Not that either is going to happen in CyTown but give me a Tom’s Watch Bar (Milwaukee - Deer District) or FanDuel Sports Network Live (St Louis - Ballpark Village).
Cytown Update
- Thread starter norsemen
- Start date
Tom's is great and has several successful locations across the country. That's definitely a good model for what we need in CyTown. A lot of people go there even when games are out of town because they know they'll be able to watch whatever game they're after and it has tons of seating.
The beer dorks get too hung up on the brewery aspect of this.
Also helped that it seemed like Kentucky alumni association took that area over so it wasn't worth it anyway. I walked through one day and was quite boring and dead.
The issue with Mullets in Ames was they franchised it to incompetent people with zero F&B or any industry knowledge.
My hot take on the craft brew tanking: Millennials love their IPAs and are now in their late 30's-40's with kids and don't go to microbrews very often anymore. It seems like 90% of the beers put out by microbrews are IPAs. At best, most places have like 7-8 IPAs, then one brown ale and maybe 1 stout. IPAs aren't that good.
Confluence has a lot more variety (the Milk Man is awesome), and I'm guessing they stick.
It's not tanking, its flattening to where it should have been in order for it to be sustainable. The covid boom was horrible for the industry, with **** place, after **** place opening, but overall share is still relatively flat at around 13.5%. Last year was the first year for more closures than openings, which is going to continue this year.
Craft beer sales are absolutely declining. The number of small breweries that opened was never going to be sustainable but that all started pre covid, not post. Iowa is still way behind the curve, there are sh!tty breweries that are still afloat but in the next 5-10 years a lot of them will be gone. The tried and true will make it but the craft beer hay day is well behind us. Alcohol consumption has changed dramatically over the last 10 years.
IPA's are still the strongest segment and continues to grow. While I fully agree that walking into a brewery that has 7 of 10 taps of similar IPA's is boring, the majority of craft beer drinkers want an IPA. The newest trend with IPA's is lower abv that are more approachable to the average consumer.
That said, give me a taproom with 7 of 10 different lagers and I am in heaven.
What is everyone's thoughts on a co-branded Breakfast Club and Grimaldi's pizzeria to anchor CyTown? I say that as Dark Side of the Spoon is growing those two brands aggressively.
While I'd love a sports bar, I am open to the idea of co-branding, especially 300+ days a year, the daily Ames visitors would probably use it more than a sports bar
While I'd love a sports bar, I am open to the idea of co-branding, especially 300+ days a year, the daily Ames visitors would probably use it more than a sports bar
I don't disagree with anything you said, except the term "tanking." I was using covid as an example for why things got to the saturation point they did. 75% of the breweries that opened from 2018-2023 had no business opening and the vast majority closing right now are from that timeline.
I'm not here to argue that craft beer isn't a tough segment, but it's also not going away. There are plenty of breweries in Iowa seeing incredible growth.
I am also in the boat that a brewpub would only work in CyTown if they were one of the secondary food and drink options and not the anchor tenant.
Tom's is great. Had a work trip with 4 days in Minneapolis in January. We went to the Tom's there back to back nights for Bears playoffs and CFP Champ game.
I don’t want to jinx it, but that’s prime location for Olive Garden #2
They did split the anchor tenant into two spaces in the latest plan I’ve seen. With one having the rooftop component
Agree
Craft beer isn’t necessarily tanking, as much as it is a case of all beer sales are declining.
More importantly, brewpubs/taprooms are declining the least. There is a shift to on-site consumption.
And we’re not talking some random location. A good establishment/vendor with the ability to have high throughput on game days would do well, and likely benefit from brand exposure that comes with the drinking nature of 60k on game days
Are people going to live at CyTown? I know that was in the plans not long ago but has that shifted to corporate tailgate suites?
Alcohol sales as a whole are declining.
In 2025, 54% of Americans reported drinking alcohol, the lowest level in the past 86 years, according to Gallup’s annual Consumption Habits Survey. The decline coincides with recent research indicating that any level of alcohol consumption could have a negative effect on a person’s health, according to a Gallup newsletter.
The drop in alcohol consumption is most pronounced among young adults, with the decline accelerating in recent years, Gallup reports. In 2023, 59% of people between 18 and 34 reported drinking alcohol; in 2025, that had fallen to 50%.
Offline Cocktails preparing to tap into growing ready-to-drink beverage market - Business Record
The power button symbol in Offline Cocktails’ logo nudges consumers to step away from their screens and instead, spend quality time with family and friends. That’s the message Matt and Jodi Schweiger want to convey with their startup, a $4.5 million canned cocktail and mocktail business they are...
www.businessrecord.com
Ive said it before but I think a place with a setup like Iowa Taproom seems like it'd do great. Good food and a selection of Iowa beers (along with other drinks available for those that aren't beer drinkers) so there's an array of options but not dependent on the success of one lone brewery\brewer
