Friday, September 17, 1999
Eatery shifting attitude
Beer to wine on Main Street
BY AMY HIGGINS and LISA BIANK FASIG
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Out with the nachos and in with the wines: The Main Street Brewery is closing this weekend to make way for an upscale restaurant and wine bar coming in December.
Tonight and Saturday will be patrons' last chance to partake of the pub fare at 1203 Main St., in the heart of Over-the-Rhine's Main Street entertainment district. The Swing Lounge on the second floor closed two weeks ago.
Vince Bryant, the 5-year-old restaurant's co-owner, said the change is intended to counteract the district's shift toward a younger, strictly bar-going set. He hopes the new restaurant's sophisticated atmosphere will draw patrons beyond the weekend, late-night niche that the district has developed.
“Food can be our point of difference,” Mr. Bryant said. “In this competitive business, you have to continually reinvent yourself.”
Mr. Bryant said the new restaurant — called Jump Cafe & Bar — will hold more than 500 people and increase floor space from 8,000 to 10,000 square feet after the $500,000 renovation.
The new eatery's menu will be similar to Teller's, the Hyde Park restaurant also owned by Mr. Bryant's Queen City Brewing Co. When it opens in December, Jump will feature a display kitchen, wood-fired oven and Cincinnati's first wine bar, Mr. Bryant said. The wine bar will share the restaurant's tapas appetizer menu and offer the company's microbrewed beer.
“That sounds wonderful to me,” Marge Hammelrath, executive director of Over-the-Rhine Foundation, said of the concept change. “I think it's neat the way they keep adding interest to what they're doing.
“They continue to evolve.
They change with the times.”
Mr. Bryant said the times have brought several new businesses to the Main Street district that only serve drinks and seem to cater to the younger set. When the Main Street Brewery opened, the restaurant was busy seven days a week during lunch and dinner hours. Now, however, it's mostly crowded only between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday.
“The older clientele is staying in Covington, or in Hyde Park,” Mr. Bryant said.
Bob Schneider, president of the Over-the-Rhine Chamber of Commerce and owner of six Main Street clubs that are his tenants, said the number of visitors to Main Street is rising, but younger visitors are outpacing the older crowd. New attractions, such as Banana Joe's and Have a Nice Day Cafe, are drawing young people.
“Probably the average profile is 25 to 35,” he said. “It gets so crowded down here, and there's a lot of great entertainment, but it's not really geared toward an older group.”
Mr. Bryant said he hopes to bring a more diverse crowd to Main Street. Business at the restaurant — which had sales of more than $12 million in the past five years — has slowed recently.
“I'm glad my neighbors are there, but it's a tough business to stay on the cutting edge,” he said.
Mike Starling, editor of New Brewer magazine in Boulder, Colo., said the craft brewing industry in 1998 was worth more than $3 billion. The brew pub sector is stronger than the microbrew sector, he said.
“I think what basically you have is an industry that took off like a shot and had a large amount of growth,” Mr. Starling said. “What I think we see now is more a maturing of the industry. The really good businesses are doing well.”
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