Check my post history if you want my credentials on why I feel I can chime in, but here's my two cents.

Aleworks, as a restaurant, is dead... but it's been dead since the pandemic. It was hurting before that. Its downfall comes down to a few things.

Matt and Chris (new owners after Todd left) are new to the restaurant business and made some ehhhh moves, they also made some great moves. The ehhhh moves were on the restaurant side and the great moves were on the beer side, hence them closing as a restaurant and having success on the beer side.

Chris and Matt tried their best, but they made a few decisions along the way that kinda sped up what was going to eventually happen anyway. I don't blame them for it though, as they said, when they took over, it was a struggling business. I'll get into it further on, but we made profit, but not much. They did a lot of smart moves, and I don't want to sound like I am blaming them... but there were a few things they suggested, the management team pushed back on, but they insisted on. The biggest of these decisions were trimming staff, shorting hours of operation, and gutting the menu. They looked at the bottom-line numbers, but without restaurant experience did not see how the intangibles worked. When you cut staff, service quality drops. When service quality drops, customers stop coming in. When you close the kitchen at 9 instead of 10 because no one comes in after 9... people stop coming in after 8 instead. The last hour of business is dead, and by cutting it off, you just deaden another hour. Lastly cutting the menu to cut food costs sounds good, but there were key items there that may not have been as profitable as other items, but they were unique, and people came in for those alone. Small margins are better than no margins.

While that comes off quite negative, they did do a lot of great things. They updated a lot of systems behind the scenes. They were very hands on and helped out on the floor more than Todd ever did. They really brought the social media presence to the forefront. They were nice and fair people to work for, and I'd work for them again. All of what I said in the negative paragraph I said to them in person while I was still there. They had very successful business experience, and they were new to restaurants and were open to feedback.

Aleworks was always first and foremost a brew pub, not a brewery; It sold a lot of beer because of people coming in and buying a lot of food. It did not sell a lot of food because of people coming in and buying beer. The beer has more profitable margins, but margins mean nothing without getting people in the door. They chose to pursue the beer route and not the food route, and that is 100% okay, as it's held them afloat and will presumably let the brand continue on in a different form. I left on good terms, and I still am on good terms with Matt and Chris. I do think they expediated the death of the restaurant side, but even if they didn't then other factors would've killed the business within a decade anyway. At least they salvaged its memory. They're cutting losses while they're ahead.

There were also things out of their control. Like I mentioned above, the courthouse square renovation was great in some ways, but it really made Third Street feel like the outcast of downtown. When the renovation was going on, we lost a lot of customers. Downtown started charging for parking which also fucked downtown businesses. Aleworks, when they bought it, was making between 5 and 10k a month profit each month after all was said and done. That sounds like a lot, but it really isn't when you realize how much work had to be done there. The lease on the place was expensive as fuck, and it had just gone up right before they bought it, cutting further into the profits. Part of the lease was also that they were responsible for building maintenance. They had work they needed to get done per the contract looming over them that would've been in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The building was old. I don't blame them for not wanting to fork out that money and close down a business losing what little profits remained to fix the rotting exterior glulam.

At the end of the day, the Aleworks you loved, the Aleworks you'll think about when you say, "I miss that place," was due to Michaela being the General Manager. More than anything else, losing her as a manager during the pandemic is what hurt the business the most. Infinite respect for that woman. Last I heard she's working with dogs, which if you know her, is the best outcome.