Although Scotty's Brewhouse will be starting to sell liquor within the next month, the atmosphere of the restaurant will not change, said owner Scott Wise.
"We’ve always tried to position ourselves as a restaurant first and a bar second, so I’ve always felt like we’re the place where you want to get the night started,” Wise said. “We don’t want to be the bar that has 50-cent shots, that’s not who we are.”
The restaurant's hours will adjust based on the customers' wishes, but for now they are staying the same.
Wise said he has wanted to get a liquor license for several years, but the timing was never right. The license, which he applied for in July and is hoping to have by Family Weekend on Oct. 23, will attract a different demographic to his restaurant, he said.
Scotty's Brewhouse's current alcohol menu is limited to beer and wine.
“We’re going to open ourselves up to a whole other crowd of people that may have avoided us because they couldn’t come in, you know, on a Friday night,” Wise said. “I think we kind of segmented ourselves; we pigeonholed ourselves so we lost out on some of those people that did want to have [liquor].”
Wise said obtaining the liquor license wasn’t difficult, but it was costly. He said he knew going in that it could cost anywhere from $50,000 to $80,000, but there were other expenses as well, like ordering glassware and figuring out where to put all the bottles of liquor.
Wise declined to say how much he paid for the license because of ongoing negotiations.
In addition to getting their liquor license, Scotty's Brewhouse also underwent a complete interior remodel.
“We had to remodel the entire bar. We didn’t remodel just because we wanted to remodel, … but it needed remodeled so we could have a place to put all the liquor ... [and] all the martini glasses and champagne glasses and wine glasses," Wise said.
All in all, Wise said they spent about $350,000 this summer, completely redesigning the interior, purchasing the liquor license and the supplies for serving liquor and losing capital when they closed for a week to undergo construction.
Wise said even with the expense, he’s pleased that it’s all come together.
“It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long, long time, and I’m so happy that it finally came through,” Wise said. “[The restaurant] just needed a face lift, so when I found out that we could get a liquor license … and we could do a face lift at the same time, everything came together at the perfect intersection."
Scotty’s Brewhouse President of Operations John Benjamin said the time was right to remodel. The restaurant will be celebrating its 20th anniversary next year.
“It was time to update the restaurant … it’s a new look for all of the Scotty’s locations,” Benjamin said. “I think it’s a great look with an industrial warehouse feel.”
Wise said he doesn’t like to follow the crowd with the food he offers his customers, and now he’s excited to offer unique drinks to his customers in Muncie. He said they will have four different margarita versions.
“We try to be unique and we try to be a trendsetter and we try to look at what is popular in the industry, and so Muncie and Ball State have been missing out on that,” Wise said. “They’ve seen it in our food, but they haven’t really seen it in our cocktails that we serve, and we have a lot of fun with them, … so I think it’s really going to put that diversity on our menu.”
Benjamin said he’s already heard positive reactions to the remodel, and adding the liquor license along with updated staff training will help the restaurant stay around for a long time.
“We’ve been here 19 years and want to be here another 20 years,” Benjamin said. “It’s a real unique restaurant — who else serves both tater tots and waffle fries?”
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