Based on its successful development of craft cocktails, North Pier Brewing Company will be powering a new tacos and cocktails restaurant format called Kingfisher, which is expected to open late-summer at 210 State Street in St. Joseph.
Jay Fettig, owner of Kingfisher and NPBC, wants the new restaurant to have a casual atmosphere for quick and easy dining that reflects the laid-back beachfront lifestyle of St. Joseph.
“Saint Joe gets so busy and already has so many restaurants, we wanted to offer something that is casual, quick and easy, where you can come in board shorts and flip-flops,” Fettig said.
“If you want to stay for a drink you can, but everything is available to-go. We wanted to have things that are handheld and easy to eat walking around downtown or carrying down to the beach.”
The Kingfisher taco menu will center on beach themes organized in three categories: Baja, which will focus on Mexican-style tacos; Caribbean, including jerk chicken flavors; and Tiki, consisting of fruit and fish flavor combinations.
The restaurant will offer appetizers as well as rice bowls featuring island-style fried rice with rich flavors and topped with meat, micro cilantro and fried egg.
In 2018 NPBC wanted to experiment with some new product lines, so it obtained several licenses to produce mixed spirits and craft cocktails.
“Seltzers were just starting to take off, and not too many people were doing craft cocktails,” Fettig said. “Just like with our beers, we want them to be easy drinking for a kind of lazy beach lifestyle.”
NPBC’s first cocktails were the Cut and Run and Gold Coast tiki styles, which did well in the taproom and in distribution.
“As we’ve added more beers and started running out of space to put things, we started looking at a new space and concept that highlighted the cocktails even more,” Fettig said
Kingfisher is opening in the space formerly occupied by Schaller Gallery, between Third Coast Surf Shop and The Toy Company. Fettig hoped to open Kingfisher by the beginning of summer, but found the building required more work than was expected.
“It’s an old downtown Saint Joe building, and as soon as we started peeling back the layers, the complexity of the remodel just grew and grew,” Fettig said.
Fettig chose this location to capitalize on the foot traffic in downtown St. Joseph, as well as for his existing relationship with the building owner, Ryan Gerard. Gerard’s business, Third Coast Surf Shop, located next door, has done several collaborations and events with NPBC.
“When Ryan bought the BUILDING, he wanted to have something cool there that would add to the downtown community,” Fettig said.
“He approached me during the heart of COVID and we weren’t exactly planning to do our next location at the time. In the end, we decided it would be a perfect location for us.”
The building has a similar footprint to North Pier’s existing taproom, which Fettig said will translate to a familiar service model that the company is comfortable with.
Fettig hopes Kingfisher will draw new customers to North Pier Brewing Company and North Shore Inn — the legendary burger restaurant across the street from NPBC — which the company acquired in 2018.
“With North Pier and North Shore, people are coming to us specifically,” Fettig said. “It’s great that we’ve made this corner into a destination, but we’ve never had the walk-in traffic.
“We’re excited about being in a downtown location with Kingfisher as a complimentary but different business, and hoping that visitors to downtown who don’t know about North Shore and North Pier yet might visit us in Benton Harbor too.”
Jay Dean, who joined the NPBC team from Chicago in 2018 to help the company’s acquisition transition of North Shore Inn, will be the head of tacos at Kingfisher.
“Jay (Dean) is honestly overqualified for what he’s been doing for us, but he really liked the company and we’ve been really fortunate to have him,” Fettig said.
“We knew he would be a great person to head this up, and we were glad we could promote within the company instead of hiring someone from outside.”
Kingfisher will ultimately be open for lunch and dinner seven days a week, but Fettig said current labor market shortages may cause the restaurant to start with Thursday-Sunday service. The restaurant is currently hiring for kitchen and front-of-house positions.
Visit the company’s website kingfisherdowntown.com or facebook page https://www.facebook.com/kingfisherdowntown for more information.
