The Main & Mill Brewing Co. will expand, opening another brewing operation and tap room in a building a few blocks east of the original establishment, which opened in 2015 at 240 E. Main St. in Festus.
The new building is at 10 E. Main St. and is expected to open at the end of the year, said Denny Foster, who owns Main & Mill, along with his father, Barry Foster.
“We’re not changing anything at Main & Mill. It will still be a restaurant and it will still brew beer. This is an expansion,” Foster said. “(The new brewing operation) will allow us to do more things. We did 550 barrels last year. I’m guessing we’ll more than double that the first full year.”
Foster said he and his father bought the 20,000-square-foot building at 10 E. Main St.
“It will be for beer production and a tap room,” he said. “We’re going to do (the tap room) on a pilot basis for our local community. We’ll get feedback on our new beers at the tap room. It will be similar to what we have now, just no food. We’ll add a canning line, which we don’t have now.”
He said the tap room, when it opens, will be called the Main & Mill Barrel Works.
“We’re supposed to start getting our equipment in August,” Foster said. “We just hope to get everything going by the end of the year. We will be hiring people. We’re just not sure yet how many.”
Foster said the 10 E. Main St. building has housed at least a couple of businesses over the years, most recently Kennedy’s Catchall and Auction House, which recently moved to the building next door at 12 E. Main St.
“The building (at 10 E. Main) used to be a Ford dealership for quite a while,” Foster said.
When the Fosters bought the building at 240 E. Main St. in October 2012, it had been unoccupied for years and had fallen into disrepair, so the father-son team painstakingly restored it over the next few years.
That building, which dates back to the 1880s, served as a bar at least until the 1940s and housed a variety of businesses thereafter, Foster said.
He said the Main & Mill Brewing Co. is doing well.
“Things are going good,” he said. “We’ve had so much love and support over the last few years.”