Dear Foothills Family,

What a March it’s been. The month we had planned to spend celebrating our 15th anniversary has instead featured closed businesses, canceled events, people in isolation and life brought to a near standstill.

Through it all, like most of you, we have first and foremost been concerned for the health and safety of our families, our co-workers, our community, our state and our planet. But we also, like most small businesses, have had to rapidly deploy drastically different business models, a process that would have been unthinkable even a couple of months ago.

Closing our doors and re-working how we continue to serve you, our customers, became the next top priority. We reacted by instituting curbside pickup for food, beer, wine and coffee at our pub and tasting room; and re-working our brewery schedule to keep the beer flowing to store shelves.

And you? You reacted by pulling together and supporting the businesses in your community, including us, to a degree that is both amazing and humbling. That outpouring of love and support has kept us going over the last couple of weeks and will continue to help us find our way in this new normal. ‘Thank you’ doesn’t seem like nearly enough to say . . . but thank you.

Here’s an update on the latest at Foothills:

BREWERY – Our brewery continues to brew and package beer. We are keeping areas like our lab off limits to all but essential personnel, keeping the brewers a healthy distance apart every day, and maintaining our usually stringent sanitation and sterilizing procedures. Some good news to report — last week we did our first canning run with our new Juicy IPA, Festival Express, in 19.2-oz. stovepipe cans! Those should be hitting store shelves this week and next, so keep an eye out for them. That beer will now be available in 12 oz. can 6-packs and 15-packs, in addition to the stovepipe single serves.

And we’ve switched Torch Pilsner to cans! Our award-winning Bohemian Pilsner is now available in 12 oz. can 6-packs.

Also, just a heads up, if you plan on purchasing our HopBox variety pack anytime soon, you’ll find a different mix of beers in it than we normally have (Hoppyum IPA, Jade IPA, Seeing Double IPA and a seasonal selection). Since we don’t currently have a seasonal to put in there (though HopJob Session IPA will soon be making its appearance in those), we’re putting one extra of each of those core beers in it instead. Which works out well for you — Jade and Seeing Double are two of our high-end beers, and you’re getting an extra one of each in this HopBox!

We’ve also made the tough decision to put our Craft Happiness IPA Project on hold for now. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, it’s our monthly IPA we brew to help support needs in our community. Our first release of 2020, U B U Juicy IPA, is still on shelves — it was brewed to encourage individuality and acceptance in our culture. A portion of proceeds from sales of that beer will benefit United Way. We’ll eventually crank this project back up again — but since these beers are 90% draft sales, we’ve decided to suspend production for now.

PUB – The pub, where it all started for us 15 years ago, has become a curbside pickup and delivery machine. The kitchen staff is turning out the same great food they always have, and our managers have been handling the logistics of pickup and delivery for the menu as well as packaged beer and growlers, wine and whole bean coffee. Pickup/delivery hours are 11:30am-8pm every day. Chef Shane has put together some family package specials for you, and you can also order from our regular menu (though there are a few htings we’re out of; those are noted on the online menu). And all of our wine bottles are half price! Just give the pub a call – 336.777.3348.

TASTING ROOM – The tasting room is open 11:30am-6pm every day, and also has packaged beer, growlers, wine (also half price) and whole bean coffee available for curbside pickup (sorry no delivery). Like the pub the tasting room has been offering growler fills, with the growler glass being free when you get it filled so we don’t have to sanitize brought-in growlers. But so many people have been taking advantage of that special . . . that we’re running out of our big (64 oz) growlers! We still have plenty of 32 oz. growlers, and we have more big ones arriving next week; so this week only we’re allowing customers to bring their growlers in (to the tasting room only, not the pub) and have their growler sanitized and filled.

They also have 4-packs of our 19.2 oz. cans – choose from Hoppyum IPA, Thousand Smiles Golden Ale, or Festival Express Juicy IPA ($10.99) or Craft Happiness Project IPA ($12.99).

PRO TIP: the tasting room has a pretty healthy stash of Sexual Chocolate left, in both 22-oz. bombers and 4-packs of 12 oz. cans. AND . . . we are allowing growler fills of Sexual Chocolate, for the first time ever. Might wanna get in on that. Call the tasting room at 336.997.9484.

There’s a word we use all the time in craft beer — coopetition. OK not a real word we made it up. But we think it sums up the craft beer life pretty succinctly — because no matter how much breweries compete, we know that at the end of the day we’re all in this together. So we always help each other. It’s a fitting word to use when referring to how we’re gonna get through this pandemic – by realizing we’re all in this together. We’re working to do our part . . . and we’re incredibly grateful to you for continuing to allow us to do that.

Stay Safe and Healthy,

Jamie Bartholomaus

President & CEO