With new opening, Craft & Draft continues crusade to boost Midlands’ craft beer scene
From the start, Columbia’s Craft and Draft was meant to be more than a bar or taproom. Now, with the opening of a second Craft and Draft location in Irmo, owners Andrew Johnson and Kellan Monroe have taken their business from more to much more.
The original Craft and Draft, opened in 2014 on Devine Street, easily cemented its multilayered role as a neighborhood watering hole, a bottle and can shop, a mobile bartending van, a regular food truck host, a fixture at local events and festivals and a major supporter of the local craft brew industry.
The business’s new Irmo location at 7583 St. Andrews Road, opened this week, is all that and more.
A grand opening, or “zero anniversary,” celebration this Saturday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. will include live music, City Limits Barbeque and, of course, plenty of beer from local breweries.
“When we started talking about Irmo, we were looking for somewhere in town that was starving for a craft beer bar,” Monroe said. “There were a couple spots out here that had some decent beers, but nobody focused on it solely like we do.”
Like its counterpart, the Irmo location features a dozen taps rotating craft beers from local brewers and beyond, plus a wide selection of bottled and canned beers and wines. New here, though, are additional taps dedicated to ciders, nitro beers and draft wines. There’s also an in-house kitchen serving up a small menu’s worth of sandwiches, pretzels and charcuterie — something Devine Street regulars have long called for, the owners said.
And there is much, much more space. Compared to Devine Street’s roughly 1,700 square feet, the Irmo shop covers some 6,500 square feet, including about 3,100 square feet of space that can be rented for special events, such as baby or wedding showers.
The new space allows Craft and Draft “to boost business and do things we can’t do downtown,” Monroe said.
The smaller, laid-back Devine Street shop remains bustling and poised for growth. Sitting smack in the middle of Shandon and Old Shandon, the original Craft and Draft has the feel of a true neighborhood hangout. And with hundreds of new residences opening just down the street, it is well positioned for increasingly more traffic.
“I laugh when people tell us we’re the Shandon ‘Cheers’ kind of place,” Monroe said. From when they first started the business, Monroe said he and Johnson could see that “what we were doing, we could be a really good part of the community. It allows us to be a part of the community itself by being a local hangout.”
Now is a time of growth all around for Craft and Draft, as the two engineering grads and former college roommates have turned their little start-up store into a brand recognized across the Midlands, even eyeing further expansion.
Before Craft and Draft, Johnson and Monroe originally had notions of opening a brewery of their own, at a time when there was only one craft beer brewer in Columbia, Conquest Brewing (which recently closed).
“The original vision was, in fact, a brewery, and it kind of fell apart as quickly as it came together. We didn’t know what we were doing,” Johnson said. “We decided, you know, Columbia doesn’t have a place to go try local beers and take them home, so we created this concept, and we were the first to introduce it to the Midlands.”
With a mission of supporting the local craft beer industry, they’ve played a major role in its growth. And Craft and Draft has grown with it.
“We do focus local,” Johnson said. “That’s one of the reasons we opened. We wanted to be part of the local beer scene but grow and support it ... growing the craft beer consumer.”
Now proudly juggling their two locations, the partners look forward to possibly expanding Craft and Draft to more cities and towns, or possibly branching out to explore new business concepts, too, they said.
“You want to improve on growth,” Johnson said. “So yeah, while I’m happy with where we are, there’s always room for more.”
This story was originally published January 17, 2020 at 5:30 AM.
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