From left, co-owner Ben Mills, chef Jessie Schumann, co-owner Mitchell Owen, and employee Ryan Hughes Staff photo

Hungry Fossil Cove patrons now have an option to grab dinner without ever leaving happy hour.

Owner Ben Mills has partnered with Little Bread Co. co-owner Mitchell Owen to open a new restaurant inside a shipping container adjacent to the brewery.

The new restaurant, called Container Kitchen, has been open for about a week testing out recipes and developing the menu.

The idea for the restaurant came after Mills saw a trend in his nightly beer sales during dinner time.

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“We noticed our sales dropped every evening from 6-8 p.m.,” he said.

Every evening except Wednesday, when local food truck Nomad’s Natural Plate parks outside and serves dinner during trivia night.

Seeing the trend, Mills enlisted Owen, who co-founded Nomad’s (but has since sold the business to an employee), to help create a restaurant to serve food for the remainder of the week.

Mills and Owen ordered the shipping container that would become the exterior of the restaurant from a company in Oklahoma, and did all the renovations and modifications to turn it into a functioning restaurant themselves.

Once the container was nearly ready to go, they hired local chef Jessie Schumann, who was returning to town after a stint in New York to develop the cuisine.

The menu is simple, focusing on just six items made from scratch with fresh ingredients. There’s a bratwurst dish, two burger sliders with buns made locally at Little Bread Co., an avocado taco, a strawberry bacon goat cheese salad, and cheesy polenta fries.

Schumann said the menu will probably expand and evolve over time, and she also plans to develop items to complement seasonal beers created at the brewery as well.

The restaurant will soon host a grand opening to coincide with the release of Fossil Cove’s new line of canned beers, Mills said, though no specific date has been determined.

The Container Kitchen will be open for dinner on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday at 4 p.m. (Wednesdays will remain reserved for Nomad’s Natural Plate), and on Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m.

New Fossil Cove location in the works

Map: Todd Gill, Flyer staff / Enlarge

Mills told us on Monday that he’s working on expanding his brewery to a new building to be built just down the road from his original location.

He purchased 0.93 acres at 603 W. Ash St. back in December, and is currently working through the design phase of the project with local architecture firm, Modus Studio. The new location is about a block from the current brewery, and even closer to Scull Creek Trail.

Details on the project are still being worked out, he said, but creating a space for Container Kitchen is definitely part of the plan.

We’ll have more info on the new Fossil Cove brewery once Mills and his team have ironed out the details. In the meantime, craft beer fans in midtown Fayetteville have a shiny new Fossil Cove location to look forward to.