Friction Beer Co., the long-awaited brewery moving in to the former Hartman Hardware space in downtown Shawnee, is getting closer to opening but still has yet to set an official date.
One of the owners, Brent Anderson, said he’s hoping for an early-April opening, but there are a few barriers that could get in the way.
Previously, Anderson and co-owner Nathan Ryerson were brewing up beers for festivals only, but they’re growing into a new music-inspired taproom at 11018 Johnson Dr.
Friction will be downtown Shawnee’s third brewery
- Anderson said he hopes Friction will stand out both in taste but also as a place to hangout.
- They intend to serve up their well-liked pale ales and milk stouts they’ve served at festivals in the past, plus a new, evolving selection of beers, as well.
- “What we’re creating as a company and as a place extends beyond the product,” he said. “We want to be able to fit in the overall fabric here, and just give people something else that’s unique.”
Friction is opening about a year after it expected to
- Anderson said supply chain challenges, along with some difficulty with utilities and some permitting issues, have slowed down the renovation.
- Friction is still waiting on a few inspections, and there’s not an exact timeline on when they should expect those to be completed.
- After that happens, he said, it will take about one month to brew enough beer to open.
- “We’re going to open when we open, and there were just too many factors outside of our control that we had to account for,” he said.
The renovations cost well over $1 million
- There’s also the matter of converting an old hardware store and the rest of a roughly 100-year-old building into a taproom, which Anderson said “was not a small undertaking.”
- It essentially required them to gut the storefront and start from scratch.
- “Once you start turning things over in an old building and modernizing it,” he said, “it adds time and cost.”
- They also had to do a number of code upgrades to the space that weren’t required under the old ownership since the building was grandfathered in, Anderson said.
They’ve pared back their plans for now
- Initially, they expected to open Friction with a second floor beer hall, event space and rooftop patio.
- That would make use of an old dance hall that’s more recently been used for storage.
- The beer hall is still in the long-term plans, but Anderson says it won’t open when the rest of the brewery opens this spring.
- For now, they’ll open the taproom and social area, plus the garage-turned-brewing-station in the back.
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