OCEANSIDE — A pair of local hotspots in the city have teamed up after a chance encounter.
That Boy Good, also known as Miss Kim’s by That Boy Good, and Northern Pine Brewing Co., joined forces three years ago to jointly open one location in downtown Oceanside. It’s one of the first times the city has given the green light to such a co-existence between a restaurant and brewery.
Typically, breweries in Oceanside will have food trucks cater to their customers, but this arrangement brings both to their patrons.
“I was totally not on board,” said Kim Millwood, co-founder of That Boy Good. “This is a big building … and there was a lot of work to do.”
Millwood and her husband opened the first That Boy Good (now dubbed Miss Kim’s by That Boy Good), a southern-style barbecue joint, six years ago at 207 N. Coast Highway, which has quickly grown into a local destination for barbecue lovers. However, the two wanted to expand their catering operation and needed more space.
Anne Ortega and her husband, meanwhile, were in search of a place to open their own brewery three years ago. Ortega had spent years with Mother Earth, but she and her husband wanted a place of their own.
The two women were put in contact through their brokers in 2015 as a way to share costs and bring the best of both worlds to their customers. The city of Oceanside was eager for the chance to assist with the collaboration, and after some diligent work, signed off on the permits for both entities.
“They needed a massive space for the catering kitchen and we need a brewery,” Ortega said. “The entire place was just too big (for one). We were like let’s just share the space and they opened up a counter and then it worked for both of us.”
While they co-exist as one, the two are separate. Both each have a lease, based on square footage, and manage their own insurance and property taxes.
Perhaps the biggest challenge was the building at 326 Horne St. It sat vacant for eight years, so the two businesses had serious construction in front of them.
Electrical, digging trenches, plumbing, floors, reconfigurations and more saw the two pump in several hundred thousands of dollars into the building, Millwood said. The process took much longer than expected, about 18 months starting in early 2016, but in the end the businesses are thriving.
“Nothing was up to code,” said Millwood, who is also the chairwoman for Main Street Oceanside, a downtown business association. “They were so excited, the city, from day one because they’re really redeveloping downtown Oceanside.”
Northern Pine Brewing just celebrated its one-year anniversary, while That Boy Good is expanding its catering business to accommodate orders for more than 2,000 people. For example, they recently catered the Carlsbad Oktoberfest.
That Boy Good has a walk-up counter for food service, but seating is considered part of Northern Pine Brewing. The brewery, which features a range of beer, will also be offering more quantity as Ortega said plans are in place to add two, 20-barrel vats in the next several months.
“It’s been an incredible first year,” she added. “It was Oceanside or nothing for us. We didn’t want to be in an industrial center. We wanted to be a small neighborhood brewery where you could belly up to the bar and focus on that.”
Looking forward, plans are in place to open a patio, but in the meantime, a wraparound mural is expected to be painted in January 2019 as part of Main Street Oceanside’s plan to beautify city buildings.
