Covid Kills Craft Beer Bar

A Court Street craft beer bar has shut off its taps and closed its doors for good — becoming downtown’s latest small-business casualty of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Beer Collective’s co-founders and co-owners Craig Sklar and Taurean Davis announced in a Facebook post this week that the gastropub they’ve run for the past three and a half years at 130 Court St. has permanently closed.

“This Covid-19 crisis has hit the world hard, and especially the service industry in ways for which we could not predict or prepare,” their Facebook post read. ​“Together, we will hopefully get through this crisis. This new world will sadly be without The Beer Collective. We have considered different strategies, but we are unable to keep the doors open any longer.”

On Thursday afternoon, Davis and Sklar met up with the Independent to talk through why they ultimately decided to close up shop.

They spoke about the slim margins and economic precarity of running a small business even when a pandemic has not closed most of the economy. About the challenges of navigating the federal Paycheck Protection Program designed to prop up small businesses during the pandemic. About the rent and utility and insurance bills that kept piling up even after they stopped service and laid off staff in March.

And about the pride they feel in having built a craft beer-rich community space that thrived for as long as it did.

“It is going to be a rough time,” Davis predicted. ​“We might have come out and been one of the first people to say that we’re closing, but I don’t think that we’re going to be the last.”

He said this economic shutdown has been particularly tough on bars, which rely on in-person gatherings and cannot easily transition to takeout. Some of his favorites bars around the country — such as Holy Grale in Louisville and Armsby Abbey in Worcester, Mass.—have closed indefinitely, if not permanently, during the current crisis.

David also offered a glimmer of hope. ​“The service industry is resilient,” he said. ​“At the same time, I think there’s going to be a lot of people who will find ways to make it through. Some way.”

The Beer Collective’s closure comes roughly a month and a half after the longtime Whitney Avenue diner Clark’s announced that it too would be closing for good because of the pandemic and associated economic shutdown.

“The Definition Of A Small Business”

Davis, 34, and Sklar, 35, opened the craft beer bar on Court Street in September 2016. Click here to read about their business’s early days, how the two co-owners met, and the concept for their bar.

Open seven days a week, The Beer Collective had 20 beers on tap, 15 in cans, and a cellar bottle list. They focused on craft beers from throughout the state — and the country. (When asked for the favorite beers they served up on a nightly basis, Davis pointed to Fox Farm’s Layers IPA, and Sklar to Hoax’s Sleight of Hand sour Berliner Weisse.)

They also had a food menu and a wine list. But, Davis said, the business operated primarily as a bar. Over 70 percent of its monthly revenue came from alcohol sales, and the rest from food.

The bar employed 15 people, including Davis and Sklar, who spent nearly every day working at the bar they co-founded and co-owned.

“We were very much the definition of a small business,” Davis said. ​“We were owners that were they every day. We loved what we were doing.” They hosted trivia nights, promoted local brews, and even hosted a few weddings and wedding receptions.

On March 15, they closed their doors for what the co-owners thought would be a temporary amount of time. Maybe a month? Maybe a little longer? The state had just announced that all indoor dining establishments and bars had to close in order to stem the spread of the novel coronvarius.

Davis and Sklar said they thought about trying to transition to a take-out business model, as many other restaurants did. But they were first and foremost a bar centered around bringing people into the same physical space to drink, talk, and build community around craft beer.

Sklar said they laid off their staff relatively early on into the closure. He said that, fortunately, everyone who used to work at the bar was able to qualify for unemployment compensation.

After the passage of the $2.2 trillion federal CARES Act towards the end of March, Sklar said that they applied for the first round of funding for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).

That’s the federal small business support program run by the Small Business Administration (SBA) and funneled through private banks that provides eligible small businesses with loans worth two months of payroll. Those loans became forgivable if the recipients spent over 75 percent on payroll.

Sklar and Davis said they also applied for one of the SBA’s Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDLs).

“We didn’t end up getting anything,” Sklar said. Their bank turned down their PPP application. They never heard back about the EIDL.

They then watched the money in the first round of PPP funding fly out the door towards businesses that, for the most part, had significant pre-existing relationships with banks.

Davis said that The Beer Collective co-owners, like many small business owners around the country, did not have any special relationship with financial institutions that they could lean on. They had a bank account that they regularly deposited money in. And they had taken a loan out towards the start of the business’s life that they were still paying off. That was about it.

By the time a second round of PPP funding came through, Davis said, the two co-owners decided that it wasn’t worth applying again and potentially taking on a loan that might throw them further into debt.

They still had quite a few expenses. But with their former employees all on unemployment, those expenses weren’t necessarily payroll. They still had to pay rent to their landlord, Olympia Properties. And they still had to pay utilities and a raft of insurance plans that are required to run a bar.

“Access To Money”

“It was a really tough decision for us,” Sklar said. They ulitmately decided that closing up for good was the best thing to do. They said they’re still negotiating with their landlord around how to get out of their five-year lease, which ends in a year and a half.

When asked what would have helped them keep The Beer Collective, Davis and Sklar had the same answer. ​“Access to money.”

That is, easier access to some kind of grant or other financial assistance that would not have thrown them into further debt and that would have allowed them time to adapt their business model to the new realities of the service industry.

“We were open for three and a half years, and it was bittersweet to close, but I very much think we accomplished what we wanted to do,” Davis said.

“We served fantastic beer from great brewers that otherwise didn’t get as much recognition. We gave them a platform to be able to display their beer. And we gave a lot of people who were as passionate about beer as us a good place to be able to drink and gather and nerd out about beer.”

Sklar said that he plans to stay in New Haven and try to open a new restaurant called Haven Hot Chicken. Davis said he plans to move back to his home state of Colorado and potentially open a new food service business in Denver.

“More Than Just A Bartending Gig”

In the days after The Beer Collective co-owners announced that the bar would be closing for good, former staff and customers flooded Facebook with fond memories and words of praise.

“Working at The Beer Collective was much more than just a bartending gig,” wrote Austin Scott. ​“This place became my home away from home and the staff was my second family. To lose a job permanently due to a virus has to be the most unfair thing in life I’ve ever had to experience. That being said, life isn’t fair and we have to keep moving forward and looking towards the horizon.

“I want to give a huge thank you to Craig Sklar and Taurean Davis for the job opportunity of a lifetime that ultimately lead to me starting my own business. Without this job I would have never moved to New Haven and made friendships with so many people that are going to last a lifetime.”

Michael Sneed agreed. ​“Hands down one of the best environments to work in with amazing people,” he wrote. ​“Taurean Davis and Craig Sklar, thank you guys for everything.”

“I owe ALL my beer knowledge to Craig Sklar and Taurean Davis,” wrote Amy Nelson, ​“hands down most knowledgeable beer connoisseurs I’ve ever met. Sad to see the doors close for good.”