KALAMAZOO, MI — Rupert’s Brew House has served its final beer, owner Mark Rupert said.

The brewery and pub, open in downtown Kalamazoo for about six years, had its final day of business and hosted a comedy show on Sunday, Sept. 8, Rupert said.

It is sad to see the business go, he said, but also an exciting time, as he shifts to focus on plans to open a cannabis lounge in Kalamazoo.

Rupert spent the better part of 2019 operating a private cannabis club during special hours at the brewery. Located at 773 W. Michigan Ave., the brewery was housed in a unique, triangle-shaped building that fills a parcel of the same shape on the west side of downtown, not far from Western Michigan University’s campus.

People were drawn to the club, he said, where they could smoke marijuana and drink a beer at the same time.

Saturday traffic for the cannabis club was creating a bottleneck, he said, so the club eventually expanded to seven days a week, meaning, any night after 8 p.m., people were free to consume beer and marijuana and hang out with like-minded people, he said.

He saw people come from outside Michigan to partake in the scene, and the number of patrons in general increased, Rupert said, increasing from 50-60 customers on a typical Friday or Saturday, to about 200 people coming to the first night of the cannabis club. People kept coming as word got out, he said.

Despite that early success, Rupert stopped holding cannabis events in July soon after the state published new rules for recreational marijuana businesses.

“They, in my opinion, specifically wrote a paragraph saying, hey, you’ve done this for this long. You’re not going to do this anymore without getting proper licensing." he said. “And I respect that. So we stopped doing the club.”

Rupert's Brew House the night before its grand opening in 2013. (James Buck / MLive File Photo)

Customers hugged one another while enjoying their final pints at the bar Sunday, he said.

“It’s a sad moment, but also an exciting time, because we know that the future is right around the corner," Rupert said. “So us, as a brewery, we see it more beneficial to let the other breweries continue doing what they’re doing, we’re going to get into something else.”

Next, he wants to open Rupert’s Tree House, a cannabis lounge, in or near downtown Kalamazoo.

He would prefer it be in the same building, Rupert said while smoking a cigarette outside of the former brewery. He is considering another location as well, and is open to hearing other ideas about his vision and would like to attract investors for the new business.

Rupert thinks a hiatus of a couple months is needed to get prepared for the new endeavor. He said he can apply to the state for a license to operate a cannabis lounge starting on Nov. 1.

He envisions a lounge and another microbrewery business in an adjacent space, so people can buy their craft cannabis and hang out with other like-minded people in the lounge.

“The consumption lounge would be on the main side of the bar, that’s always been where the stage and everything is, and then we would separate the back into being a marijuana micro business, which would allow us to do 150 plants process at all here and sell sell it on the other side,” Rupert said. “So two separate entities that would supply the downtown with recreational weed and the consumption lounge where people could hang out and have conversations and talk about the future of what we want to see downtown.”

He wants to build a “craft” brand for cannabis the same way craft beer producers helped make a name for Kalamazoo, and to give people a local option among the many other options to buy marijuana available now and expected in the future, including some ran by large corporations, some based outside the country.

Growlers and glasses sit ready at Rupert's Brew House the night before its grand opening. (James Buck / MLive)

Though he saw an increase in the brewery’s business because of the amount of people interested in the cannabis club formed there last year, the change in his focus is about more than profit.

“We’re changing the stigma of how negative weed is and seeing it in a positive light,” Rupert said.

After the cannabis club opened, Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety officers took a walk through and did not take any action against the business, he said.

While recreational marijuana is here to stay in Michigan, local rules for related businesses have not yet been determined.

In April 2019, Kalamazoo City Attorney Clyde Robinson presented a recommendation to the Kalamazoo City Commission to temporarily opt out of allowing marijuana businesses in the city. He said in April that the the wording is subject to multiple interpretations and he suggested an ordinance to opt out of allowing recreational marijuana businesses with a sunset date, meaning the decision to opt out would expire on that date.

Robinson said on Tuesday, Sept. 10, that the city commission will be asked to make a decision on the issue, but declined to give further details about any possible recommendation he will bring to commissioners.

Rupert’s Brew House closed during a turbulent time in the Michigan craft beer industry, with impacts seen in Kalamazoo. This year in Kalamazoo:

Beyond closures and mergers, other breweries have made moves as they work to compete and promote their craft beverages.

Kalamazoo’s Brite Eyes Brewing announced in June in a Facebook post that it would eliminate morning hours and focus on brewing beer and executing a “simple, delicious” food menu to complement the beer selection.

Bell’s Brewery, the top seller of craft beer in Michigan, operates Bell’s Eccentric Cafe with an outdoor beer garden in Kalamazoo, with brewing operations in Comstock Township. The brand, incorporated in 1983 in Kalamazoo, released Bell’s Double Two Hearted Ale on Aug. 26. The company recently announced Light Hearted Ale, a low calorie version of its popular Two Hearted Ale, coming in 2020.

One Well Brewing, opened in Kalamazoo 2014, expanded its indoor and outdoor space in 2016. The brewery is celebrating sour week on Sept. 16 to Sept. 22, and releasing B-Plan, a new sour beer brewed with honey and local Brettanomyces yeast and aged in oak barrels.

Latitude 42 Brewing Company, opened in Portage in August 2013, opened a second location in Oshtemo Township in March 2018.

Presidential Brewing Co. opened in March 2019 in Portage. On Sept. 6, the brewery tapped Rutherford B. Haze, a juicy, hoppy, hazy New England IPA that was created by a home brewer, and selected (or elected) by customers at the pub as the top choice for that version of beer.

Mark Rupert.

Rupert’s Brew House was among the first businesses in Michigan to jump in with a new cannabis-centered business model, starting the cannabis club in January 2019 after voters legalized recreational marijuana in November 2018.

By July, Rupert was thinking more about the new opportunity for change.

“We figured let’s just, you know, pump the brakes on the beer and start looking to what really was making the business successful,” Rupert said. “In that time, the cannabis club was doing way more help to increase revenue as far as beer sales and everything else. People really wanted that one place where you can do both.”

The state’s rules made it clear he couldn’t serve beer at a cannabis club, Rupert said, and he had to make a choice.

“My decision was, you know, the beer was fun, we had a successful run with it, our reviews are fantastic. The atmosphere in here is great. But if you’re not making the sales was based off of the amount of options you have downtown, then you’ve got to make yourself something different. Us making ourselves different means let’s get into the cannabis situation.”

Specific plans are yet to be determined, Rupert said, but he would like it to be downtown and wants to create a space to help Kalamazoo embrace cannabis culture.

“It’s all up in the air at this point,” he said. “But that’s the exciting part about it is, you know, it’s a new adventure.”