ROYAL PALM TO GET FIRST BREWERY ON ST. PAT’S DAY
ROYAL PALM BEACH — Residents in the western communities soon will have a new place to grab a craft beer.
Royal Palm Brewing Co., the first brewery in the western communities, will have its grand opening on Saturday, St. Patrick’s Day, at it’s space in the Commons at Royal Palm shopping plaza. It’s an event a year-and-a-half in the making, said co-owners Geoffrey and Pam Shetka.
“We’re either smart or stupid for this,” Pam Shetka said, laughing when asked why they chose to open on St. Patrick’s Day, one of the busiest nights of the year for breweries. “I guess we’ll find out.”
The family business is run by 30-year-old Geoffrey Shetka, his brother, 38-year-old George Shetka of Royal Palm Beach, and Pam, 43, George’s wife. They were inspired to open a brewery after years of making their own beer at home. Geoffrey was the
first to get interested in home brewing while studying environmental science at the University of Central Florida. His enthusiasm spread to Pam and George, and soon every family vacation involved a visit to a new brewery.
“I realized, people can make a living doing this,” Geoffrey said. “This is pretty cool.”
From their trips to breweries around the country, the Shetkas pulled inspiration for Royal Palm Brewing Co.
They also pulled inspiration from their family. Pam and George have two children, 3-year-old Gabi and 8-year-old George Jr., so they knew the brewery would need to be kid-friendly.
“We went to other breweries and saw how they incorporated fun things for children,” Pam said. Their brewery will offer games, and a giant chalkboard covers one wall. Children will be able to enjoy snacks, including Popsicles and popcorn.
For adults, the brewery will offer a variety of “simple and easy food,” Pam said. The tapas-style menu includes meats and cheese trays, panini sandwiches, and hummus and veggie platters.
Pam, formerly a finance director at a car dealership, and Geoffrey, who worked as an aquatic biologist for Orange County, now find themselves at home with George sampling new sandwiches. Like roasted turkey, brie and apples. And chicken, mozzarella and pesto.
And let’s not forget the stars of the show — the beers.
The brewery will offer four beers on St. Patrick’s Day: their Cascade SMASH Pale Ale, Citra IPA, Sweet Stout and American Witbier.
Geoffrey — who after receiving his degree in environmental studies from UCF studied brewing technology with the world-renowned Siebel Institute of Technology — said the dark, rich stout was an essential choice for St. Patrick’s Day.
“We had to have it,” he said, smiling. Pam chimed in, saying the smell as it brewed was amazing. “Like granola bars,” she said.
The beers’ names are steeped in meaning for the Shetka family. The Rose’s Imperial Red Ale is named not just for its rosy hue, but also for George and Geoffrey’s grandmother, Rose.
“She was their biggest fan,” Pam said. “She loved their beer. Whenever they went to see her, they would bring her the latest beer they brewed.”
The shining new equipment toward the back of the more than 2,500-square-foot brewery includes four massive fermenters. Pam said it is a tradition in breweries to name the fermenters. She nodded to Geoffrey.
“So there are four,” he said, grinning. “So we named them after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” Yes, emblazoned at the top of each gleaming tower are the names Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo.
Because breweries need a certain kind of space, with ample room for those fermenters but also for seating for patrons and space for food preparation, Royal Palm Brewing Co. searched several areas in Palm Beach County before settling in Royal Palm Beach.
They found one location in Lake Worth that would have been perfect, Pam said — but as they pulled around the building, they saw a sign that said the new Mathew’s Brewing already had the spot.
Then there was the issue of zoning. Some municipalities are more friendly than others when it comes to brewers, but few have codes that specifically address breweries.
In Wellington, breweries are treated either as restaurants or nightclubs, said planning, zoning and building director Bob Basehart. If more than 50 percent of revenue is not from food, then the brewery would be classified as a nightclub, and it could go in any commercial development as long as it is more than 500 feet from a residential area.
When the Shetkas began inquiring with Royal Palm Beach officials about rules for breweries, the ball started rolling for the village to craft those rules.
“Our zoning ordinances didn’t have a provision for this type of establishment,” Mayor Fred Pinto said.
In the new rules, breweries were split into two categories of brewpubs and microbreweries, planning and zoning director Bradford O’Brien said. Royal Palm Brewing Co. is considered a brewpub, so it cannot exceed production of 15,000 barrels a year.
“If they achieve 15,000, then they think they would be doing really, really well,” O’Brien said.
The brewery will be limited in the outdoor seating it can offer because it is so close to the Bella Terra neighborhood, he added.
It has been a labor of love, Pam said. And not every family could pull off something like this. “We might not have it all together, but together we have it all,” she said.