that opening one restaurant, let alone two, with her budget would be challenging.

Before she’d have to face that reality, DeMarco suggested she come aboard at Postino.

No science, all art

Under this new partnership, Postino became a destination for first dates, happy hours, laid-back lunches and late dinners with girlfriends. With its unpretentious approach, global wine list curated by Brent Karlicek and the right balance of snacky bites, paninis and salads to pair with a drink or two, the wine bar grew a cult following. Wine flights were too stuffy, Bailey says, so instead they offered $5 happy hour pours to encourage people to try something new. 

“It’s not really a restaurant, it’s not really a bar, it’s a third-place for people,” Bailey says. “All we ever want to do is make people feel better than they did when they came in here.”

In just a few years, she and the DeMarcos were plotting more restaurants. They formalized their partnership as the restaurant group Upward Projects in 2009. That same year, they opened the second Postino on Central Avenue in the former Katz’s Deli.

“We had no science back then, it was all art,” Bailey says. “I wish I could sit here and tell you we had some big plan, but it wasn’t. It was very much just what was available. We love old buildings.”

Postino Central became the anchor to a cluster of eateries from Upward Projects that would open over the next five years, including Windsor, Churn, Federal Pizza and Joyride Taco House. This diversification in Phoenix didn’t slow down plans to put more customizable bruschettas, mini beer pitchers and glasses of rosé onto tables around the Valley.

“The minute we get open with one, (Craig)’s looking for the next one,” Bailey says. “Any money we were making in one restaurant, we were rolling right into the next one.”

The co-founder says she would sweat over each new outpost. When Upward Projects moved into the East Valley in Gilbert’s Heritage District in 2012, “everybody told us we were crazy,” she recalls.

The building had played host to a revolving door of failed restaurants on “a cursed corner,” as the East Valley Tribune put it. There were questions about whether the community would show up — concerns which later proved trivial.

“I remember getting that open and just being so busy,” she says. “Still to this day, it’s our busiest restaurant in the whole company.”

Bailey outfits every Postino with decor that honors the building’s history and the neighborhood. To make each space distinct, she scours auctions, scouts eclectic pieces online and sifts through vintage stores (though now, her favorite “pickers” will set aside entire pallets of stuff for her). 

Bailey points to the couch she’s sitting on in Arcadia. It is the only one of its kind at any of their restaurants, as is the dovetailed credenza that splits the lounge and dining room. (The carpenter branded “1” on the side denotes its singularity.)

“We want it to feel familiar to you,” Bailey says. “But we also are OK with having this sense of discovery.”

That curation runs counter to the streamlined process that defines most chains. But the details are worth it, she says. 

“In my mind, when we stop being a place that people take their friends from out of town, you got a problem,” she says, “because to me that means it’s not special, it’s not part of your community.”

Postino expands

Growing Postino wasn’t without its challenges. As the group expanded its restaurant count into the double digits, the owners were still using their credit cards to fund their projects. Bailey quipped that in such lean, fast-paced times, she ran on ramen and Red Bull. 

Upward Projects took on “significant investment” from the Los Angeles-based Brentwood Associates in 2017. The private equity group’s portfolio also includes the breakfast and brunch spot Snooze and fast-casual Blaze Pizza. The backing and capital meant “we weren’t riding the line so close,” Bailey says.

“We have a very rare experience with private equity. Brentwood has been phenomenal,” she adds, while acknowledging, “at some point they’ll have to realize their investment.” 

Outposts of Postino are now open in California, Colorado, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. The group has continued to grow amid a chaotic past six years for the restaurant industry, starting with the pandemic. During the shutdown, the group had to lay off 1,200 people.

“That was, hands down, the worst day of my life,” Bailey says.

To make it through, the team added online ordering and a wine club. In spite of the stress and so many unknowns, Bailey was reminded of the joy restaurants can create for people, and what created joy for her in Italy: slowing down with family and friends over a bottle of wine.

As they’ve grown and opened in other states, not every Postino has been a hit. Upward Projects opened an outpost in Deep Ellum, Dallas’ trendy arts and entertainment district, in 2021. The challenges of the pandemic and the area came to a head, and Bailey soon realized two things working against them: a lack of a lunchtime crowd and an audience that prefers spirits over wine and beer. The group quietly closed Deep Ellum in 2023 and transferred employees to other Dallas locations.

“That stung a lot,” Bailey says. “That was really tough.”

Lessons like that encouraged more evolution at Postino, which added a taut cocktail menu and spirits selection in 2024.

Currently, new locations in Charlotte, Chicago and Salt Lake City are in the works, with more to come, Bailey says. Before the doors swing open at those spots, Postino hit a milestone in Phoenix. On April 4, the wine bar officially hit 25 years in business.

To mark this silver anniversary throughout the rest of the year, the team will uncork limited-edition bottles of two of Postino’s signature pours: Holly’s Way Chardonnay and Stagedive Pinot Noir. Upward Projects will also roll out a digital wallet perks program for customers called Postino Pass. 

Sitting in the Arcadia lounge, Bailey notes she and the DeMarcos aren’t the types to celebrate themselves. Instead, Bailey seems intent on continuing to work with the same intensity that’s made Postino what it is today. She muses about Upward Project’s direct partnerships with wine makers, a recent vintage find (a massive concrete fish statue still in need of a home) and dressing in costume as bruschetta, Postino’s most recognizable menu item that now gets an annual showdown to pick new toast toppings.

Reflecting on these last 25 years, Bailey says neither she nor DeMarco anticipated Postino would grow to this level. She credits the nearly 3,600 people who work for the restaurant group and the people who have continued to visit Postino in Arizona and beyond for decades. As we head out of the chain’s very first location, Bailey lingers, chatting with other members of the Arcadia crew.

“It’s really neat to see the neighborhood and just continue to be a spot for people to meet,” Bailey says while looking around the dining room. “After all these years, it’s a pretty huge honor.”