Hickory Creek Brewing Owner Itching To Open In New Space

NEW LENOX, IL — Hickory Creek Brewing's owner had been eyeing a new home for it for more than a year before finally getting his hands on the building permits. Now Gary Meyer is putting the finishing touches on the space off Schoolhouse Road, hoping that it won't be long until he can open the doors. He's been working day and night to transform it into his new vision, with hopes of opening as soon as possible in January 2023.

Meyer, who originally opened Hickory Creek in 2018 in a strip mall on Laraway Road in New Lenox, now picked some space off Schoolhouse Road. Flanked by boutique coffee shop Gost Coffee with Pizza Di Farfalla inside, in addition to a massage therapist and a fitness center, the combination makes the new spot at 1333 S. Schoolhouse Rd. "pretty neat," Meyer said.

When he first spotted it, Meyer had hoped that the building owner would welcome Hickory Creek into the space there.

"I knew the coffee shop was there, saw there were large portions of the space not in use," Meyer said. "They embraced the idea."

Meyer had been facing a higher rent in the Laraway Road location, and would not have been able to carry on operations there. The retired engineer who started brewing beer two decades ago began his pursuit in a 150-year-old brick milk house on his property—situated on the west bank of Hickory Creek on Marley Road in New Lenox Township. A nanobrewery in 2016, it didn't take long for his work to outgrow that space.

"The larger space allowed us to upgrade from a nanobrewery to a microbrewery (less than 15,000 barrels of beer per year)," Meyer wrote on the brewery's website, "and to have a tasting room."

The 7-barrel brewing system they purchased enabled them to brew seven barrels per batch, or between 1,000 and 1,500 barrels per year. The microbrewery could seat 78, and they expanded beyond just beers, with live music offerings and a chicken food truck stopping by regularly for patrons. They'll carry on those ideas in the new location, Meyer said. In addition to the rotisserie chicken truck helmed by Country Grill Chicagoland, they'll bring in more, he said. Village regulations limited how many food trucks they were permitted to have at the old location, he said, but the new location is in unincorporated New Lenox, so the same rules do not apply.

"We’re going to go food truck crazy," he said.

Things might look a bit different inside—the colors will be brighter, more vivid than the previous location—but visitors will notice a familiar giant, 20-ft. submarine hanging, and the same wooden bar top from the brewery's first home. But the pops of color paints will be a sharp contrast to what people knew of Hickory Creek before.

"That’ll be the biggest thing," he said, of the brighter color palette. "We wanted to liven things up, brighten things up."

When he's able to announce an opening date, he'll share it on the brewery's Facebook page, which he asserts is the most accurate place to stay up on all things Hickory Creek.

Fans should plan to see all 16 taps up and running, Meyer said—he has a lot of inventory from the old storefront.

He's happy he'll be able to keep Hickory Creek Brewing in New Lenox, he told Patch.

"It’s my town, this is where I live," he said. "This is where I wanted to take care of the people."