USA, VA: Garden Grove Brewing & Urban Winery to close in late June

Carytown’s only brewery is tapping out, Richmond Biz Sense reported on May 20.

Garden Grove Brewing & Urban Winery will close in late June, ending a 10-year run at 3445 W. Cary St.

Owner Ryan Mitchell said he’s opting to not renew the brewery’s lease and is now exploring selling the business and its assets.

Mitchell and Mike Brandt co-founded Garden Grove in 2015, just as the area’s craft beer industry was taking off. When it opened, Garden Grove was Virginia’s 100th brewery. Today, that figure stands at nearly 350, according to data from the Brewers Association, a national trade group.

Upon opening a decade ago, Mitchell said they opted to sign a longer-than-typical lease term of 11 years. Taking on the additional years gave them more stability when it came to rent increases, but less flexibility on getting out of it. Now that it’s up, Mitchell said it doesn’t make sense to renew.

“Just like (how) everybody’s having issues with increases in rent, what we’re paying for rent, in my opinion, is too much,” Mitchell said. “Also, 10 years in, I feel honest in saying that we had a good run with it but we’re ready to move on… As a business owner, you have to know when the time is right to put in the cards and call it. And I think it’s time.”

A few years after opening, Garden Grove leased some acreage at a vineyard in Fauquier County and began producing its own wine, a pivot that Head Brewer and Winemaker Kevin Storm said was a huge differentiator for the brewery.

“It was so much easier for us to have gluten-free options, which has always been really great for us. It’s amazing the amount of people that come into the brewery looking for a gluten-free option,” Storm said. “It really did give us a chance to have something for literally any palate.”

The end of 2019 heading into 2020 proved to hold some of Garden Grove’s most challenging days.

In the fall of 2019, Mitchell said they had a clause in their lease that was basically their only chance to get out, and since the brewery was doing well, they decided to renew. But a few months later, on November 20, 2019, Brandt, his co-founder, passed away. A few months after that, the pandemic hit, sending the craft beer world into disarray.

Looking back at that time, Mitchell said it was a blur.

“I could never get over one thing before the next thing hit. We were doing so well, it made sense to renew the lease. And then Mike passes away, and you don’t have any time to understand that, or like, truly have emotion to it before the pandemic hits. Then you have staff and family that you have to worry about, and you’re still trying to get over the fact that your business partner died,” Mitchell said. “So that was a big gut punch.”

Then in 2021, Mitchell and Storm began to notice a changing of consumer tastes. For years, Belgian-style and Saison beers had been among Garden Grove’s most popular brews, but non-alcoholic beers and mocktails were catching on, as were hard seltzers and lighter, “lawnmower beers,” as Mitchell put it. One day in 2021, when brainstorming new beers, Mitchell challenged Storm.

“I was like, ‘Let’s brew the best-tasting but cheapest beer that we can, and just see what happens,’” Mitchell said, referring to what is now its Preferred Beer of Richmond, a 4.2 percent ABV light lager that’s been a flagship for Garden Grove ever since.

“We sold out of the entire batch in two weeks. And we’re like, ‘Wait a second, what did we do?’ We kept making it and it kept selling out of it,” he said.

Mitchell said they’ve worked out deals to sell Garden Grove’s cooperage and some of its kegs, but that he’s also open to selling the business itself and all of its other assets.

Garden Grove is planning a “kick all the kegs” party on June 28, at which Mitchell said all beers and glassware will be $5.

The going-away party will also have a tie to Mitchell’s new career: as a firefighter in Chesterfield County.

A portion of proceeds from sales that day will go toward the Chesterfield Professional Firefighters Association, the local union for Chesterfield firefighters. Storm, who recently got his degree in criminal justice, said he’s similarly pursuing a career in firefighting and emergency services.

Mitchell estimates that over the years they’ve held fundraisers for around 100 different local nonprofits. Between that work and having a place with so many regulars, Mitchell and Storm said they’re proud of the run Garden Grove has had.

“I feel like I can speak for Mike (Brandt) that one of the things we wanted to be able to do in opening a brewery was have a place that could be a community spot, and we’ve been able to do that,” Mitchell said. “That going away is what hurts the most.”

Garden Grove will be the third local brewery to close this spring. Last week, Kindred Spirit Brewing’s Satellite taproom closed after a year in the city, and earlier this month, Anytime Beer Co., formerly Tabol Brewing, closed in the Northside with its owners saying they’ll look to reopen elsewhere.