New bar offers outdoor experience
By TYLER ELLYSON - CNA staff reporter tellyson@crestonnews.com
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| Alan Shaffer, left, talks up a patron at Oaks Brew Garden, 103 N. Oak St., while his son Kyle works the other end of the bar. The two men work for Shaffer’s wife Julie, right, when running the bar and outdoor beer garden. (TYLER ELLYSON) |
The building at 103 N. Oak St. may be on its way back to being a summer staple in Creston.
Owners Julie and Alan Shaffer transformed the old Dairy Queen into Oaks Brew Garden and opened for business Wednesday.
Oaks Brew Garden offers customers an outdoor beer garden and “really good air conditioning” while enjoying cans or bottles of beer, wine coolers and wine.
“We have a fair number of specialty and import beers,” said Alan Shaffer. “We’re going to try and do more with that if there’s a demand.”
Shaffer said the bar has modest prices and an eclectic crowd, ranging from construction workers to college students to business executives.
Unique feature
Patrons utilizing the outdoor beer garden are also allowed to smoke, which has become an accidental selling point for the bar.
Three years ago, when the idea to make the building a bar was born, the Shaffers were looking to start a non-smoking establishment.
“When we first started toying around with the idea, almost all the bars and restaurants allowed smoking,” Shaffer explained.
State law changes since that time turned the concept of smoking in a bar into a rarity in Creston.
A negative to allowing smoking is that most cooking is prohibited by state regulations. Oaks Brew Garden currently serves only frozen pizzas and snacks. Shaffer hopes to have Tastee burgers, a loose meat sandwich made from the chili dog topping at Dairy Queen, brought in for sale in the future.
“We do intend to try that,” he said.
Future plans
Other potential happenings for the future include drink specials, events, draft beer and the addition of televisions to the beer garden. But, these are just possibilities.
“I think it’s naive to set a plan and say this is how it’s going to turn out,” said Shaffer. “I think people who make rigid plans and say this is how it’s going to turn out, they may be the comedians who make God laugh.”
For now the customers play as big of role as anybody in dictating what happens at the bar. From what music is played on the satellite radio to ideas placed in the suggestion box, the Shaffers are listening.
Current business hours are 4 p.m. until 2 a.m., depending on the crowd. The bar is closed on Sundays and Mondays.
“We’re finding out what people want,” Shaffer said. “To some extent, the customers will get to decide a lot of what happens.”
The only certainty is Oaks Brew Garden will not be open during the winter months.
“There’s not a definite plan other than the fact that we’re open,” said Shaffer.
A grand opening will be held sometime after the Union County fair.
Transition
There hasn’t been a business at this location since the Dairy Queen moved to Taylor Street eight years ago.
Although Shaffer says there have been previous offers for companies to utilize the building, and he had about 100 different ideas himself, its primary function was storage for equipment.
“We called it the grove,” said Shaffer. “Farmers always have a grove to keep equipment in.”
Shaffer, who has owned the building for 23 years, said they recently put a “full-court press” on to get the plans to fruition.
“I did feel some responsibility to freshen it up and put it to a new productive use,” he said. “We don’t need any more empty buildings downtown.”
Admittedly, transforming the building into a bar was a little more work than Shaffer expected, but things like the infrastructure, seating, coolers and counter seemed to already be a good start for the project.
“There were some things that made sense,” Shaffer said. “We really thought it was time to do this type of thing.”
After going through the regulations and licensing, extending the counter, taking down some walls and shelves and adding a fenced-in beer garden area, Oaks Brew Garden was ready for business.
Shaffer may own the building, but the bar is under Julie’s name, making Shaffer and his son Kyle employees at Creston’s newest watering hole. That’s just fine by them.
“This is a chance to spend every night of the summer hanging out with my son, talking with my friends and maybe paying some bills,” said Shaffer. “It’s win, win, win.”
