Del Ray Part Two
We are well underway for our new location at 2003 Mt Vernon Avenue, in the heart of Del Ray! We secured our building permit last month. This was the biggest obstacle for us opening on time. Our friend, who is a permit expediter, told us to expect 90 days wait time. One mistake, and you go to the back of the line again. Either we’ve gotten good at this, are lucky, or both. It’s a huge relief! Shout out to my business partner, Lee.
Prior to getting the permit, we were still hard at work on all the cosmetic changes we could make without one (painting, redoing the floor, etc). Plus sourcing and ordering. Lots and lots of that. My eyes feel like they’re about to fall out of their sockets.
Like I said in Pt 1, it’s a small space, which gives us the opportunity to really make it special via the interior design. I had the brilliant idea to hire a cheap interior designer, and let’s just say we got what we paid for! She did a nice job creating a rendering of what I was looking for, but when it came time to provide real world items and order them, that apparently wasn’t part of the deal.
Live and learn. Although this forced me to spend 100+ hours picking out every single item in the space, I think overall it was a good experience. The plan was always to have our actual boots on the ground handle more of the design process. The result was that I got a bona fide crash course in interior design, with enough hand holding and guardrails from Lee and our friend and style consultant Monica that I didn’t feel completely in over my head. When it comes time to remodel Leesburg, I think I’ll know what to do. This is also just a great skill to have in our kit for future expansion plans.
While I was scouring Etsy for lights, learning everything to know about LVT tile, making friends at the paint store, and combing through local markets for cool vintage stuff, Lee and Jose were constructing the guts of the operation. They built the walk-in refrigerator, fixed a major sag in the floor with self-leveling concrete, and retiled the entire thing. Lee planned out a beautiful 12 tap Euro-faucet draught system, courtesy of our friend Dave Morgan at Veteran Draft. Our Leesburg manager and resident artiste Jules got started making menu boards for all of our many, many beers. Divide and conquer.
The major takeaway from all of this is thank God we started early. We thought we’d have a lease signed in January instead of May. This gave us time to develop a general concept that could be applied elsewhere if the deal fell through, but we inevitably started doing work specific to this location. We’ve learned to fiercely guard our time, the most precious resource. We make a point to not put in work until projects pass certain checkpoints, but we ended up breaking those rules. Lee got our permits and sub contractors all lined up. I worked on our food menu. If we hadn’t gotten a head start, we’d definitely be in some hot water now.
Which leads me to the food. Beer + no food = no fun. Specifically, no sales–you can’t really throw ‘em back on an empty stomach. We’ve got a tiny kitchen here, but I think we can get a lot done with it, combined with centralized prep in Sterling. As I mentioned in part 1, this is not generic boxed frozen food tossed in a deep fryer. The menu will be small, but cool. I don’t want to spoil it, but I will reveal the star of the show: chicken tenders. Everyone who’s not a vegetarian loves chicken tenders (and if you don’t eat meat, we still have some great stuff for you!) My benchmark for fried chicken is that it can be different from, but must be at least as good as Popeye’s. Otherwise what are you doing? Ours will be marinated in a buttermilk and hot sauce brine for 12 hours before double dredging and frying to exact 165 for maximum juicyness. Gluten free, and available with our house made hot honey mustard.
I really hope the rest of this continues to go as well, because if it does, we’re looking at a pretty imminent opening date. We’ve gotten to know a lot of the Del Ray community in our comings and goings already, and it seems like people are genuinely excited for us to open our doors. We can’t wait.