Page 10 - BusinessWest June 9, 2021

White Lion Brewing
HAfter a Year to Forget, This Springfield Label Is Ready to Roar
e called the promotion ‘cans to go,’ brew pub and a resump- which pretty much says it all. tion of outdoor events
Indeed, while he could brew his craft- with the now familiar beer label, White Lion, at his new facility on the White Lion logo attached
ground floor in Tower Square, Ray Berry couldn’t sit any visitors at the attached pub because the facility wasn’t finished and painstakingly slow in its progress. But he could sell cans to go — and he did, quite a few of them, in fact — on Wednes- days and Saturdays from 2:30 to 7 p.m.
“We’ve been creative, and we’ve made a number of pivots along the way and diversified our portfolio, but the bottom line is we lost a full year and more.”
May 26 was the last of those Wednesdays, and the last day for the promotion. Berry was sad to see them go. Well ... sort of, but not really.
He called a halt to cans to go so he could direct 100% of his energies into the next phase
of the White Lion story, a chapter that has been delayed more than a full year by COVID-19 — the opening of that much-anticipated downtown
to them.
“We want to make
sure all the I’s are dot- ted and T’s are crossed, take a pause, exhale, and made sure everything
is in place for our June opening,” he said. “We want to be ready to really hit the ground running.”
As he talked with
BusinessWest, Berry was
checking the schedules
of a number of promi-
nent elected officials, try-
ing to find a date when
most of them could
attend a ribbon-cutting
for the opening of his
downtown facility. That
ceremony will be both a beginning and an end — a beginning, as we noted, of an exciting new chapter, and the end of 15 months of COVID- fueled frustration that didn’t derail White Lion, but struck at the absolute worst time for the brand born in 2014.
Ray Berry, seen here at the canning line at White Lion’s downtown Springfield brewery, is moving on from ‘cans to go’ to the next chapter in the story of this intriguing business venture.
“COVID set us back a full year,” he said, add-
ing that the owners of Tower Square, who also
act as the general contractor for the buildout of
his facility, had set May 2020 as the date for that project to turn the
key and open for White Lion business. “We’ve Continued on page 46
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10 JUNE 9, 2021
FEATURE
Staff Photo
BusinessWest