By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
The time has come for Zach and Chris Tracy.
On Monday, Feb. 1, they will open the doors of Juniper Brewing Company to the public.
The couple has been working to realize their dream of a place featuring Zach’s micro-brewed beer that offered food, company, and entertainment throughout the day and into the night.
For now, the shop will be open 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. with coffee drinks, including nitro brewed, and other non-alcoholic beverages and a café menu featuring breakfast and lunch items, including a variety of toasts, salads, grain bowls and more.
Signature items will include a quinoa bowl topped with roasted butternut squash, poached chicken, shredded kale, crumbled goat cheese, dried cranberries, toasted pepitas; Juniper toast made with sourdough bread topped with Juniper jam, goat cheese, toasted pepitas, lemon zest and a drizzle of agave; a chorizo breakfast burrito; and curried chicken salad on a croissant.
Service will be take out and dine in. The size of the space, which has a capacity of almost 200, allows for social distancing.
They hope to start longer hours and serving craft beer later in the spring.
Signs announcing the pending opening of the venture appeared in the window of the former Panera at 145 S. Main St. in downtown Bowling Green back during the 2019 Black Swamp Arts Festival.
At that point the couple was anticipating a spring 2020 opening. What they could not anticipate was a global pandemic. Just at the time when they should have been gearing up for opening, the world closed down.
But that didn’t deter the Tracys. Once they moved back to Bowling Green from the Cleveland area in early 2019, getting Juniper planted and flourishing was their goal.
The pandemic paused work on the project in March 2020.
The first week no one knew what was going on, Zach said. No one was in the space.
Construction was deemed essential in Ohio, Chris said. So, they worked with tradespeople to schedule work.
“We were trying to be very careful and thoughtful about who was in the space,” she said. “There weren’t more than like four people in the space at the same time.”
“It was very important to us that people were safe,” she said.
While work was able to continue “this certainly caused some anxiety about the timeline,” Zach said.
“The coronavirus has thrown a curveball into everyone’s business plan certainly into ours,” Chris said. “It was a matter of just trying to complete each task that we knew was in front of us at a time, and switching gears and thinking about our business model completely differently.”
Chris explained that at first the coffee element was a smaller part of the operation. “We wanted to be open in daytime. Zach was going to be here anyway brewing and doing his thing.”
Then with the pandemic that element as well as online ordering started to grow.
During this progressive opening “Zach will be tinkering with completing all the mechanicals of the brewing system,” Chris said.
When they open more fully, Juniper will feature a number of guest taps from some of the craft breweries he worked with in Cleveland as well as a few of his beers.
The number of in-house beers will increase over time, though the restaurant will maintain a few guest taps.
Zach, who was a teacher until he moved back to his hometown of BG, started brewing in 2003. Over the years he won awards in Ohio and Michigan. In 2012 he took a course through the American Brewers Guild culminating with a week at a California brewery.
He interned at Fat Heads and Noble Beast, working with top regional brewers. All that experience, he said, has helped shape a personal style that will be showcased at Juniper.
He also has worked on infusing coffee with hops to create coffee in style of classic beer varieties.
While Zach’s developing the beer, Chris focused on the interior design. She had high hopes for the space.
Working in banking, she has experience in financing community development projects. “Historic preservation is such a big part of what I do.”
She had visions of brick walls waiting to be uncovered and wood flooring in the space that had opened as a department store in 1892.
Once they set to work they discovered the brick had been skim coated with cement, so they had to leave the drywall up. The floor joists had deteriorated, or had been cut through for utilities. The wood they could save was used for trim work.
The tin ceiling tiles were also unsalvageable, except for the section that’s now exposed over the brewery area.
“All my preservation dreams were crushed,” Chris said.
She fitted out the décor with a mix of pricey, select furniture, including some made specially for them, and bargain furnishings from other restaurants and a church discovered on Facebook Marketplace.
An area set aside for classes and business meetings as well as a game room for families will be used, at least for now, to expand for seating for dining to maintain social distancing.
Still the couple is holding true to the vision Zach spelled out back in fall, 2019. Juniper will be a place to gather for entertainment and work. A community center with beer.
