When working to open North Park Beer Co. (NPBC) nearly a decade ago, Kelsey and Amanda McNair knew they wanted high-quality food to be prepared and available on-site, but as first-time business owners with zero experience in the hospitality industry, they were fearful of taking that on firsthand. Instead, they enlisted the Mastiff Sausage team to run the kitchen at their flagship location. It’s been a winning combination, but when constructing a kitchen-equipped taproom in Bankers Hill in 2022, the McNairs felt up to the challenge of heading that venue’s culinary program. For that, they enlisted the services of Chef and General Manager Sam Navarro, who has earned praise from NPBC fans for his everyday menu, as well as weekend brunches, Tuesday Night Supper Club and collaborative beer-pairing dinners with guest breweries. Navarro’s performance, along with that of Director of Operations Mac McAlister, has fueled the McNairs’ decision to once again take on both food and beverage as they work to open their second satellite location, North Park Beer Co. Pizza Shop.
Coming in at 2,300 square feet (with an additional 400 square feet of outdoor seating), it is located on the corner of Ingraham Street and La Playa Avenue in Pacific Beach’s Crown Point neighborhood, and is expected to open this June. As the name implies, its kitchen (which will also be under Navarro’s supervision) will serve pies of the savory Italian variety. Those pizzas will be crafted in the New York style with 18-inch, 12-inch and personal-sized varieties available along with salads, meatballs fashioned using Kelsey’s mom’s recipe, and the 24-hour-brined chicken wings and tenders that have proven such a hit at NPBC’s Bankers Hill location. Meanwhile, a tap system outfitted with two dozen Czech Lukr faucets will dispense the company’s popular IPAs, pale ales, lagers, stouts and more. We were able to pull Kelsey away from this highly anticipated project long enough to ask him for some details and, like any good pizza purveyor, he delivered.
What inspired you to go with a pizza concept?
Crown Point is a captive-audience sort of neighborhood where there’s not a lot of food-and-beverage options. Rocky’s Crown Pub is an institution, then you’ve got Bayside Landing and Tajima is going in, but there’s no pizza. I’ve been a pizza nerd as long as I’ve been a beer nerd. When I saw no pizza places in the immediate area, save for a few places in PB, I decided to take two passions and put them into one opportunity.
What sort of interior-design concept do you have in mind for the new location?
Crown Point will be a bit of a departure. The building has some corrugated metal, wood-clad elements and some large painted surfaces. It doesn’t feel like it was grounded in a particular architectural era, which created a “what do we do with this space” situation. Thinking about this location as a pizza shop first, we decided to lean into the TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) sort of thing we’ve done with our Hop-Fu! mascot and the use of characters from our Disciples of Fu! beer series. For the first time, you’ll see some of our can-art inspiration as part of the design. It’s light-hearted, but will still have some maturity to it with the finishes.
What sort of seating options and amenities will the new spot offer?
We’ll have a mix of high, communal tables and banquettes inside, then outside there’ll be a mix of four- and six-tops. There will be an ordering counter and a bar where guests will order food, grab a buzzer and retrieve their food. Back in North Park, we’ve slowly been turning our mezzanine into an arcade. It’s been fun to see people enjoying that at the brewery, so we’ve carved out a nook in Crown Point to put in some pinball machines, as well.
How does it feel to be growing, particularly when it’s harder to do so than in years past?
We’ve been paying close attention to the recent volatility within the brewing industry, especially locally. So many breweries had to change operations, their business models, or even close for good. Even with that volatility, a new location feels like the right thing for us to do and is exciting. We will be much closer to the business model in our original business plan, which is hospitality-focused with limited distribution. There’s the thrill of the challenge that any new location brings, but it’s more exciting than scary, and I’m feeling good. Without the truly amazing humans who make up our team, it would not be that way.
How does that focus on quality apply to your new culinary concept?
We put immense care and thought into the ingredients we source for our beer, and we’re equally focused on sourcing the best ingredients for our culinary program. We would rather spend more on things like Ezzo pepperoni, Grande mozzarella and Bianco di Napoli tomatoes because they are awesome and produce delicious results when compared to cheaper alternatives. Having the right equipment to prep our food is also massively important. I recently attended the International Pizza Expo in Las Vegas to make a critical decision on a dough mixer. The head baker of Central Milling, a great company from whom we plan to source our flour, recommended an Empire Iris mixer, which was reassuring since we were already looking at that model. For our oven, we went with a Pizzagroup Dragon stone deck conveyor oven, a new innovation in pizza-cooking technology and uncommon in San Diego. The oven features stone plates that rotate around a conveyor belt to create a flat baking surface, allowing you to bake styles of pizza that require a stone deck with the convenience of a conveyor. Ubiquitous chain conveyor ovens found in most American-style pizzerias can only heat to 550 degrees Fahrenheit and can’t give you the crispy texture of a pie baked directly on a deck, but this oven can do that and can get as hot as 840 degrees! We don’t plan to go quite that hot for our style of pizza, which will be inspired by New York-style pizza and likely be baked closer to 600 degrees. Recent visits to New York City by myself and our team helped inform our direction. We tried many notable pizzas, including Scarr’s, both of L’industrie’s locations, Mama’s Too!, Paulie Gee’s Slice Shop, Mike’s Underground, John’s of Bleeker Street and Wylie Dufresne’s Stretch Pizza, to name a few. All amazing places, all a bit different, with quality being the common thread.
Would you consider opening additional locations beyond Crown Point?
Nothing is off the table, but we will be brewing at capacity this year with just over 3,000 barrels and no additional real estate to expand our brewing operations. If we were to open additional locations we would need to consider another brewing space to ensure the same variety in selection we currently offer. That said, opening a big production facility is not the next step in my vision for NPBC, and any plans to expand our brewing operations would purely be to facilitate additional restaurant and taproom locations. Doing this would allow us to tell our own story and ensure we’re serving the freshest beer possible, as we want every West Coast IPA to be less than three weeks old. Ultimately, my vision for the future is rooted in maintaining our quality standards across the board.
North Park Beer Co. Pizza Shop will be located at 3805 Ingraham Street in Pacific Beach’s Crown Point neighborhood