Vista-based Booze Brothers Brewing opened in 2013 as the shared passion project of siblings Donny and Dave Firth. As the beermaking duo behind a business named for them, they have been spotlighted from the get-go, but they received a great deal of assistance along the way from their sister, Tiffany Garcia, and former employee, Chelsea Bradford. Both were heavily involved in the interior design the brewery’s tasting room is often lauded for and have gone on to head a business called Witty Rentals, which provides furniture rentals for events as well as professional staging services. They are also in the process of renovating a barn in Fallbrook, which they will use to store their rental furniture, but there’s more. That space will have a public component dubbed The Mill which will include a retail shop with food, coffee and a 4,000 square-foot Booze Brothers beer garden.
The Fallbrook location will be Booze Brothers’ fourth, joining the company’s extensive Vista brewery campus, nearby private-event space The Vistonian, and its satellite tasting room in Oceanside. Though the former features a stage-equipped outdoor space, the new venue will be unique for the company in that, with the exception of a small indoor ordering area, it is mostly outdoors. Fortunately, putting together an aesthetically appealing, functional space is right in Garcia’s and Bradford’s wheelhouse. They’ve already updated the previously dilapidated barn with new bathrooms, decks, lighting and more.
“Having the help from Witty Rentals is a huge advantage,” says Booze Brothers Partner Kris Anacleto. “Overall, this location is a way for us to provide craft beer to a relatively lacking market. We know there have been two brewery ventures out there over the past eight years that didn’t work out, but we think we’re in a bit more of a unique position. Also, we’ll be offering packaged beer to-go, which we think will be huge for that area and is something that hasn’t been available there in the past.”
The previous operations Anacleto refers to are Fallbrook Brewing, which opened on the community’s Main Street in 2013 and shuttered in 2018. The facility was taken over by Vista-based Prohibition Brewing in 2019 and transformed from a production site to a kitchen-equipped tasting room before closing down during the pandemic. While the inland North County community has shown hometown affection for local brewing interests, garnering the regular patronage necessary to keep doors open has proven challenging for brewery owners.
The diverse draw of Witty Rentals’ store should help to draw more visitors, as should the phase-two addition of another Booze Brothers property, Pizza Bros. The Vista brewery debuted its flatbread side hustle late last year, partially to provide a solution to the State of California’s requirement that brewery tasting rooms sell food in tandem with beer, but it’s an extension of the business the Firths had wanted to move forward with for years. The pandemic merely moved Pizza Bros. to the front burner. Now that the concept has proven itself in Vista, it’s ready to expand along with its parent company. And there may be even more branching out for the brothers.
“We’re also heavily looking into running the coffee side of things at The Mill. We’ve always wanted to dive into coffee, but we kept kicking that can down the road,” says Anacleto. “The vibe of The Mill provides the perfect chance for us to get our feet wet with this, and we’re working closely with our friends at local company Iverson Coffee Roasters to make sure that, if and when we do launch that component, we do it right.”
Currently, The Mill and Booze Brothers’ beer garden are on track to open in late April. Anacleto predicts that Pizza Bros. will follow soon after.
The Mill will be located at 838 East Mission Road in Fallbrook