One of the Triangle’s most influential and popular bottle shop brands will close next month.

The owner of Sam’s Bottle Shop announced that its South Durham beer emporium will close Feb. 11 after a decade in business.

The closing ends a much longer chapter for the Sam’s name, which helped lead the Triangle’s embrace of craft beer through Sam’s Quik Shop and Bottle Shop.

“I’ve been more than blessed to have the opportunity to work 40 of the more than 80 years of this family business,” owner John Boy said in a video on the Sam’s Bottle Shop Facebook page. “I’ve met more customers, industry professionals and made many friends over these years. I can’t say how much i appreciate all the love you’ve showed to us over the years. Saying goodbye is very very difficult.”

Sam’s Bottle Shop opened in 2014 and while it closes after a decade, the brand’s legacy in championing craft beer in the Triangle goes back further.

The history of Sam’s Quik Shop / Bottle Shop

Carl Boy and his family opened a gas station on Erwin Road in Durham in 1947 and later the Blue Light Restaurant.

When the restaurant closed in 1974, it was changed to Sam’s Quik Shop, a convenience store.

In the 1970s and ‘80s, John Boy said his mother Gerry made a point to stock beer beyond the standard American labels. The Quik Shop emphasized imported beer, Boy said, and what craft beer existed at the time.

As the market for craft beer continued to grow, John Boy said the shelves of the Quik Stop started to shift away from a traditional convenience store to more of a bottle shop.

In more recent years, Carl’s grandson John Boy put the focus of Sam’s Quik Shop on craft beer, both American and International. Sam’s was one of the few spots in the Triangle where beer fans could reliably find the latest west coast IPA and rare Belgian lambics and everything in between.

“It just kept growing and growing,” Boy said in a phone interview. “As it grew another department of the store would go away and we’d convert it over to craft beer…..It wouldn’t have happened if my mother hadn’t started selling what what was available in those times. Nobody else was doing it.”

Sam’s Bottle Shop in recent years

In 2018, John Boy sold the Erwin Road property to real estate developer Wilmorite Construction for $5 million and Sam’s Quik shop closed at the end of that year. Today the site is seven-story student housing complex Blue Light Living, a nod to the former Blue Light Restaurant.

In closing Sam’s Quik Shop, Boy noted the property’s legacy and various forms in Durham.

“I would like to thank the generations of customers and employees that have walked through the doors of The Blue Light and Sam’s Quik Shop,” Boy said in the Facebook post on Dec. 31, 2018. “Thank you for your support, loyalty and your neighbor-like spirit. This is not an easy decision to come to and I thought about so many things, my parents, me growing up in this store, the changing times from when it was a diner & drive-in to a convenience store with movie rentals and a large beer selection to the premier beer store in North Carolina it has become today.”

Sam’s Bottle Shop continued on for the last five years, offering a larger retail and drinking space and a rooftop bar. Boy owns the Bottle Shop building and said there isn’t yet another business lined up to take it over.

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