TC's Taproom Takeover: Against industry odds, local breweries expand their brands
August 2026
Three makes a trend; four makes a movement.
That’s a phrase worth applying to the craft beer sector in northern Michigan, where a quartet of local breweries has expanded to new locations against industry-wide headwinds.
The story started in 2024, when Traverse City’s Earthen Ales launched Tank Space, a quirkily space-themed satellite location on Eighth Street. It continues today, as Short’s Brewing Company works to convert the Logan’s Landing complex into its first-ever Traverse City home.
What’s driving this pattern of local expansion, and how does it play into – or deviate from – craft beer’s flagging fortunes nationally? The TCBN takes a closer look.
Beer bubble burst?
“If the craft beer industry is a ship, we can comfortably say we’re no longer in the safety of a harbor.”
So says Matt Gacioch, staff economist for the Brewers Association, in that organization’s “Year in Beer” report for 2025. The BA is a nonprofit trade group that champions American independent craft breweries, hosts major industry events and tracks key market metrics. Per the BA, 2025 marked the second year in a row where more breweries in the United States closed than opened. In 2024, closures outnumbered openings, a first since 2005.
There were few silver linings in the BA’s 2025 report. Overall beer sales were down 5.7%, craft beer sales were down 3.8% and import beer sales were down 5.3%. Production volume has seen a decline in line with those percentages.
Gacioch blamed the continued craft beer slump on “changing consumer behaviors, retailer rationalization, cost increases due to inflation and tariffs, and more competition than ever,” but said brewers were “stepping up to meet today’s challenges head on by adjusting their offerings and, sometimes, their entire business models.”
New frontiers
For a growing number of northern Michigan breweries, “stepping up to meet today’s challenges” has meant expanding rather than contracting. Earthen Ales added Tank Space as a satellite location in April 2024. Traverse City’s Silver Spruce Brewing Company followed suit later that same year, soft-launching a new taproom on Silver Lake Road.
In the past year, TCBN sister publication The Ticker has broken the news about two additional craft beer expansions. First, in December, The Ticker reported that Brent Faber, owner and founder of Stone Hound Brewing Company in Acme, had “signed a lease with an option to purchase” the McLain Cycle & Fitness building on Eighth Street. Faber will open a second Stone Hound location there, likely sometime this year.
Joe Short and Scott Newman-Bale (of Short's Brewery) and Tim Pulliam and Steve Morse (of Keen Technical Solutions) toast the purchase of Logan's Landing. (Photo credit: David Weidner)Then, in April, The Ticker was the first outlet to report that Short’s Brewing Company had partnered with Keen Technical Solutions to purchase the east side of the Logan’s Landing complex on South Airport Road, with plans to use about 10,000 square feet of the 16,000 square-foot space for a new Short’s taproom.
Asked why so many breweries are choosing to expand amidst nationwide contraction of the beer market, Short’s founder and namesake Joe Short paints the trend as an “adapt to survive” strategy.
“What I suspect, in why you're seeing breweries open more retail, is because there's a surplus of production,” Short said. “We’re seeing a little bit of that as well. The beer sales at the pub are a little slower, which means we have excess production beers, and so we're trying to burn those up at the pub and at the pull barn.”
The Short's story
The flagship Short’s “pub” can be found in downtown Bellaire, where the brewery was first born in 2004. It wasn’t until 2017 that Short’s “threw some draft lines on a pole building” at its production facility in Elk Rapids, and even then, the establishment was merely a summer beer garden, with no indoor seating to speak of. The “pull barn,” as it is known today, took shape in 2021, when Short’s made the Elk Rapids location an indoor, year-round pub.
“The challenge is that both Bellaire and Elk Rapids are very tourist-driven villages; we don’t have a strong year-round, seven-days-a-week program for sales,” Short said. Add in a “not great” economy, a “down” period of distribution for Short’s, and sobriety trends that have almost everyone – particularly younger demographics – drinking less, and Short has found himself with more excess beer to burn than he had a few years ago.
The flagship Short's location in Bellaire.
“Fortunately, we have a strong enough foothold that we were prepared to just weather that storm,” Short said of the headwinds.
That “foothold” is notable. Short’s is the third-biggest brewery in Michigan by volume, after Founder’s in Grand Rapids and Bell’s in Kalamazoo. Since both Founder’s and Bell’s have sold out to major corporations, Short’s now also has the distinction of being Michigan’s largest independent brewery.
Still, the shaky beer market meant Short was receptive when Tim Pulliam of Keen Technical Solutions came calling with the opportunity to be part of the revitalization of Logan’s Landing.
According to Short, there have been many offers and asks over the years aimed at getting Short’s to open a location in Traverse City. The answer was always no. Recently, Pulliam even “petitioned” Short to consider bringing the brewery to the Mill District, another Keen project on Boardman Lake.
“When everybody thinks of ‘Shorts opening up a new location,’ I think they’re picturing the pub in Bellaire, and as I told Tim, ‘I don’t want to run another restaurant. I just want to sell beer!’” Short said. “Logan’s Landing was more intriguing, and probably a little more our style. It's a little more ramshackle than something brand new. And then there were all the other elements: the fact that the Boardman Loop is finished and there’s now so much pedestrian traffic out there; the fact that this legacy property is nostalgic for so many people; the fact that I’ve had a great relationship with Tim from Keen for decades. So, we just kept talking about it, and ultimately, we came to an agreement that worked for everybody.”
The Logan's Landing project
Short’s CEO Scott Newman-Bale says he “can’t think of another building” in all of Traverse City that would have gotten the brewery to take the plunge on a TC-based taproom. Even after signing all the paperwork and committing to the project, Newman-Bale and Short both insist they “honestly don’t know” what the Logan’s Landing establishment will look like when it opens its doors.
“We’re going to start with just beers on the patio, and then it'll evolve just like the rest of our projects do,” Short said. “We do feel the need to do our own food, because the food accounts for 70% of the revenue in Bellaire. So, I do have some ideas for that, but we don’t know how it’s going to be yet.”
Joe Short teases the floorplan for the new Short's space at Logan's Landing.As renovations begin at Logan’s Landing – Short’s is taking over the old Auntie Pasta’s space – it’s now spit-balling time for Short and Newman-Bale, where no idea is too crazy to say out loud. Newman-Bale’s current pie-in-the-sky proposal? Tracking down the old Clinch Park Zoo train and bringing it to Logan’s Landing for a family-friendly attraction. He even pictures the train traveling over the Boardman River, via the bridge the connects the two halves of the complex.
No matter what happens, Newman-Bale says he’s confident the new Traverse City location will fulfill its purpose of helping Short’s burn through a whole lot of excess beer – regardless of the fact that Logan’s Landing will bring Short’s into its most competitive, brewery-saturated market yet.
“Yes, there are a lot of breweries around there, but I think we’ve got the coolest spot,” Newman-Bale said of Logan’s Landing. “There’s not a whole lot of outdoor spaces in Traverse City, which is weird, considering where we live. You’ve got a couple of rooftop decks on hotels now, and you’ve got places like Brady’s Bar that have patio space, but you don’t have a ton of places where you can just go sit outside and have a drink. I think that’s why Hop Lot in Suttons Bay does so well, and I think it will play in our favor, too.”
Short’s is targeting a May 1, 2027 opening date for the Logan’s Landing location.
Earthen Ales' 'third space'
Geography, as it turns out, is a driving force behind local craft beer expansions – and not just for breweries like Short’s that are setting up shop in entirely new towns.
For Andrew Kidwell-Brix, who co-owns Earthen Ales along with his wife Jamie, adding a second location was motivated by a desire to reach a new Traverse City demographic. While Earthen Ales will celebrate its 10-year anniversary later this year, the brewery’s location – tucked away into one of the less-well-traveled corners of the Village at Grand Traverse Commons – has always kept it one of the best-kept secrets of the local beer world.
“I still talk to folks over at Tank Space – and we've been there two-plus years now – and they’ve never been to Earthen Ales,” Kidwell-Brix said. “That’s even true of a lot of our Tank Space regulars: Their life revolves around the east side of town, and the Commons just doesn't really play into things for them.”
Asked how Tank Space came to be, Kidwell-Brix admits he and Jamie “weren’t specifically looking for a second location,” but realized “there was some room on the map” between Stone Hound in Acme and the Eighth Street/Boardman Lake cluster of breweries like Silver Spruce, The Filling Station and Right Brain Brewery. Andrew and Jamie, who both come from urban planning backgrounds, saw an opportunity – and not just to sell more beer.
“Yes, you brew beer as a brewery, but I think your reason for continuing to exist is for the people who use the space,” Kidwell-Brix said. “It’s for the people who meet up after work, the people who celebrate milestones in their lives, even the people who just get caught out in the rain and need somewhere to tuck in for a minute. Beer is just one piece of what we do. I'm still passionate about it, but at the end of the day, what we're really doing is providing a third space in the community where you come in and you don't have to worry about doing the dishes, and where your to-do list from work isn't sitting there on the desk in front of you.”
While Kidwell-Brix acknowledges that the national numbers indicate consumers are drinking less beer, he doesn’t think those trends have hurt Tank Space or its utility in the community.
“We’re selling more cider than we once did, and less beer, so we know things have changed a little bit,” he said. “But I think we’ve still found our niche, because we’re there to meet the needs of the people who want to use the space, not just to brew beer for the sake of brewing beer. Probably the best decision we made was putting in a private room at Tank Space, because it’s allowed us to host not just private parties – like birthdays or office get-togethers – but also meetings of local neighborhood associations and nonprofit groups, board retreats and even classes for the National Writers Series. We offer the room for free, so we’ve become a part of the broader fabric of the community, simply because we’re able to lessen the burden of these groups getting together.”
The former McLain Cycling building on Eighth Street will become Stone Hound Brewing Company's in-town home.Stone Hound's neighborhood brewery
Faber sees a similar advantage to bringing a new Stone Hound location online.
The original Stone Hound opened in 2021, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and quickly found a following in part because there were no breweries in Acme or Williamsburg. That location has continued to prove fruitful.
Faber says Stone Hound doubled its revenue over the past three years, even as craft beer declined nationwide. He credits “finding the right mix of things to get people in” – not just good beer, but also a diverse food menu that includes vegan and non-vegan options, a live music program, vinyl nights on Tuesdays and trivia nights on Wednesdays.
Now, Faber’s plan is to clone the Stone Hound model on Eighth Street, with the renovation likely finishing by the end of the year.
“Now that we have it dialed in, I think Traverse City is a spot that makes sense for us to be, just so we can reach a different audience,” Faber said. “I know a lot of people, when they come up on vacation, they don't leave Traverse City proper. Those people would probably never even find us where we are now, because they just stay in that downtown area.”
Reaching the tourism audience is one motivator behind the Stone Hound expansion, but not the only one. Just like Kidwell-Brix, Faber wants his brewery to be a dependable third space where locals can gather and enjoy one another’s company.
“I lived a block over from the McLain building for nine years, so I’m familiar with that neighborhood,” Faber said. “The idea is to do something similar to what we built in Acme, where we draw a lot of people that live off Bunker Hill, or in Holiday Hills or out in Williamsburg. The Traverse Heights neighborhood, and then also across the street in the Webster/Washington neighborhoods, I know there are a ton of families there. I want to make this space a similar kind of thing: the local spot for those neighborhoods.”
Note: Silver Spruce owners Leah Tyrell and Scott Stuhr could not be reached for comment on this story.
