Craft Beer Cellar offers alternative to bar scene
The owners of the new Craft Beer Cellar, set to open Saturday, hope to offer patrons an alternative to the normal bar scene while tapping into the rapidly growing cultural phenomenon of craft beer.
Hot Springs natives Jen and Justin Schalow moved back to their hometown from Atlanta to launch what will be the 26th location in the Craft Beer Cellar franchise, which was originally conceived and started by Justin Schalow’s older sister, Suzanne Schalow, in Boston in 2010.
The retail craft beer bottle shop and tap-
room, located at 120 Ouachita Ave., formerly World Cargo, will open to the public at 11:30 a.m. Saturday, with the festivities set to continue until 10 p.m. The first 100 customers will receive a free gift bag with specialty CBC items and there will be tastings from Lagunitas, Lost Forty and Superior Bathhouse Brewery, beer trivia, complimentary food, and a raffle for a chance to win a Yeti cooler filled with beer supplies.
Jen Schalow said her sisterin-law, Suzanne, a 1988 graduate of Lake Hamilton High School, went to college at Harvard in Boston and “discovered she loved beer” and ended up opening the first Craft Beer Cellar, which quickly led to a second store. “People were asking her to open another one, but she had all she could do managing the two she was running already,” she said.
So Suzanne Schalow launched a franchise, which in six short years has grown to include 25 other stores, including several in Boston, Vermont, New York, Dallas, Houston, San Francisco, two in Los Angeles, and multiple other locations. Eleven more are in the planning stage across the country.
Justin Schalow, a graduate of Lakeside High School, and Jen Schalow, a graduate of Lake Hamilton, who married right out of high school, had settled in Atlanta after traveling the world for 10 years following Justin Schalow’s enlistment in the U.S. Army. They both loved craft beer and they said their love only grew as they tasted beers around the world during their travels.
“We wanted to come back to Hot Springs. We grew up here and wanted to come back home,” she said. As it happened, Suzanne Schalow was interested in starting a franchise in her hometown so they started looking for a place here.
They looked at their location when it was still World Cargo “and the space really appealed to us,” Justin Schalow said. “So when the chance opened up, we jumped at it. It was a no brainer.” The couple rented the space in late February and began renovating and working on it, doing all the decorating themselves.
He noted they added a parking lot in back and there is street parking in front and on the side and patrons can use the parking lot next door after 5 p.m.
Unlike dimly lit bars with lots of smoke and loud music, Jen Schalow said their business will offer a “more intimate, relaxed atmosphere” where patrons can come in, choose from more than 400 hand-picked bottled or canned beers, including 24 drafts on tap, and sit down, read a book, log in on their laptop with the cellar’s free WiFi or just chat with the other patrons.
“This will be a good place to bring a date,” she said, noting they will have sofas and tables and other comfortable seating, looking out on the all-glass front facing the street. She said it will have a similar vibe to a coffee shop where people hang out for hours, except one will be able to get craft beer.
Customers can drink on premises or take their beers to go and they can mix and match their selections, she said.
The cellar will stock “the largest amount of native beers in Arkansas,” she said, noting “we’ve tried to get beer from every brewery in the state. There are a lot and we’re working really hard to get them all. A couple of them don’t even distribute beer, but we’ve been twisting their arms.”
She said they will have the largest craft beer selection in Hot Springs and the largest amount of draft beers available, including eight native beers on tap.
“We really want to support the breweries around here. Help out the little guys and small businesses,” she said.
While they will have some packaged foods available, including chips, salsa, Kent Walker artisan cheeses and pretzels, they encourage patrons to bring their own food or have food delivered there from nearby downtown restaurants to enjoy with their beer.
They also want to offer patrons the chance to learn about craft beers and all of their employees are certified as beer experts through the Cicerone Certification Program. “We’re beer geeks,” Justin Schalow said.
They plan to even offer classes every Thursday night on the history of beer, how to brew beer, the sensory aspects of drinking beer, with guest experts brought in as lecturers in addition to the classes they teach themselves.
“We want this to be the go to place for craft beer. Come and get in a conversation about beer. You can learn something new or maybe teach us something new. We expect there will be people coming in who know more than we do about some beers and we are willing to learn,” he said.
Jen Schalow said their “Trinity” at the cellar is “beer, hospitality and education,” noting they will have employees to carry people’s purchases to their cars and will do everything they can to make everyone feel comfortable and welcome when they come in.
A therapist by day, working at Therapeutic Family Services, Jen Schalow said coming there can be a form of therapy. “It’s going to be very mellow. We want to bring people together to have fun together. Just be able to relax and have a beer at the end of a long day.”
The store’s hours of operation are Monday-Thursday, 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.; and Sunday noon to 6 p.m. Growlers, kegs, and flights will be available, along with cans and bottles.