East 40 Brewery is #BlueSpringsStrong

How do you run a brewery during a pandemic? That’s just the question East Forty Brewing owner David Mann and his staff have had to figure out over the last five months.

“It all happened really quickly. We knew it was going to come here, but we weren’t really prepared to shut down,” Mann said. “That first month or so, we were figuring something new out every day. But we were able to pivot our whole service model and found little successes to keep us going.”

During those initial months, Mann and his staff embraced the curbside pick-ups of food and beverages, taking advantage of the pandemic’s more open state liquor laws – which allowed selling pre-mixed drinks to-go.

Photo by Jaime Russell, Anthem Photography

“As a brewery, we were already able to sell our beer to-go in growlers, so we were used to that,” Mann said. “But when the state opened up the ability to sell our pre-mixed drinks, we began canning those for to-go and delivery, which was great, because it had been something our customers had been asking about for a long time.”

Mann was also able to keep all of his full-time employees working during the shut-down by providing the curbside and delivery options as well as using the down-time as a chance to address some deferred maintenance issues in the building and work on adding an event space to his property.

When restaurants and bars were allowed to open in May, albeit with pretty strict guidelines on capacity requirements, Mann worked with the City of Blue Springs to expand his outdoor footprint through a special permitting process approved by the City Council.

Now, East Forty offers live music, socially distanced of course, on the weekends in the new expanded outdoor patio – which used to be the back parking lot.

“We’re really trying to keep everything and everyone outside right now to keep our customers as safe as possible,” Mann said. “So when the weather is nice, we have been thriving. And now we are working on a plan to make our outdoor areas more ‘all-season’ so we can continue accommodating our customers safely if the pandemic continues through the fall and winter.”

While business may have been a bit slower and the ever-changing pandemic restrictions and re-opening guidelines issued by the county health department have been a challenge, Mann says these have things have actually helped Easy Forty grow their team and capabilities.

“We’re in a better place now than we were when this all began. We’re just trying to be safe and do our part not to spread the virus throughout the community.”

Thank you to the City of Blue Springs, The Examiner, Community Services League Blue Springs, and Downtown Alive for supporting our local small businesses. Together, we are #BlueSpringsStrong!

Photos by Anthem Photography