Outdoor Retailer - Summer 2017 - 66

BREAD+BUTTER / Counter Culture

PINT OF SALE
Julia Dunn dishes out
cold comfort at The Hub
and Pisgah Tavern in
Brevard, North Carolina.

The Hopping,
Hoppy Hub
Combine a brew pub with a bike shop-and pour your
customer a cold one while they browse-and you provide just
the type of retail theatre that keeps customers happy and
engaged in your store community. by Doug Schnitzspahn
THE PISGAH TAVERN IS A BREW PUB, LOCATED INSIDE A BIKE SHOP. IT'S A CONCEPT THAT
began because cycle shop The Hub sits inside the Pisgah National Forest in once-dry
Transylvania County, North Carolina. When the shop started serving beers on tap in 2008, it
operated as a private social club-and that's just what it is: a gathering place where visiting fattire tourists and local gearheads can swap stories and talk frame geometry over a cold craft brew.
Since beer and wine sales to the public became legal in 2014, the shop-which feels more like a

66 OUTDOOR RETAILER

/ Summer 2017

brew pub with tables on an outdoor deck and
the obligatory food trucks pulling up-has
continued to evolve to a model of how retail
can become a social event as much as a place
to buy stuff.
"If someone comes here to ride and something breaks and they come in on a busy
Saturday, they want to get back on the trail,"
says The Hub and Pisgah Tavern service manager Rob Swiers. "We tell them: 'Leave the
bike. Grab a beer. We'll get it done.' They don't
end up milling around and frustrated. We get
them out the door in under an hour."
The concept was the brainchild of owners Sam and Jordan Salman, who bought
the place in 2008 fresh out of college but
tutored by the former owner as he eased out
of the business. In the midst of this corner of
Appalachia's hip cultural revival (the music
hotspot of Brevard is just to the south and
bustling Asheville is 45 minutes north), the
Pisgah keeps a rotation of eight beers on tap
(and stocks cans of PBR, Miller High Life,
and Natural Bohemian in the fridge). The selection always includes some local draughts,
such as Appalachian Mountain Brewing's
Long Leaf IPA or a beer from Ecusta Brewing,
right across the street. The Pisgah also serves
biker favorites like Dale's Pale Ale from Lyons,
Colorado, and the ever-popular Los Locos
from Utah and Colorado's Epic Brewing.
It's not just the suds that keep customers
coming back, though. The shop prioritizes
quick, knowledgeable service (Swiers claims
they can fix a RockShox Reverb Stealth seat
dropper in 25-30 minutes), and employees
ride the bikes they sell on the public lands
trails out The Hub's back door. According to
Swiers, there's not really a set hierarchy for the
employees here. "Everybody does everything
here," he says. "My title may be service manager, but really I'm just the glue that keeps
everything running."
Those jobs include serving cold ones, too,
of course, and the beer helps break down the
wall between employee and customer. "The
person working on your bike may serve you a
beer. The person who just sold you a tent may
pour you one," he says. "When it comes down
to it, everybody is pretty happy to be at the bar
and watch us work on bikes," he says. O.R.

Photograph by Andrew Kornylak
Outdoor Retailer - Summer 2017

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