Craft and Draft owners eye December opening in Irmo

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As buzz surrounding popular downtown taproom and bottle shop Craft and Draft’s second location builds, co-owner Andrew Johnson said the launch of the Irmo business is back on track after two delays.

Johnson said the new location at 7583 St. Andrews Road in the Irmo Village Shopping Center encountered electrical and plumbing issues, but those are now resolved. Inspections of the electrical and above-ground plumbing systems, along with official state signoff, are all that remains before the doors open to the nearly 7,000-square-foot space that will feature a full kitchen and an event room.

Well, that and a few other details.

“Once we’ve passed those (inspections), we’ll start putting in drywall and starting painting,” Johnson said Wednesday morning on his daily drive to the Irmo shop, where he was planning to pour more concrete for a floor that he hopes will be ready to have a finish applied this week. “Once we get our floor in, everything above it can start really working. … I can say pretty confidently that we will be open by early December.”

The Irmo location has been the subject of much summer, and now fall, speculation. Johnson and co-owner Kellan Monroe had originally targeted a late August opening date before the recent obstacles.

“I feel like I’ve said four to six weeks for about three months now,” said Johnson, who’s frequently asked while working at the original Devine Street location about progress at the Irmo addition. On a recent night behind the bar, he fielded nearly a dozen phone calls inquiring about an opening date.

Based on that interest, and on social media tracking, Johnson expects a robust business from the Irmo, Lexington and Chapin areas.

“I’m predicting that every other beer we sell is going to be to someone from the Chapin area,” he said. “When they drive into town, they drive all the way to Harbison. Those folks down there really don’t have anything like what we have.”

One special touch awaiting patrons will be the wood Johnson and Monroe recently harvested from a friend’s old barn. Built in the 1930s or 1940s, the barn had been used for storage for a while.

“A tornado ripped through there about 10 years ago and tore about half of it down,” Johnson said. “It had just been sitting there. He heard we were looking for barn wood.”

The wood collected in the all-day effort, along with 10 to 15 pieces of the barn’s tin roof, will be worked into Craft and Draft’s interior design and featured prominently in the main bar. Johnson said one unifying color will also tie the bar top, which will be marble or granite, to the kitchen service window, taproom window, and point of sale countertop.

More wood for tables is being procured from a woodworker in Little Mountain, he said.

Johnson shared those details after dropping his two young sons at day care at the start of a typically hectic day. He and Monroe have been splitting time between the downtown and Irmo locations for several months while Katelyn Shire, appointed in August as manager of the Devine Street shop, has kept things rolling there.

“She has done a wonderful job. She’s asking for more work, and we keep telling her more work is coming,” Johnson said. “Once we open (in Irmo), our schedules will be busier, but they will be more defined. We’ll have our hands in both places. Ultimately, the goal is to manage from 30,000 feet. A business runs more efficiently if the operators are at the operating level, not management or bartending.”

That said, Johnson said he and Monroe plan to maintain their roles tending taps and chatting with patrons.

“We are very mindful, especially with the local businesses that succeed, that the ownership is there,” he said. “It doesn’t disappear. It certainly helps that we enjoy being there. I don’t think of it as work. When I’m writing checks and doing paperwork, that’s working. Being behind the bar slinging beer and talking to customers — that’s not work.”