Starting a tiny Brewpub/Craft Beer Bar

This is a great thread and I have enjoyed the regular updates. I'm not in the place in my life to do something like this, but could definitely see tackling a project like this many years down the road.

If I am ever in Louisville, I will look up your place and buy a beer from you!

 

I'll have to stop through on the way to MI when you get everything open. your place seems to be the type of bar I'd want to go to small, intimate and with a great selection. I think that while you are choosing what you will serve you should definitely look at quality not quantity. That's what I look for.

 

You mentioned that you will have 6 taps but cooler space for 12, but I did not notice that you mentioned cooler space for storage of kegs? (though it might have been somewhere in this long thread) If you are going to keep kegs after you get them for a later tapping or for a vertical with the next year's version, how many can you store and keep on hand for future use?

 

Quick thought: Try to make sure you always have a good range of beers, particularly on the hoppy/malty spectrum, with light/dark a secondary consideration. This may seem obvious, but I'm continually surprised by how many otherwise very good craft beer bars fall down on this, offering (for example) wall-to-wall imperial and double IPAs and nothing else. As my wife and I are both definitely not hop heads, if we run into that more than once at a bar, we usually don't go back.

 

That sucks, sorry to hear that.

 

I don't know if anything like this would be possible - I have no knowledge at all of the zoning/licensing regulations in your area, but would it be worth considering opening up as a kind of rudimentary food service place with a BYOB policy where you could charge corkage fees and facilitate beer trades among like-minded craft beer drinkers?

 

Damnit! I've been reading this thread damn near every day and I was rooting for you Wade! Sucks you couldn't pull it off this time but keep trying, maybe at a different location. It's a small dream of mine to open up a little craft beer bar and I was learning a lot from your experiences. Please keep us informed if you happen to get back on track.

 

Sorry to hear this Wade. I hope this only postpones your idea and doesn't kill it. I get the feeling you would have run a friendly pub.

 

Restaurant? Wow, cooks, chefs, servers, do you have any experience in restaurant management? Incredible difference between running and owning a beer bar, and engaging in food services. I'd bail and be done with it.

 

Would you consider operating solely as a brewery/taproom? Last year I contacted the Kentucky ABC and it sounds like in your space the best you can do is sell beer you make on the premises. Here's what they told me (I was asking about wine & liquor but it's still applicable here. You may already know this.):

The schedule M is the application packet paperwork you would need to apply for the producers license called a microbrewery, that would give you the right to produce up to 25,000 barrels of your own beer at that location. If you have a restaurant/bar in the same building at the same address a microbrewer can also hold a retail beer license, that would give you the right to sell your beer by the drink, or purchase other brands of beer from a beer distributor to sell to your consumer if you wanted other on top. If you wanted to also sell wine by the glass, you would have to have a restaurant that seats 50 people and has 50 % of the gross sales come from food. Then you could qualify for a restaurant wine license to go with your retail beer and microbrewery license. A schedule F packet, would give you the paperwork to apply for the restaurant wine and retail beer together.

 

Enter food and lose your shirt. Without food experience, and added to running a beer bar the danger factor multiplied quite a bit. You have no losses to cut other than time and a dream, the field is littered with guys in financial distress with broken dreams, debt out the ass, and a failing business they were not prepared to take on. Bar Rescue is a prime example of guys losing funds, homes, retirement, and leveraged to the hilt, and over their head. Quit while your even.

 

You can always "buy" employees, friends, food to move food sales into an acceptable percentage. Cash sales and creative counting also help... That being said, the zoning mishap is really unfortunate.

 

Bummer, sorry to hear that things might not work out. I've also enjoyed reading this thread. Good luck with the variance.