Holy Whale’s Riverview Beer Garden Will Open Friday
RIVERVIEW – Those walking along the riverfront trail in Riverview will be met with a Holy Whale Brewing Co. beer garden on the deck of the Chocolate River Station this summer.
It will be open to the public starting at 3 p.m. on Friday, June 26.
“We’ll be open seven days a week, we’ll be going at different hours, but usually mid-to-late afternoon until 9 p.m., so it’s not going to be a ruckus late-night crowd. It’s just kind of enjoy outside until the bugs kick us out,” said Jeff Grandy, who co-owns the company with brother Peter.
The Alma-based brewery, which is affiliated with Buddha Bear Coffee Roaster, had opened a shipping container cafe that also served beer and snacks in 2017 on the Chocolate River Station’s parking lot. That cafe was facing the trail, which during a pandemic, could be “somewhat of a bottleneck there for people kind of traversing through,” says Jeff.
“It would have just been more headaches than not, and taking away half the seats,” he said. “It’s essentially just a cumbersome area to consume alcohol and no way to enforce anything.”
So they approached the Town of Riverview for alternatives, including moving that container deck-side to open a beer garden. The town was receptive, Jeff said, like many other municipalities, they were also looking for ways to allow people to enjoy the outdoors.
Not only is the deck back-dropped by a large mural commissioned by Festival Inspire on one side and the river on the other, but it’s also much larger. It’s allowed to hold up to 150 people per the fire regulations, but the Grandys plans to accommodate fewer than that.
To maintain physical distancing, all patrons will be directed to sit down, as standing around to mingle is not allowed. They can then text their orders from their seats, and once the orders are ready, they’ll get a text back from the container staff. Whoever needs to pay can then come to the counter.
“It’s essentially crowd control to keep people seated when they need to be seated,” Jeff said.
The container cafe used to serve coffee drinks. But Jeff says the length of time it takes to make lattes and others, and the time of day that the beer garden is open made them decide to take them out of the menu.
Instead, there will just be beer and non-alcoholic options like soft drinks, as well as light snacks like chips. The beer offerings will mostly be Holy Whale brands to start with.
“But typically as the summer progresses at our main business in Alma we run out of our own supply. So, once that happens, we’ll be reaching out to other local breweries to fill the gaps that we can’t do in certain styles of beers,” Jeff said. “That’s what we’ve done in the past and we plan on doing that again.”