Eastern Market Brewing Co. to open self-serve taproom at former Founders site in Detroit

The former Founders Detroit taproom has a new tenant — and it's a Detroit brewery setting its sights on further expansion.

Eastern Market Brewing Co. has signed a five-year lease and plans to open a self-serve taproom at 456 Charlotte St. in Detroit's Midtown in 2024, taking over the 14,000-square-foot space that Founders Brewing Co. occupied from 2017-23, including Founders' five-barrel brewhouse and brewing equipment.

The taproom, dubbed Elephant & Co. — as a nod to the brewery's roots and original elephant logo — will have dozens of taps featuring Eastern Market Brewing Co. beers, along with a Dooped Donuts cafe, the company's coffee and vegan donut venture, and Detroit-style pizzas. Delivery service for its food and beer selections will also be available.

"We poured our first beer six years ago today, at Eastern Market After Dark," said managing partner Dayne Bartscht. "I remember driving to Lansing because I couldn’t wait for them to mail the permit (for us to sell beer). I got the permit, drove down to Eastern Market, and we opened that night.

"So it's pretty wild that we’re making this announcement today. It's an emotional day just in general for the business."

This will be Eastern Market Brewing Co.'s second self-serve taproom — following Lincoln Tap, which opened in late 2022 in the former Roak Brewing Co. space at 330 E. Lincoln Ave. in Royal Oak — and its fourth taproom overall, joining Ferndale Project at 567 Livernois and its original location at 2515 Riopelle St. in Detroit's Eastern Market.

Lincoln Tap will eventually rebrand into the Elephant & Co. fold, part of the brewery's hub-and-spoke vision to open more Elephant & Co. taprooms statewide, and become the primary production and experimentation hub for the other locations.

Honoring history

Like many Detroit buildings, 456 Charlotte St. has a rich history, with many tenants over the years including the Cass Corridor Food Co-op and RS Electronics. Eastern Market Brewing Co. seeks to design the building to restore the look and feel from the 1950s and pay homage to those businesses and their values, enlisting Southfield-based JGA to oversee the branding.

Much like Founders Detroit before it, Elephant and Co. will have a spacious outdoor area that holds 150 people, an indoor space that seats 100 and and backroom events space that can accommodate up to 50.

"One thing we feel strongly about is the importance of community," said Pauline Knighton, the brewery's vice president of sales and marketing. "We’ve done real well at all locations in leaning into the specific communities we’re in, with Ferndale Project, downtown and Eastern Market. We want to carry that over to this location. We're excited to be part of the Midtown community, and have that beautiful event space we've never had before."

Founders Brewing Co., the Grand Rapids-based brewing giant, opened its second taproom in the space in 2017, hoping to expand its footprint in Detroit. But Founders abruptly closed it in May after a tumultuous six years that included a majority sale to Spanish beer company Mahou San Miguel; two racial discrimination lawsuits, one of which led to a temporary closure in 2019-20 due to community outrage, and the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced monthslong indoor dining closures across the state.

Taking over is Eastern Market Brewing Co., which opened in 2017 out of a 2,500-square-foot brewery and taproom at 2515 Riopelle St., and has greatly expanded its footprint across metro Detroit the past six years. In 2019, it acquired Axle Brewing Co. and opened Ferndale Project months later out of the former Livernois Tap, using its 10-barrel brewhouse to brew a variety of "creative, progressive and unconventional" IPAs, fruited sours and stouts.

In 2021, Eastern Market Brewing Co. signed a five-year lease for the 17,000-square-foot Roak Brewing Co. taproom and brewhouse, which allowed it to triple its brewing system capacity, ramp up self-distribution and grow its other ventures conceived in a business incubator during the COVID-19 pandemic, including Dooped Donuts and Peddler, a food and beer delivery service that will now fold into Elephant & Co. Lincoln Tap opened there a year later, becoming Michigan's first fully self-serve taproom shortly after the state made self-serving equipment for alcohol legal.

"The idea of Elephant & Co. wasn't really about the space (at 456 Charlotte). It was a way to bring all these businesses together," Bartscht said. "As we’ve grown, we’ve introduced new concepts and locations and brands, and as we did that, employees became more spread out to different locations and businesses. We wanted to bring everything together under a parent company."

What's next for EMBC

Contributing to the company's growth is its investor program, a crowdfunding effort launched in 2022 via the Mainvest platform that allowed investors to purchase equity in the company for as low as $500. The company raised roughly $1.2 million through the program, with plans to use the funds to grow its current operations, and promised its investors it'll distribute at least 50% of its profits back to them each year.

While those funds won't be used to open Elephant & Co., they will be used as part of Eastern Market Brewing Co.'s planned expansion for 2515 Riopelle, which will be delayed by about a year due to the new taproom opening and rising costs of construction, Bartscht told investors.

"Our plans are finalized (for expansion)," Bartscht said. "But we brought in some general contractors to quote it out, and it’s just not a good time to be developing a property."

While Elephant & Co. won't officially open until next year, it's planning a "soft launch event" on Oct. 27 in partnership with its landlords, Midtown Inc. and Invest Detroit, with all proceeds going toward community-based charities in Detroit.

In the meantime, this expansion allows Eastern Market Brewing Co. to continue growing the scope and versatility of its operation. For example, it'll use the Elephant & Co. hub in Royal Oak to test barrel-aged beers, and transform its five-barrel brewhouse in Eastern Market into a "wild brewhouse," focusing on wild sour ales, all of which will be distributed to serve at its various Elephant & Co. locations. As of now, Eastern Market Brewing Co. hopes to finish the year at around 4,000 barrels of beer production, with nearly 2,000 entering self-distribution to stores, bars and restaurants (Michigan law currently prohibits microbreweries from self-distributing more than 2,000 barrels of beer a year).

"We learned a lot over the past six years, and each location has taught us something different," Bartscht said. "It’ll bring all those lessons together in one place, and we’re really excited about that."

Brian Manzullo covers craft alcohol for the Free Press. Contact him: bmanzullo@freepress.com and on Untappd, bmanzullo and Twitter, @BrianManzullo and @SpiritsofDET.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Eastern Market Brewing Co. to take over Founders Detroit site