A former automotive parts warehouse in Dexter will be undergoing a cleanup and transformation into a new brewery and distillery for Northern United Brewing Company, LLC, doing business as
Jolly Pumpkin. A tasting room and retail shop is also included in the plans for the former Martinrea/Pilot building located at 2319 Bishop Circle.
Last week, the Dexter Village Council approved Jolly Pumpkin's application to the state for micro brewer, small winemaker, and small distiller licenses. As the property is zoned industrial, the company is working with the village to obtain the necessary approvals for a tasting room, according to Ron Jeffries, co-founder and co-owner of Jolly Pumpkin.
Jeffries hopes to be up and running in the new location by September or October. The company will move production from its Broad St. site in Dexter, where it has 10,000 square feet of production space. The purchase of the new building will nearly quintuple the production floor, to 48,000 square feet.
The facility is about 85,000 square feet in total. Jeffries says renovations will include new sloped floors with floor drains and trench drains, plumbing, CO² drops to production areas for bottling, modification of existing offices, and the installation of quality assurance and quality control labs.
"Every year we've doubled our sales," says Jeffries. "We're just flat out of space in our existing building so we've been looking for a while to find the right space and we wanted to stay in Dexter ... We take orders from our wholesalers that we can't fulfill for months just because of the size of our production facility. There's an opportunity for oak-aged sour beer, which takes quite a while to produce, for some instant growth."
Jeffries projects adding anywhere from 10-20 jobs as an immediate result of the expansion, and possibly up to 50 within a year and a half after opening. Staff will be needed for brewing, quality control, packaging, office support, and sales and marketing roles.
While distilling and wine making operations will be ongoing, first and foremost, the facility will be a brewery, he says. "While we will have wine and spirits going on there, it's not any sort of Jack Daniels or something."
Source: Ron Jeffries, co-founder and co-owner of Jolly Pumpkin
Writer: Tanya Muzumdar
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