Interborough rivalries in New York City have always been fierce, but now Manhattan finally has something all the other boroughs have claimed for years: a production craft brewery.
Torch & Crown Brewing recently opened its 9,000 sq. ft., 10-barrel brewery and taproom in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood after years of location scouting and construction.
By co-founder and CEO John Dantzler’s count, he and co-founder and head brewer Joe Correia visited 250 potential sites, performed engineering diligence on more than 100 spaces, sent out 57 letters of intent and signed two leases before deciding on their location in lower Manhattan.
The business partners, childhood friends who began experimenting with homebrewing in high school in the New York City suburbs, always knew they wanted their brewery to be located in the heart of the city, so they needed a site in an area zoned for manufacturing, which is rare in Manhattan.
“We stacked the deck against ourselves right from the beginning,” Dantzler said. “But, being excited and naive, we maybe didn’t know, to some extent, but also just didn’t care — we were going to figure this out.”
One lease Torch & Crown signed was for the retail space in a co-op building. When Dantzler and Correia stopped by for what they thought was an initial meeting with their future brewery’s neighbors, they were instead met with a flurry of lawsuits from co-op members who did not want a brewery in their building.
“There was a group of 12 or 13 owners that were all pretty unified against us,” Dantzler said. “The only person who was not — who refused to join — was Macaulay Culkin.”
The search continued, and nearly two years to the day after signing their lease for the brewery they’ve built on Vandam Street, Torch & Crown opened in late October with COVID-19 capacity restrictions in place. The wait was worth it, Dantzler said.
“We landed on this thing that really no one has done — at least at a scale that we’re doing — at this production brewery right in the center of the city,” he said. “We really want that personal interaction with our consumers.
“We don’t want to make you have to take a train to an Uber to a whatever to get out to our facility,” he continued. “We want to be right there, front and center.”
Pre-pandemic, the plan was for Torch & Crown to open in May. But when New York City was the country’s first epicenter of the novel coronavirus, plans changed. After the on-premise establishments that sold a good chunk of its volume had to shut down, Torch & Crown quickly pivoted to home delivery, which it still offers. Consumers in lower Manhattan can place an order and receive it in fewer than 30 minutes; elsewhere in New York, Torch & Crown offers same day delivery.
“That was something that was always in our plans in terms of how to interact with our community outside of just our four walls,” Dantzler said.
Although Torch & Crown began selling beer in New York in early 2019, Dantzler and Correia founded the company in 2018. That year, they acquired a brewing facility in the Bronx and began contract brewing for other brands.
“In 2018, we did not brew any Torch & Crown beer,” Dantzler said. “The reason for that was we wanted to stay true to our vision and what we wanted our brand to stand for — this is Manhattan’s brewery.”
Once the SoHo lease was signed and the company’s vision came into focus, Dantzler and Correia began hiring staff and producing and self-distributing beer under the Torch & Crown label. They sold 2,000 barrels in 2019, according to data from national not-for-profit trade group the Brewers Association. The new location will be capable of producing 3,000 barrels annually.
Torch & Crown has tapped New York restaurateur Christian Pappanicholas, founder of the former The Cannibal Beer & Butcher, to manage food and beverage operations, and former Eataly executive chef Alex Pilas to run the kitchen. For other roles at the new location, Dantzler sought applications from the newly formed Beer Kulture job board, which connects hiring managers in the beer industry with candidates from underrepresented groups.
“They’re really doing awesome stuff to change the landscape of craft beer, and we could not be more grateful for the help that they’re giving us by bringing us top, amazing talent,” Dantzler said. “It’s an industry that really needs a lot more representation and a lot more equality at the table.”
The new brewery and taproom has 3,000 sq. ft. of outdoor service space covered with a heated tent, which has been helpful since its indoor dining room capacity is capped at 25%. However, Torch & Crown’s tumultuous first two years have prepared the team for success, Dantzler said.
“Just staying afloat is a huge victory at the moment,” he said. “We’ve been through so many hurdles at this point. We’re confident that we have a team of fighters.”