The Little Creatures Brewery comes to Hobsonville Point.
An old Air Force hangar at Catalina Bay, Hobsonville Point is about to be reborn as a craft beer hall and eatery.
The cavernous, 1500sq m Little Creatures craft brewery will open on Waitangi Day, February 6, on the heels of a new weekend ferry service which has been partly funded by locals in the tight-knit community in Auckland's northwest. The ferry service starts today.
Little Creatures, now owned by Lion, has a history of usual venues. It's first brewery and eatery was in an old crocodile farm in Fremantle.
Lion is spending $20 million on the project, between the fitout and a 10-year lease, says managing director Rory Glass, and it will employ about 100 staff.
A second floor has also been added to the hangar by developer Willis Bond. That will be used as a co-working space in the manner of Generator or BizDojo, who cater to startups and others who want shared office space or a place for meetings. Willis Bond is also developing the 1.8-hectare stretch of waterfront that surrounds the hangar. The area already includes the recently opened Thai restaurant Siamese Doll and Fabric (which the Heralddubbed "one of the most perfectly formed cafes you will find in this city").
The main dining hall at Little Creatures, Catalina Bay, Hobsonville Point.
Little Creatures features a brewery capable of producing up to 180,000 litres of beer a year - about 90,000 six packs - plus pizza and fish and chip shops and a cocktail lounge with "Italian-themed" shared plates.
Customers will also be able to buy beer to take home - a big deal for locals out west, where supermarkets are dry and the Portage & Waitakere Licensing Trusts directly control pricey bottle stores. Little Creatures' manufacturing licence puts it beyond the trusts' reach.
Havana Coffee Works' Geoff and Lizzy Marsland. Lion bought the couple's iconic Wellington cafe & coffee roasting business just before Christmas and they'll be on hand for the Little Creatures opening.
Lion is also looking beyond beer. Just before Christmas, the brewer bought iconic Wellington coffee roasters Havana, and Little Creatures will open at 7am to sell coffee to locals on their way to the commuter ferry.
"Today you are just as likely to catch up with a friend over a coffee as you are over a pint of beer or a glass of wine," Glass says. (Lion also owns Wither Hills, Daniel Le Brun and recently bought a stake in Foley Wines, which includes Mt Difficulty and Mt Difficulty's step-down brand Roaring Meg in its stable).
"In fact people will often move from one to the other. It made sense for us to develop a coffee offering with a premium, edgy brand that complements our portfolio."
The Havana buyout did draw some sniffs on social media, but Lion says it is letting co-founder Geoff Marsland and his wife Lizzy Marsland run the 30-year-old outfit as an independent division.
Little Creatures' pizza oven gets a pre-launch workout.
The new venue will also sell kombucha from another recent investment, Tauranga's Good Buzz, in which Lion now holds a 25 per cent stake.
There's also a wooden fort inside and sandpit going in outside.
"For parents with young families, it's a chance for them to enjoy an adult experience without leaving the kids at home," Glass says.
"We want it to be family friendly. We want people to come down and catch up for coffee. We want people to bring their kids here to have fish and chips. We've got all-day dining. We've got an Italian bistro, we've got a kids' play area, we'll have a sandpit as well. And of course there's the main dining hall."
A training session. Little Creatures Hobsonville Point will employ around 100 all up. Lion MD Rory Glass says some Little Creatures Australia staff and managers have drafted in for the opening.
"We'll have a community engagement manager. That's very unique," Glass says. In Australia, Little Creatures has dished out grants for community projects. Here, community features will include a wall where local artists can display and sell their work, commission-free.
Head brewer Udo Van Deventer also wants to have regular teach-ins with locals. He'll be brewing Little Creatures' regular lineup, but also brews specific to Hobsonville Point. The first will be "Catalina Bay Ale," launched around March.
Van Deventer plans to follow that up with a gruntier double-hopped IPA (Indian Pale Ale). He says the new brewery is "wildly over-spec'd," so he has a lot of capability to experiment. He can also brew in small batches of as little as 14 kegs, which again will help him to mix things up. He says he's keen for locals to chip in ideas.
Craft beer gold rush
Lion and rival DB have developed a taste for craft beers because it's the fastest growing segment of the market - although that growth is flattening out.
Over New Zealanders are drinking a lot less beer, according to Statistics NZ figures. As a proportion of the total volume of alcoholic beverage available for consumption, between 2002 and 2017, beer decreased from 72 per cent to 61 per cent. But within that, the number of 5 per cent+ alcohol beers has risen.
The hangar has a number of "precincts." One is the Kittyhawk bar, which will serve wine (Lion also owns Wither Hills and Daniel Le Brun) plus cocktails and Italian-themed small plates.
The rise of five per cent-plus brews has been seen by media as a sign of the rise of craft beer. And it is to a degree. But it's also a sign of the halo effect of craft that has also lifted "premium" beers at that slightly higher alcohol level such as DB's Heineken and Lion's Steinlager. And the picture is coloured by the rise of so-called "session beers" as craft brewers compliment the 8 per per cent hop monsters they were known for with 4 to 5 per cent brews that suit a longer drinking session and are in simpatico with tighter drink-drive laws.
A comfy chair precinct.
Glass says while mainstream local beers have had only slight growth in recent years, and international beer sales have declined slightly, craft beers have been booming.
"We've seen growth of about 30 per cent, 20 per cent. Now we're down to about 10 per cent growth - but that's still growth. New Zealand is the most developed craft beer market in the world. About 17 per cent of all sales come from craft beer. It's really important that we're involved in that. That's one of the key reasons we're opening Little Creatures at Hobsonville Point."
DB Breweries boss Peter Simons says while craft beer is still hot, a craze for low-carb, low-calorie and low or zero-alcohol beers is the next big thing. Photo / Dean Purcell.
DB Breweries boss Peter Simons doesn't want to give figures, but says his company has seen a similar trajectory for craft beer growth.
The craft boom has seen both Lion and DB get out their chequebooks.
Recent craft beer deals have seen DB pick up Kapiti boutique beer maker Tuatara for $30.5m, and Lion's $25.1m buyout of Upper Hutt's Panhead, $8m purchase of Dunedin-based Emerson's, and the acquisition of Christchurch's Harringtons in August for a yet-to-be-disclosed sum.
Out back: Little Creatures Hobsonville Point will be able to brew up to 180,000 liters per year. A custom "Catalina Bay" ale will be launched in March, and may be exported to Australia.
Little Creatures was founded in Fremantle in 2000 by brewer Phil Sexton, restaurateur Nic Trimboli and ad man Howard Cearns, who set up shop in an old crocodile farm - setting a trend of quirky venues in years to come.
In 2012, Lion paid A$256m to convert a minority stake into outright ownership.
Glass says the decision to open the Little Creatures brewery at Hobsonville Point was partly because of the beer's increasing popularity in New Zealand. It is now sold in more than 400 venues.
"Craft has been absolutely fantastic for beer. It's got people interested in beer again. It's got people talking about beer again in much the same way wine did a number of years ago. So being involved in that craft beer market has been really important for Lion," Glass says.
The Sunderland hangar in 1958. The former Air Force base at Hobsonville is now a special housing area. Photo / Hobsonville RSA.
The craft boom has also been good for both the major players' bottom Iines - both through their craft beer acquisitions and by boosting so-called "premium" mainstream beers.
