To say 2020 has been a crazy year is an understatement. We truly appreciate your support and patience as we navigate in this new world. We are all trying to do the right things, but sometimes it is hard to know what that is.
As we have mentioned in previous communications, we have decided to keep our tasting room and patio closed for the time being. This will most likely be the case for the remainder of 2020 and maybe into early 2021. This is due to a few reasons.
- OCCUPANCY RESTRICTIONS: With the KCMO 50% occupancy restriction and the 6ft of distance guidance between tables, we would only be able to allow a handful of people inside our small tasting room and on our patio. Street side seating isn’t an option along 63rd and Holmes Rd for our area, and our building is multi-tenant use so we can’t turn the parking lot into additional outdoor seating. The cost to operate a tasting room with only a few seats available doesn’t financially add up for us to be open for tap pours at this time.
- TO-GO BEER DEMAND: Right now, we are canning and bottling 100% of the beer we produce, and it’s selling as fast as we can make it. If we reopened the tasting room, we’d have to reduce the amount of to-go packaged product. Unfortunately, there isn’t a way for us to supply our tasting room with beer for pours/growler fills and meet current package to-go demand.
- EXPANSION: Now for the good news. We just signed a lease to take on more space in the building for brewing operations. In our current state, we are 100% maxed out on capacity to produce beer and there’s no floor space to add additional tanks. When complete, this expansion project will allows us to significantly increase our production capacity, helping us keep pace with current package to-go demand, as well as ensure plenty of beer is available on tap and for growler fills when the tasting room reopens. Even if city restrictions are lifted, we will need to keep the tasting room closed until construction is complete. We anticipate the expansion will be be completed by Spring 2021.
Will anything change with to-go sales during the expansion? Absolutely not. We will continue to release news cans of beer to-go every week, just as we’ve done since March.
Once the occupancy restrictions return to some form of normal, and our construction is completed, you can expect tap pours as well as cans and bottles to-go.
This is where we stand today, but things change quickly. We will do our best to keep you posted as we progress with the expansion and when we believe the tasting room will reopen.
Thank you from the BKS Team!
