SLY FOX PHOENIXVILLE
WILL RELOCATE THIS FALL
Sly Fox Brewhouse & Eatery will move across Rt. 113 into the Maple Lawn Shopping Center this fall. If all goes according to schedule, the move will be completed by the end of October.

The new pub will be located on the site of the recently closed Blockbuster store, which is being entirely revamped, including the creation of an outdoor terrace in front of the building and the addition of a cold room for the brewery on the back of the building.

Sly Fox Brewhouse & Eatery opened in December 1995 and is the linchpin in the evolving Sly Fox entity which now includes the 20bbl production brewery and restaurant in Royersford. The column below by Brewhouse founder and co-owner Pete Giannopoulos explains why a new location has become a real necessity and gives some insight into what the new pub will be like.

Another newsletter will be arriving next week with a floor plan of the new site and more details.

I guess you all have heard about our move across Rt. 113 this Fall. Sly Fox Brewing Company has had a long and storied history at our original location in Pikeland Village Square. My family, the staff and our regular customers love our birthplace but the time has come.

It all reminds me of the feelings my wife Mary and I had when we packed up all of our belongings and moved from our first house, which we had spent so much time fixing up and making truly ours, to our new home where we?ve lived since 2001. As much as we loved our previous home with all of the great memories, we could not know at that time how much we would love our next home and the wonderful neighborhood where the kids have met some lifelong friends.

You do what you have to do once you figure out what?s best for your family, in this case the Sly Fox family. The fact is that the current building has begun to need a whole lot of love. We approached the landlord about our concerns and they were able to give us a fresh look outside with the painting of our building. And we replaced the carpeting and repainted our home inside. But the most costly concerns involved much more than superficial changes, including an air conditioning system that we could no longer rely on and which required ongoing repairs. We also had to rent and then purchase a portable heating system to make it through the extremely cold winters, anyone who came in on those days knows the sound of our forced hot air heating system. Top this off with not having a vestibule area to prevent the instant loss of heat while the cruel winter winds blew directly into our restaurant and you can see what we were facing. We had a few more key areas which had to be addressed.

The bottom line was that it has become way too costly for Sly Fox to operate a profitable business at the current location with energy bills approaching $5,000 a month. I am also looking at the future cost of energy and becoming very concerned. Between the inefficiencies in our old heating and air conditioning and the thousands of dollars a year we are spending in maintenance and makeshift solutions, we need to make a move for the numbers to continue to work.

I first met Gutram ?Gunty? Weisenberger when we shared a Sly Fox Vienna Lager on the day we first introduced it. That is a the first positive sign for me. He loved the beer and compared it to what he had recently enjoyed in Vienna, Austria. He operates Westover Properties, which has its corporate headquarters in King of Prussia, for his Austrian family. One of their properties is Maple Lawn Shopping Center across the street. And when we sat down to discuss moving the pub over into the vacant Blockbuster site, he was able to meet all our needs and concerns.

The first was the refrigeration that was going to be needed to house all of our great beer selections. If we built a cold box into the existing space, the pub itself would be too small. Gunty agreed to add a new cold room onto the back of the building.

The next crucial issue was our biergarten, or outside terrace. It was as if he was already prepared for this objection. He insisted that they would build us a new terrace in front of the pub that everyone in the shopping center and its visitors would admire. Perhaps the most important issue among many friends, customers and family alike was the annual Bock Fest and Goat Race. They said they would be happy to accommodate us there as well, making it an even bigger and better community event.

And that is why we signed a new long term lease with Westover Properties and are in full swing at this very moment. We intend to stay in our current home right up to moving day and to hit the ground running. The other day I even got an offer from a good customer to help at no charge. Another reminder of how much of a family we have become.

Needless to say, this will require a high level of coordination because we have to submit extensive plans to the Health Department in order to start the building process. This will require the submission of precise layouts and blueprints that Betzwood Associates have almost completed. The same goes for the state Liquor Control Board (PLCB) and the Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) at the federal level.

I am very, very excited about everything and am taking full responsibility for this important decision. I know that everyone is concerned whether we can pull it off. The answer is that we cannot not pull it off (you may have to read that sentence once or twice slowly).

One last thing that helps explain my confidence: Robin Kohn, owner and president of Betzwood Associates, and I are close friends and are working side by side on this project. His firm has been doing all our work for fifteen years and it was he and I, so many years ago, who created The Sly Fox Brewhouse & Eatery. I have all the confidence in the world in Robin and would not work with anyone else. When I walked up to Robin and said ?it?s time to put the dynamic duo back together,? he could tell by the tone of my voice exactly what that meant and responded with that wry smile of his. It was almost like he said ?I?ll meet you at the bat cave.?

On the First Friday of every month, Incubus Tripel goes on tap at Noon, only in Phoenixville.	On the Second Friday of the month, a new Varietal Pale Ale is released at both the Phoenixville and Royersford pubs.	On the Third Friday of the month, a firkin of cask ale goes onto one of the hand pumps in Phoenixville at Noon.

© Sly Fox Brewing Company, All Rights Reserved.