Passing the Brewery Baton at The Workshop Brewing Company

New chapter for the Workshop and Kingsley Local Brewing

It was February of 2023 when the doors opened at Kingsley’s newest watering hole, giving locals a fresh space to relax, unwind, and enjoy a frosty pint.

Now two years later, Kingsley Local Brewing has settled into a nice little groove. Located right in the heart of the village, KLB is a spinoff of the popular Workshop Brewing Company in Traverse City.

Pete Kirkwood, founder of both, recently sold a majority stake in these operations to Amber Carr, a Mancelona-area native who previously worked at both Right Brain Brewery and Identity Brewing Company in Traverse City.

Northern Express sat down with Kirkwood and Carr to learn about what’s next for KLB and Workshop.

How It Started

It couldn’t be outside a “one Beulah radius.”

Kirkwood laughs as he describes his initial thoughts on expanding the Workshop’s footprint. The Benzie County seat was about as far as he was willing to drive from Traverse City, and that was that.

“I actually did a thing where I looked at drive times to make the radius, so it’s not exactly a circle,” he says. “It’s shaped like the Millenium Falcon.”

Regardless of the shape of his “heat map,” Kirkwood felt a pull—thanks, in part, to three businesses that inspired him—to expand beyond the Workshop, which opened in 2013.

The Portland-based McMenamin brothers have a chain of restaurants, pubs, and breweries in the Pacific Northwest, almost all of which are housed in refurbished historic buildings. From this, Kirkwood knew he wanted to breathe life into an old building. “I love adaptive reuse and the inherent community building that coalesces around it,” he says.

Patagonia founder Yvonne Chouinard is what Kirkwood describes as a “reluctant entrepreneur,” which he identifies with. “I sort of find myself starting businesses mostly because I don’t really know what else I would do if I didn’t do that,” he says.

Finally, Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor spun off several supporting businesses from its flagship deli, with these spinoffs having an “unbeatable competitive advantage” by virtue of being able to rely on the resources of the main operation. With all of the “unglamorous” stuff like human resources, accounting, and more handled by the mothership, the offshoots are free to create and innovate.

“Their community of businesses model is one that I’ve admired ever since I knew about it, and it was my express plan when I started the Workshop to build that kind of a business model—a hub and spoke model, in effect,” Kirkwood says. “Kingsley Local represents the first spoke in that wheel.”

Kingsley as a location made sense because those in the village were vocal about their desire for a taproom, Kirkwood says. He loved that the 19th-century brick building—which most recently housed a print shop—was at Kingsley’s “natural center of gravity.”

“I looked at pretty much every building that I thought would be appropriate in a one-Beulah radius, and this ended up being the closest to what I was looking for,” he says. “This is the geographic center of this village, and it’s the obvious place for people to come together. With a great, big, beautiful beer garden and this welcoming, brightly lit, beautiful taproom space, I was endeavoring to create a fertile ground for community building.”

How It’s Going

Opening KLB was an immense effort, Kirkwood says, but he’s both proud and glad to be operating in a community he believes in.

“I think I was working on this place for the better part of a year before we were able to open, and that was right post-COVID, so it took me twice as long as I expected and it cost me three times as much. It destroyed my budget,” Kirkwood says. “But here we are. We planted a flag in Kingsley. It’s our vote of confidence in the future of this village, and the most important thing that we’re trying to do is respond to what the community is asking us to be.”

Kirkwood believes KLB is still “in the process of taking root.” Some have embraced the taproom, and it’s possible that others are nervous of what it might represent for their town.

“I know that a lot of the old-time Kingsley natives are suspicious of becoming a mini Traverse City,” he says. “At the same time, there’s a lot of people who live in Kingsley that work in Traverse City, and it seems to us that those folks would probably rather sit and have a drink and a conversation in their own village rather than way back over in Traverse City.”

Kirkwood was frank when speaking about the first two years from a business perspective.

“I wish I could say it’s going gangbusters, especially because the village was essentially publicly beseeching the brewers to provide them with a brewery,” he says. “When we first opened up, we got a really nice response. We got a lot of folks signing up for the club here. But to be honest, the growth has been below what we had hoped it would be.”

Though KLB is a licensed brewery and is legally and physically capable of producing beer, right now all of the beer comes from Traverse City. But that’s likely to change, and for now it is the site of aging for all beer served at both locations.

“The authenticity of this being a brewery is important to us, which is why we have brought the barrel aging piece here so that we’re legitimately doing part of the manufacturing on site,” Kirkwood says.

What’s Next

Despite the slower than expected start, Kirkwood and Carr are bullish about KLB moving forward. The beer garden is amazing, they are working on getting food beyond a food truck, and they have plans to better engage the local community.

In the meantime, they’ll keep slinging cold brews to folks in Kingsley, who according to Kirkwood like their brews a little stranger than the people back in TC.

“In Traverse City, they know what they want and they kind of stick with their stuff. In Kingsley, when we roll out something a little edgy, a little different, that’s what they want,” Kirkwood says. “Kingsley’s more adventurous when it comes to new and interesting beers.”

Kirkwood is excited to shift (most of) his ownership to Carr, whom he believes will only boost KLB going forward. Carr has visions of good food, mini music festivals—maybe even a mechanical bull. “Amber bringing new vision and energy into the place is going to really help,” he says.

Carr was considering starting her own brewery when Kirkwood put Workshop and KLB up for sale earlier this year. She couldn’t believe she had an opportunity to buy into a legendary place like the former and an up-and-coming place like the latter, though she was at first nervous about approaching Kirkwood.

“He kicked me out of the Workshop once,” she says. “I was aggressively playing cornhole with friends and we went a little too far and we were whipping the bags at each other. And Pete very nicely and calmly came out and goes, ‘You know, you guys are having fun, but we need to be concerned about the safety of everybody else around. And at this point, I do have to ask you to leave.’”

As for Kirkwood, he’s looking forward to handing the bulk of operations at both locations over to Carr and diving into some artistic endeavors, especially after building the Workshop twice.

“The business was profitable and very successful right around 2019 or the beginning of 2020, and then we all know what happened, right? The whole thing got nuked by COVID and I had to do the whole startup thing all over again,” he says. “So basically what we’re looking at right now is the second time I’m coming out of my startup phase, and this is really the first time that kind of handing over the torch has even been possible.”

He couldn’t think of a better person to hand it to.

“I have an amazing young woman who wants to roll up her sleeves and get into this thing, and I want to support her,” he says. “I think that's a wonderful transition.”

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