Kelowna’s Red Bird Brewing is expanding big time

It was just five summers ago that Red Bird Brewing opened its doors in Kelowna’s North End with a modest 30-seat tap room.

Now, it’s looking at becoming 30-times bigger with a 900-person capacity.

“It was always in the plan,” co-founder and operations manager Adam Semeniuk told iNFOnews.ca, March 13. “It just took a number of years to get the sales under our belts, get the experience under our belts and waiting for the building beside us to become available. Then we made the move.”

Having good beer doesn’t hurt.

“Our head brewer, Blake (Lawrie), even before he started on as full time, he brewed some little batches in our space way back when,” Semeniuk said.

In the summer of 2021, Red Bird became the largest brewery in the city with seating indoors for 189 and outdoors for 314 for a total of 500.

READ MORE:Red Bird looking to be biggest in Kelowna’s brewery district

It has been able to get special event permits in order to hold about half a dozen events each year with up to 900 people by closing its parking lot and setting up tents.

Those were mostly for long-weekend events like July 1 and the brewery’s anniversary on the August long weekend.

The brewery has now applied, through the city, to have the larger space available on a more permanent basis, although Semeniuk expects to only hold about a dozen big events each year.

By having a revised licence, it will allow them to put on events on short notice.

He also wants to have early opening hours on weekends so families can come in before noon.

The licence application has to go to Kelowna city council before being forwarded to the province for final approval.

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