What’s Next for Laurel Canyon’s Canyon Country Store?
"Today is a very sad day for me and for our canyon." Tommy Bina posted those words to Facebook on the morning of April 22, saying that after 44 years running the Canyon Country Store at 2108 Laurel Canyon Blvd, he'd just been told he was no longer welcome inside it.
The post traveled fast, the way anything involving that store does in Laurel Canyon. Bina had spent decades as the face behind the counter, the man who stocked British candy after a regular customer turned out to be David Bowie, who kept a bundle of firewood by the register with a sign reading "Come On Baby Light My Fire," who by most accounts treated the shop less like a business and more like a clubhouse for a neighborhood that has never quite let go of its 1960s self. The state's liquor-license records also provide details about the store's ownership. The filings provide a record of the business alongside its place in neighborhood life.
Every business that sells alcohol in California files with the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, and those filings create a paper trail that outlasts any Facebook post. According to the San Fernando Valley News Portal, the Canyon Country Store's license trail starts on April 8, 1982, when license number 120773 was issued to Houshang Maghen as primary owner, alongside Manoutcher Shamsa and Kamran Nejatbina as fellow licensees.
That original license sat mostly untouched for over four decades. Then, on September 5, 2025, it was transferred to a new entity called Canyon Country Corporation. The people on it were mostly the same, with two additions: Eli Bina and Shirley Bina joined as stockholders, and David Manoutcher Shamsa became the corporation's president. That transferred license is still active, and it's set to expire on August 31, 2026.
That's next week.
Tommy Bina, the man whose name is synonymous with this store, whose own website calls him its owner, does not appear on the 1982 license, the 2025 transfer, or any version of the paperwork in between. The records list no role for him as a licensee or stockholder.
The Hollywood Reporter's Rambling Reporter column offered a partial explanation in March, when co-owner David Shamsa, 82, told the outlet that he and three other investors purchased the store in 1982, and that one of those original investors was Bina's brother, who has since died and left his ten percent stake to Tommy. If that's accurate, Bina held an inherited financial interest in the business itself. The license records alone do not establish what rights came with that interest. When Bina wrote in April that new owners had "come in and told me I am no longer welcome at the store," he was describing a dispute the license records alone do not resolve.
Shamsa, for his part, pushed back hard on one piece of the story making the rounds. Rumors had spread that the new owners planned to convert the shop into a straight liquor mart. Asked about it by the Hollywood Reporter, Shamsa dismissed the idea as "bullshit," though he offered no specifics about what the space would actually become.
If the ownership picture stopped there, it would already be complicated. It doesn't stop there.
On January 21, 2026, a completely separate ABC license was issued for the same address, this one to an entity called Canyon Country Cousins Liquor Inc. The people behind it don't overlap at all with the Bina or Shamsa families. The filing lists Donald Hannoun as CEO, Brandon Hannoun as CFO, and Ryan Rommy Askar as secretary. As of the most recent public record check, that license is still listed as pending rather than active.
So as of this writing, there are two liquor licenses tied to one small store on one corner of Laurel Canyon Blvd. One is active, held by the corporation that includes Shamsa and the Bina family, and it expires August 31. The other is pending, held by an unrelated group with a different name entirely. The records cited here do not explain how or whether the two licenses connect, and neither corporate group has publicly clarified what happens when the first license expires. That deadline is just days away.
A liquor license expiring doesn't necessarily mean a store closes. Renewals happen, transfers complete late, paperwork catches up. The February and March stories about the sale were published months before this deadline became imminent.
For residents who've treated the store as a fixture, what happens after the August 31 expiration remains unclear from the public information described here.
None of this has closed the doors. As of the most recent listing update, the store's posted hours run 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekdays and slightly shorter on weekends, the same schedule regulars have relied on for years. The deli counter is reportedly still turning out sandwiches. The patio benches are still there. The murals are still on the walls. Whatever is happening in the ABC filing system hasn't yet reached the shelves.
That gap between the license records and the lived story is worth sitting with, because it's the same gap that shapes a lot of what makes Laurel Canyon feel the way it does. That lived story extends beyond what the filings can capture.
Places like the Canyon Country Store are part of what makes a hillside address here mean something beyond square footage. At Longfellow + Leach, we spend as much time tracking the texture of these neighborhoods as we do tracking comparable sales, because the two are rarely separate. If you're curious what a home near this stretch of Laurel Canyon is actually worth in today's market, or what a design-forward renovation could do for a property in the hills, we're glad to talk it through.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
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