Wrapping up a tour of the 50,000-square-foot restaurant and distillery at his company’s new hub, Jeff McCabe turned around and paused.
“I love it,” he said, taking in the timber-frame entry, the porch overlooking the woods, the rustic siding they’d found out West, and the glassed-in space where a 30-foot-tall copper still would soon sit.
A year and a half after buying a 318-acre property at the eastern edge of downtown, McCabe and the other co-owners of Hard Truth Hills are nearly ready to open their newest attraction.
A “pre-opening party” will take place from 4 to 9 p.m. Saturday, July 7. Visitors can start taking “hard hat tours” of the new distillery operation after the party, said Meaghan Lappin, general manager of Hard Truth Hills.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]The new restaurant at the site, Hard Truth Hills Big Woods, has a projected opening date of Monday, July 23. Hours will be 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Lappin said.
During the last part of June, landscaping was still under way, stairs were being built off the restaurant’s covered porch, and the walls were mostly bare except for paint.
“Normally, we’d be trying to open in a week, but there’s so much to do just on the ground itself,” said co-owner Tim O’Bryan, McCabe’s son-in-law.
On this building project — the company’s ninth in 10 years — “we didn’t want to go too fast,” McCabe said.
Instead of deferring some projects they planned to do later — like finish all the spaces in the restaurant and build office areas above it — they added to the work list and their budget. Originally, co-owner Ed Ryan had estimated a $5 million investment in Hard Truth Hills. “It’s gone up,” he said in a town meeting in April, in which the company asked for a new riverfront district liquor license.
McCabe didn’t want to discuss specific cost figures. “It’s a big project,” he said. “I always expect more, because we can’t stop short. For example, you saw where there’s a pad on your way in; that’s a rack house that we need. So we couldn’t wait for that rack house (which is used to age spirits), because it will generate revenue for us right away.
“We don’t suffer from cost overruns; we’ve just added to the scope and compressed the time frame, because this is our time. We need to make it happen, and if we delay on the restaurant, in sort of sub-optimizes (the experience),” he said.
McCabe likes to talk about the experience guests receive at the Big Woods family of properties, which can now be found in Nashville, Bloomington, Franklin, Speedway and, soon, Westfield. Company leaders have been working to build a certain culture at their workplaces, which they hope translates into happier, more productive, motivated employees who want to provide a high level of service to their customers.
“If people are happy with where they work, if you build them a nice place to work, if they have fun at work, everything’s better,” he said, walking through the dining room to the kitchen in the new restaurant. For instance, they decided to build an entire room just for dishwashing, “the toughest job,” and tweak the flow in this kitchen to make those jobs easier.
Just the cooler and freezer space is bigger than the original Big Woods brewpub on Molly’s Lane.
“You could put the (original) restaurant in the cooler,” McCabe said.
A month before Hard Truth Hills’ projected opening, about a half-dozen people, all of whom looked to be 40 or younger, were already working in the kitchen, washing dishes and organizing. At least a half-dozen more that afternoon were elsewhere on the property, helping with landscaping or other jobs they weren’t necessarily hired to do regularly.
“We needed them to help us get ready,” McCabe said. “And it’s good way to get to know somebody even before they start.”
The owners have been hiring locally as much as they can while building this new property.
Once it’s fully open, O’Bryan projects that they’ll employ 135 to 150 people at Hard Truth Hills, with well over 100 of them in the restaurant alone. About half of those jobs will be part-time, but some of the part-timers, such as kitchen and front-of-house staff, could end up working hours that would approach full-time, he said.
About 15 to 20 people already work at the welcome center on the property, which opened in December, as tour guides and bartenders.
The total number of employees at Hard Truth Hills will be a little more than what they currently employ at their downtown properties, the original brewpub and Big Woods Pizza. About 10 to 14 more work at the Quaff ON! brewing facility on the north end of Nashville.
Among all the Big Woods properties in five communities, they already employ well over 300, O’Bryan said.
Retaining staff hasn’t been much of a problem over the years, but finding 150 or so new ones to work at Hard Truth Hills has been a challenge, the owners said.
As of June 20, O’Bryan estimated they’d filled about half the jobs they expected to have — enough to run the restaurant, welcome center and production facilities, but not enough to keep work schedules comfortable for employees.
While the majority live in Brown County — McCabe estimated about 80 percent — some are choosing to drive from neighboring cities, he said.
“When you have some of these people making the drive from Bloomington or Columbus to come here to work a bartending or a serving shift, that is pretty powerful, right? Because they could just as easily probably try to find a job closer to where they are. Hopefully, partially, that’s because of how well they do, and hopefully that’s also because we are providing them with a good work environment. I’d like to think that’s part of it,” O’Bryan added.
Behind the bar in the welcome center, Manager Taylor Jacks smiled when asked how well an employee could do. He said he can make about $32 per hour with tips, and even averaging in slow days, good bartenders and servers can look at $17 to 19 per hour. Servers make a base rate of $2.50 per hour and bartenders make $7.25 per hour, which is “pretty standard for the industry,” but “that’s the ‘just in case’ wage, because we always kill with tips,” he said.
The owners hope that the uniqueness of Hard Truth Hills will bring more visitors and more business to Brown County, to support the people working here.
“We think this space will bring new customers to Brown County, new people, corporate groups and class parties and all that kind of stuff … certainly tour buses. We’ve made accommodations for tour buses outside to show up here. We’re working not to cannibalize the business we’ve created downtown. We think the business downtown will be great; we’re just going to bring more people,” McCabe said.
“Once people are here, we don’t want them to hurry off, right?” he said, gesturing to the patio seating at the welcome center. “Spend as much time as they want. That’s why we’re trying to have several different experiences, so every time you come, you can do something a little bit different if you want to.”
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THE WELCOME CENTER
This is where guests of Hard Truth Hills are to start their visit. A 30-minute tour is available in this building, which explains the history of the company and some about Brown County, how beer and spirits are made (including a taste test of the various stages of production), and a sit-down tasting of several kinds of products from Quaff ON! Brewing Co. and Hard Truth Distilling Co. Tours can take off as soon as every 15 minutes depending on demand. Starting July 7, longer “hard hat tours” will leave from the welcome center, which take visitors through the new distillery building. UTV tours also are planned through the 318-acre property. All tours are kid-friendly, with child tickets offered at a reduced rate. Tour reservations can be made at hardtruthhills.com.
THE RESTAURANT/DISTILLERY BUILDING
This is the home of a new, 250-seat Hard Truth Hills Big Woods restaurant, with seating inside, outdoors on the patio, or on the long covered porch overlooking the woods. Several private rooms will be available for rental, including the downstairs beer barrel-aging area where some small-batch brewing also will be done. This restaurant will serve a menu similar to Big Woods Speedway’s, but without pizza. A walk-up window at the lower level is where guests can pick up carry-out picnic baskets and drinks. Packaged liquor and Big Woods/Hard Truth Hills merchandise will be sold in the lobby. The dining room features a fireplace, steampunk light fixtures and five barns worth of barn wood. The restaurant also is kid-friendly; a fenced playground is in the works.
On the hard hat tour, visitors will climb stairs to a catwalk and walk around the giant vats where distilled spirits are made. They’ll see the cooker, where the grains and water come together to brew; and a series of open-top fermenters where they can see and smell the different stages of fermentation. Unlike some distilleries, where tours take place while employees aren’t working, normal daily processes will go on during hard hat tours, said co-owner Jeff McCabe. They expect the distillery to be fully running by Aug. 13.
The distillery area also includes corporate offices and work spaces for employees from other branches of the company, a laboratory, a proofing room to test the liquor and put it in barrels, and a distribution area. Beer distribution has been done out of the Quaff ON! facility north of Nashville, but distribution will be moved to Hard Truth Hills to make more room for brewing at Quaff ON!, said co-owner Tim O’Bryan.
MORE INFORMATION
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