Twice a month, 3-year-old Michael Gagnon walks into Zambaldi Beer in Allouez, Wis., like he owns the place. Sometimes at his parents’ suggestion he’ll approach the bar to say hi to the brewery’s husband-wife co-owners, David and Abigail Malcolm, but typically he walks straight past the long, wooden-top tables in the tap room and makes a beeline for the corner near the bar. There, he sits down with the trains and chalkboard provided by the Malcolms, or with the toy cellphone that another child left behind, and plays. “He is sometimes a little too confident there and will walk up to complete strangers and hug them,” his mom, Hailie Gagnon, tells Yahoo. “I think he thinks everyone there knows each other because of how open and welcoming it is and how safe he feels.”
Zambaldi — a Green Bay craft brewery that’s made a name for itself locally as being welcoming to young children — opened in January of 2020 as part passion project, part response to a community survey in which respondents asked for a gathering spot, coffee shop or brewery in the neighborhood. Its success as an explicitly kid-friendly operation is significant as the stability of the craft brewery industry has fluctuated in recent years, and taprooms — that is, spaces where patrons can come to taste and buy what’s in production — have emerged as one of the most profitable ways for craft breweries to continue to make money, according to the e-commerce platform BlueCart.
Though the controversy around babies and beer has sparked Reddit threads, explainers, chat boards and general ambient disdain in the discourse, not a single source for this story could think of an instance in which children (or parents) caused an unmanageable situation, and Stephie Grob Plante wrote for Vox in 2019 that taprooms actually tend to be family-friendly by nature. They are “typically open during daylight hours and close earlier than rowdy late-last-call spots, tend to be sunny, airy spots and often offer ample outdoor space,” she noted.
Across the country, breweries like Zambaldi and families like the Gagnons are leaning into the idea that alcohol and fun for the whole family aren’t mutually exclusive — and that blending the two benefits all. Increasingly, breweries offer parents that sense of having a “village,” and a destination where their children are not only welcome but encouraged to join. Breweries, in turn, then build relationships with multigenerational customers that translate into long-term business viability and profit. Worth noting too is that while men own more than 75% of craft breweries in the United States, “women are estimated to control 75% of discretionary spending by 2028,” according to Bankrate.com. So while men tend to be running these operations, women are the ones deciding whether or not to spend their money there…