EAST FORTY BREWING
Photos by Jaime Russell, Anthem Photography
How do you run a brewery during a pandemic? That’s just the question East Forty Brewing owner David Mann and his staff have had to figure out over the last five months.
go in growlers, so we were used to that,” Mann said. “But when the state opened up the ability to sell our pre-mixed drinks, we began canning those for to-go and delivery, which was great, because it had been something our customers had been asking about for a long time.”
“It all happened really quickly. We knew it was going to come here, but we weren’t really prepared to shut down,” Mann said. “That first month or so, we were figuring something new out every day. But we were able to pivot our whole service model and found little successes to keep us going.” During those initial months, Mann and his staff embraced the curbside pick-ups of food and beverages, taking advantage of the pandemic’s more open state liquor laws – which allowed selling pre-mixed drinks to-go. “As a brewery, we were already able to sell our beer to-
Mann was also able to keep all of his full-time employees working during the shut-down by providing the curbside and delivery options as well as using the down-time as a chance to address some deferred maintenance issues in the building and work on adding an event space to his property. When restaurants and bars were allowed to open in May, albeit with pretty strict guidelines on capacity requirements, Mann worked with the City of Blue Springs to expand his outdoor footprint through a special permitting process approved by the City Council. Now, East Forty offers live music, socially distanced of course, on the weekends in the new expanded outdoor patio – which used to be the back parking lot. “We’re really trying to keep everything and everyone outside right now to keep our customers as safe as
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