"Bar Month" at OnMilwaukee is back! For the entire month of March, we're serving up fun articles on bars, clubs and beverages – including guides, the latest trends, bar reviews, the results of our Best of Bars poll and more. Follow along with the #DrinkOnMke hashtag too. Grab a designated driver and dive in!
New Barons Brewing Cooperative, Drink Brew City and Faklandia Brewing are hosting a Beer Drive-Thru on Saturday from 1 to 6 p.m. at Faklandia’s new and future home, 3807 S. Packard Ave., in St. Francis, formerly the 42 Ale House.
The drive-thru will allow customers to stay in their cars while they purchase six-packs of cans or bottles from New Barons Brewing Cooperative, MobCraft Beer, The Fermentorium, Gathering Place and Broken Bat Brewing Company and more.
"We've got a few in the mix that I'm waiting for confirmation," says New Barons’ John Degroote. "I expect a few more here in the coming hours."
Degroote says Faklandia isn’t yet allowed to sell beer, but is graciously hosting the event and hopefully drawing attention to its future brewpub at the same time.
According to Degroote, the vendors are planning strict precautions in the exchange of money and beer, including the re-application of sanitizer on hands/gloves between each sale, frequent spray down of table you pull up to with San-O2-Gard, a brewer’s sanitizer that keeps beer tanks pathogen-free, and rub-down of product(s) with San-O2-Gard before receiving them.
A menu set up in advance of the pick-up and pay station will ensure speedier service and shorter interaction times. Also fewer than five people will be working the drive-thru at any given time, to limit the number of people involved.
The vendors request that you remain your car at all times and patiently wait in the line they’ll set up with traffic cones.
According to the Facebook page for the drive-thru, the event is:
"To support the growing MKE craft beer community during this tough time when bars, taprooms, and breweries are unable to be open. Many are reporting an 80 percent to complete loss in sales over these next few weeks and we’ve been discussing ways to support each other during this period. Luckily, in the beer industry, we have pre-packaged product that is manufactured with the most professional level of sanitation and we are employing new ways to deliver it to you as safely as possible! The state of Wisconsin has approved our ‘Beer Drive-Thru’ as an alternative to visiting our taprooms and events during the Covid-19 Pandemic."
Degroot says that if the drive-thru is a hit, they will keep it going indefinitely.
"As long as we have beer to provide," he says. "And maybe Faklandia’s license (will) come through at some point (and they can sell, too)."
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
