One of the Coast’s best-known craft beer businesses is tapping into new markets with the opening of a second outlet, with an exciting twist.
Growing from strength to strength, popular local brewery Your Mates celebrated the official opening of its Cooroy pub at the weekend.
The move came after an $8 million expansion of its Warana brewery and is proving to be a major hit for locals, with the opening weekend launch of its new ‘Noosa BowlsPub’ quickly booking out.
About 1500 locals and travellers poured through the doors of the new pub in what retail operations manager Brent Colautti called a “cracker” of an official opening.
“We had a really great response, the feedback has been really positive so far,” he said.
“People are loving the extra fun out on the greens in addition to our usual great food and brews. The highlight was definitely the amount of people who travelled a long way to see what we are doing.”
With the success of the Warana brewhouse, Mr Colautti said the team had been looking to expand into the food and beverage sector.
The new venue will has created more than 20 jobs for the area.
With the new space “landing in their lap”, the team seized the opportunity to take over the former Saw and Mill Restaurant at Cooroy.
“We’ve had incredible local support which has been overwhelming,” Mr Colautti said.
“We are off to a good start. We were booked out in about an hour and a half for Friday night.”
With plans for the new pub revolving around utilising the venue’s existing greens for outdoor activities, Mr Colautti said part of deciding on that venue was to help the local bowls club survive.
“We want to rejuvenate the lawn bowls part of it, which has been a big part of Cooroy since 1940, I believe,” he said.
“We are going to really activate the lawn bowl greens, which was something a lot of people were really worried we were going to get rid of.
“We are working with the Cooroy Lawn Bowls Club committee to feed into the greens and make it bigger and better than ever.
“We have created a positive, relaxed and welcoming place for the community to gather. It has a fun, quirky and family-friendly focus.”
He revealed the outdoor activities wouldn’t just be about lawn bowls, but more about lawn games, such as giant connect four as well as the potential for mini-golf in the future.
“We want to encourage people to head outside for adventure and fun and bring that into the space, so a garden-party vibe coupled with the option of outdoor activities,” he said.
“The pub is very family orientated, we are building another kids playroom on top of the great existing playground.
“The club already had a really beautiful fit-out – the previous owners had put a lot of time and effort into it – but we are putting our mark on it.”
With the current capacity of the Noosa BowlsPub about 160 seats, he said there was room for the team to expand that number up to about 300.
Mr Colautti said the team was excited to collaborate with other local producers – specifically makers of spirits.
“We are not allowed to sell other people’s products at our Warana venue, so that’s super-exciting,” he said.
“We work closely with other Coast brands through their avenues and now we have the chance to support them back … we will also be taking the opportunity to collaborate with some other local brewers down the track.”
Mr Colautti spoke on behalf of Your Mates founders Matt Hepburn and Christen McGarry, saying “they are completely overwhelmed of the response and support from wider south-east Queensland and the wider Queensland communities”.
For more information on weekly specials and live music and lawn games events head to Your Mates Brewing Co. Sunshine Coast.
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