Several Arkansas communities appear poised to take advantage of a little-noticed act passed in the most recent legislative session, Act 681 of 2019, creating a private club permit for microbrewery-restaurants in dry counties.
The idea had been percolating for a while, said state Rep. Spencer Hawks, R-Conway, one of the measure’s sponsors. “The median age in Conway is somewhere around 30,” Hawks said. “And a lot of folks that I’ve talked to said, ‘Why don’t we have microbreweries in Conway?’”
Of course, one reason is that Conway is in Faulkner County, a “dry” county, and alcohol sales there were permitted only in private clubs — until Act 681.
The Conway Area Chamber of Commerce also was strongly behind the idea, Hawks said, working to help get the bill passed.
The measure is fairly narrow in scope. The microbrewery-restaurants can’t produce more than 45,000 barrels of beer per year, they have to be both a microbrewery and a restaurant serving complete meals, they have to meet the state’s definition of a private club, they must have a seating capacity of at least 50, and they can’t sell beer for off-premises consumption, like growlers.
“Because they’re a newer model of business in Arkansas, I think they were overlooked, and I think communities like Conway were missing some economic development opportunities,” Hawks said. “And that’s really the reason I wanted to do what I did is just to allow more entrepreneurs and communities to act like the entrepreneurs that they are.”
And now Rebel Kettle, which opened in east Little Rock in 2016, is planning to locate a brewpub in Conway, said co-owner Jason Polk. He was hoping to close on the building at 1090 Spencer St. in downtown Conway, part of the original Smith Ford building, by the end of this month.
Rebel Kettle also will be brewing beer at the Conway location. “At some point, we feel like that is going to become our primary brewing location,” Polk said.
Rebel Kettle is working with Dan Fowler of Cromwell Architects Engineers on the design for the 5,000-SF property. Polk said it will have an outdoor space and will have some “commonalities” with Rebel Kettle in Little Rock, like a similar menu, but will have its own vibe.
(As an aside, Polk said that Rebel Kettle, which produced about 1,000 barrels last year, has a goal of producing 3,000 this year.)
Meanwhile, in Fairfield Bay, which resides in both Van Buren and Cleburne counties, Mayor Paul Wellenberger sees a microbrewery-restaurant as having “great potential” in his city, a resort community on the north shore of Greers Ferry Lake.
“We are growing, bursting at the seams with conferences and tourism and we just opened up a brand new 63-room hotel,” he said, referring to Cobblestone Inn & Suites. “Because of the tourists, a microbrewery, I think, would be a great fit for Fairfield Bay. It would help us continue on our revitalization of our city.”
No potential brewpub has contacted the community, but city officials have reached out to the Arkansas Brewers Guild, notifying it of Fairfield Bay’s interest in being home to a microbrewery-restaurant.
“We had 30,000 visitors last year, 10 major events, 15,000 attending events and conferences at our conference center,” the mayor said, referring to the Fairfield Bay Conference & Vistor Center. “This year we opened up a new hotel. … We have great tourism trade. We are a great location for someone to put in a microbrewery. We would love to have one. We would be very welcoming.”
Fairfield Bay hosted three conferences in June. “All three of those rebooked,” Wellenberger said. “Two of those rebooked for the next three years. We’ve already got 22 conferences booked out in 2021.”
Hawks, the state legislator, said that microbreweries allow “a person, not just to create that restaurant scene, but to create a product that could be brought to a greater market. You talk about Fairfield Bay or Conway, what it’s like to have a community create something and then be able to find it on a shelf somewhere in another part of Arkansas or even another part of the country — I look forward to having at some point a ‘Toadsuck Brew’ or a ‘Pickles Gap Brew,’ just because it’s Conway.”