Finding Front Street

We’ve been keeping our eyes peeled for various options of new retail and manufacturing spaces for the brewery to expand into. In the past month we were made aware of a spot on Front Street that would be likely available soon as a current tenant may be leaving. We inquired with the landlord whom seems interested in having us take it on as a taproom space (not a brewhouse, not enough room) and we are now in the process of waiting for the space to be officially available. While we haven’t signed any papers yet we are feeling good about the potential of securing a Front Street retail location; possibly even by the end of Summer. If we could get it up and running before Oktoberfest that would be fantastic, though we know the wheels of government can turn slowly when it comes to permitting.

So fingers crossed everyone! If all goes well we will have solved half of our “move-the-brewery” issue. This space we are looking at will be bigger than the current taproom, but still small enough we feel we can figure out a way to keep the atmosphere of cozy community alive. We hope you’ll help us with it! It doesn’t have it’s own outside space, but there might be a possibility of sharing outside space with a winery depending on legal logistics with LCB.

Also, we are trying to figure out the best way to get another taproom licensed that will allow dogs and kids like the current one. It looks like the primary option that would allow that would be to license the location as a full brewery and then not actually brew there, just transfer beer from the “real” brewery. (There are no minimum production requirements.) However, this method could take much longer for permitting and there’s a chance the City would require some expensive building upgrades even if we don’t actually need them due to not actually producing. (We don’t know this for sure. We are working to figure it out.)

The more expeditious licensing would be to make the new location a Tavern license which could attach to our existing brewery license. It would be much quicker to get set up, but the downside is that it’d make the space 21+. However, it could be useful to maintain that type of license in case we have trouble finding a brewhouse location before we lose the current one. The Tavern license wouldn’t require us to have a majority of our own beer on tap and so could for an interim period just act as a general taproom so we aren’t fully out of business before finding a new space for the brewhouse. We could always later relicense that space as a “Brewery” when it makes the most sense.

Lots to think about. Nothing definite yet, but there’s good potential. In the meantime, keep visiting us at our cozy basement location and bring your dogs with you!