On the verge of the Barbershop’s sixth anniversary in January, local business owners John McIntosh and Dave Niemeyer sought to expand their enterprise.
By moving into the space currently occupied by Mercantile Wine and Tapas, McIntosh and Niemeyer plan to open a craft beer bar that will house a taproom and a larger brewery along Mercer Street.
“This new business will not be a second location for the Barbershop, but a way of focusing on brewing our own beer,” Niemeyer said. “The Barbershop was meant to be a craft beer bar [that produces small amounts of beer]. But this will be a larger brewery and taproom.”
The location of the brewery will be where the Mercantile has been for over two and a half years, which McIntosh and Niemeyer also own.
“We’ve wanted the brewery to grow. But with the way things were going, we were spending a lot of time at the restaurant. We were doing less brewing than we wanted, and we just didn’t have the business to expand the Barbershop,” McIntosh said.
It’s a move that’s been in the works for years. It wasn’t until recently when McIntosh and Niemeyer found the right locale to house their business idea.
“We’d previously thought about expanding to South Austin, but it didn’t fit the business model we wanted to follow. We wanted to keep that group feel in Dripping Springs. So we thought about it, and it made a lot more sense to do the expansion here,” Niemeyer said.
The new space will allow for construction of a larger brewhouse, McIntosh said.
“In the Barbershop, we were lucky to have one or two taps running, but now we’re shooting to have at least six running at one time,” McIntosh said.
With the extra space and their required alcohol sales licenses already in place, McIntosh and Niemeyer only need to file paperwork with the state in order to move forward with opening their new business. The two estimate possibly opening their venture in early 2017.
“We don’t have any control over that timeline, so it’ll just be a waiting game from there. As long as things go well, we’re shooting to open around mid-to-late February,” Niemeyer said.
A name for the new location is currently under wraps as McIntosh and Niemeyer are working on graphics for their business logo.
