Today we’d like to introduce you to Mandi Nelson.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My story really starts with my great-grandfather. He owned a restaurant supply company in Dallas called WO Food Service, and back then it was a true one-stop shop — you could pick out your tables, your silverware, get a loan, and design your entire restaurant under one roof. When my father got out of college, he went to work there as a kitchen and bar designer. Years later, one of the restaurants he designed gave me my first job in the industry, and I never left. It really was in my blood from the start.
I graduated college and got my first “big girl” wine job as a buyer at Fleming’s in Austin — location number seven. From there, I moved to Four Seasons, where I started traveling through wine regions, and that’s the point where I knew there was no other path for me.
One of the highlights of my career was working with New Waterloo, where I got to design distinct beverage programs for each of their concepts — sake at Otoko, wine pairings built around sushi, an Italian-focused list for Il Brutto, and a French program for Le Politique. After that, I moved through distribution and supplier-side roles before finally starting my own company, Communal Wines & Spirits, a boutique wine consulting and brokerage firm here in Austin.
Alongside that, I founded the nonprofit ATX Somms in 2018, which has been one of my proudest accomplishments. It’s grown into something really special — our flagship fundraiser, Grapes for Good, brings the Austin community together each year for a good cause. Last year, we raised money for people affected by the devastating floods in Kerrville. This year, the funds are going toward supporting the hospitality community itself, through training programs and healthcare access via Good Work Austin.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Smooth? Not exactly. For most of my career, I had it good — I never had to chase a job; I was recruited into nearly every position I held. Then COVID showed up and rewrote the rules entirely.
I was at European Cellars at the time, my first supplier-side gig, and the timing was almost cruelly precise: the layoffs came right around my two-year anniversary, as the company scrambled to survive by cutting nearly half its staff. Suddenly I was unemployed, holding a mortgage with only my name on it, and the universe apparently decided that wasn’t dramatic enough — because that’s exactly when my sweet little old house staged its own rebellion. Sewage came bubbling back up through every bathroom in the place. Literally. Right after the world had ground to a halt.
And it wasn’t just me. Half my friends were furloughed or laid off too, so I wasn’t naive enough to think a new job was waiting around the corner. What I did know was that I couldn’t just sit in a house with plumbing problems and feel sorry for myself.
So I looked for something to build instead. A friend of mine in Houston, Cat Nguyen, had launched Houston Shift Meal — partnering with restaurants to get affordable to-go meals into the hands of service industry workers who’d suddenly lost their income. I thought, why not Austin? So Austin Shift Meal was born. Every single Tuesday, a crew of incredible volunteers would show up and lay out five different restaurant meals plus a drink, free for any service industry worker who needed it. We kept that going for about a year — until the industry started coming back to life, and we closed the chapter the way we opened it: with a job fair as our grand finale.
We’ve been impressed with Communal Wine & Spirits, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Communal Wine & Spirits is a boutique wine consulting and brokerage firm based here in Austin, and at its core, we’re matchmakers. We represent small, meticulously chosen wine producers who don’t yet have real distribution presence in Texas and other states, and we get them into the hands — and glasses — of the people who deserve them: restaurants, retailers, and the guests sitting across the table.
Beyond representation, I also work directly with local businesses to build out thoughtful, profitable beverage programs from the ground up — with a real emphasis on staff education. A wine list is only as good as the people pouring it, so I don’t just hand a business a program and walk away. I make sure the team behind the bar actually understands what they’re selling, why it’s on the list, and how to talk about it with confidence. That’s where the profitability really comes from — knowledgeable staff sell more, and they sell it better.
What sets us apart is that we’re not a giant distributor pushing volume through a warehouse. We’re deeply, almost obsessively relationship-driven. I know the three-tier distribution landscape inside and out across the markets we work in, and I use that knowledge to build the right path for each producer — whether that means pitching directly to a distributor, negotiating fair terms, or making the case for why a wine deserves a better price point than it’s been given. Every producer we bring on gets a strategy built specifically around their situation, not a one-size-fits-all playbook. Staying small and selective is on purpose — being boutique isn’t a limitation for us, it’s the whole point.
I think what I’m proudest of, brand-wise, is that Communal wasn’t built in a vacuum. It’s built on everything before it — buying wine, working supplier side, designing beverage programs for some of Austin’s most distinct restaurant concepts, understanding hospitality from every possible angle. That range is what lets me sit across from a producer or a restaurant owner and know exactly how their wine, or their program, needs to be positioned, priced, and told.
I want readers to know Communal isn’t just a brokerage — it’s a genuine advocate for the producers and businesses we work with, and the credentials I’ve built over 20-plus years (WSET Advanced, Certified Sommelier, CSW, Champagne Specialist) back that up. If we’re representing a wine or building a program, it’s because we believe in it enough to fight for it.
What’s next?
Looking ahead, I plan to keep bringing more boutique wineries into the Communal fold — finding the producers who deserve a real voice in these markets and giving them one. There’s no shortage of incredible small wineries out there that just need the right advocate, and I intend to keep being that for as many of them as I can.
I’m also deeply committed to continuing to grow ATX Somms, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit I founded in 2018. What started as an idea has turned into something the Austin hospitality community genuinely relies on, and I want to keep building on that — expanding what Grapes for Good can do each year and making sure the nonprofit keeps showing up for the people who need it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.communalwineandspirits.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bubblesinmylife/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mandi.nelson.33
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mandi-nelson-35b939437/
