North Park is densely populated with breweries and brewery tasting rooms. There are currently a dozen such spots, including four non-brewing satellite sampling spaces (with at least three more en route), but the first to bring the tasting-room-only model to North Park was Belching Beaver Brewery back in 2012. Located on 30th Street near El Cajon Boulevard, it was the company’s first expansion project (Belching Beaver now operates four spots with a fifth on the way in Murrieta). It has served the company well over the years, but ownership has watched incoming breweries raise the bar where amenities, creativity and interior design are concerned. Rather than stick with its existing game plan, Belching Beaver has a two-phase renovation and expansion project in the works to update metro-area offshoot. The future benefits will be significant, but in the here and now, it will require a temporary closure starting Tuesday, September 7.
“North Park is the most competitive area of all our locations,” says Belching Beaver owner Tom Vogel. “We have been there almost nine years and watched as more and more breweries have come in. We need to step up our game to meet new challenges as they arrive. Everyone loves a shiny new penny. We can be a shiny new penny, too.”
As reported in April, Belching Beaver’s copper-clad vehicle for rejuvenation will be a speakeasy installed in a space abutting the North Park tasting room, which the company took over earlier this year. The new 1,500-square-foot venue-within-a-venue will be outfitted with a 10-tap raw-edge Torrey pine bar, neon beer signs, a fire pit and a rotating-bookcase entrance leading in from the main tasting room. Speakeasies are nothing unique in a city enamored with the trend, but this one will be in that it will exclusively serve a variety of Belching Beaver’s hard seltzers. The add-on space will also house a pizza oven-equipped kitchen to provide food service to patrons of the speakeasy as well as the tasting room.
“After taking over that back space, we had ongoing discussions on the best practical use for it. Basically asking ourselves what would be best for North Park, and what could we provide that is unique without pigeonholing ourselves into something that’s been done before,” says Vogel. “When the idea of a speakeasy rose to the forefront, we asked ourselves, ‘What is a speakeasy that fits with who we are?’ We think we have it, but it will take some adaptation.”
Rather than open a new, modern concept while leaving their tasting room as-is, Vogel and company have decided to give the original space a facelift. That will include resurfacing and repairing of floors, installing new bar tops, changing out the point-of-sale systems, refreshing the restrooms, adding a food prep area and fabricating the speakeasy entrance. Once phase one is complete, Vogel plans to reopen the North Park location to the public while construction of the speakeasy and kitchen are completed.
Obviously, the project will take some time, but Vogel says it’s impossible to know how much time at this point. Due to the pandemic, permitting has been slow-going, and this project, like each of Belching Beaver’s expansions over the years, has already experienced substantial delays. Given the length of the closure and uncertainty of the reopening time frame, the difficult decision was made to layoff the majority of the North Park tasting room’s staff.
“We didn’t want to set a date with our employees in the event this project continues to get delayed. There are so many amazing places opening in North Park right now, and we didn’t want to hold them back from taking advantage of those opportunities,” says Vogel. “Having said that, there are a couple that will stay on and help with the construction process, and a few others that expressed interest in other locations. A majority, however, already have other full-time jobs and only worked with us a day or so during the week.”
Vogel expects phase one to take six-to-twelve weeks to complete and is hopeful to debut the speakeasy in quarter one of next year. That said, he’s a realist and prefers to simply say the projects will be completed as soon as possible.
Belching Beaver’s tasting room is located at 4223 30th Street in North Park