Wichita brewery is reopening, but owner wants someone else to run the restaurant

Augustino Brewing Company, the west-side restaurant and brewery at 756 N. Tyler Road that closed abruptly almost four weeks ago, will reopen its doors next week.

But owners Augustine and Bianca Iacopelli say they are interested only in reopening the tap room side of the business. Though they still think food is an important to have as an option for their business, they no longer want to run the restaurant side themselves, and they’re looking for an experienced restaurateur to take it over.

“I still believe that beer sells food and food sells beer, but I want to be able to focus exclusively on the beer,” Augustine said.

Augustine said he closed the business so that he could focus on what to do next and that he purposely stayed quiet until he and Bianca had it figured out.

They’ve decided to reopen the tap room side of the business, which is through the north door, on Wednesday, he said. Starting then, it will be open from 5 to 9 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays and from 3 to 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. For now, he said, it won’t open Sundays, Mondays or Tuesdays.

The Iacopellis have decided to stop serving coffee and cocktails so that they can focus on what they do best — brewing beer. That part of their business has always been strong, Augustine said.

“We were able to run the beer side really well,” he said. “The beer was doing well. It was profitable for us. And maybe it’s just our naivete as owners, but we could never get to to a point where the food side of things was running as consistently as we know someone who has more experience in that area can run it.”

Augustine said he’s just started putting the word out that his restaurant space, which is on the south end of the space and seats up to 120, is available. If someone wants to run it under the Augustino name, he’d welcome that, he said. If the new owner wants to make the restaurant a completely new and separate business, he’s fine with that, too.

“It’s a turn-key operation,” he said. “If the right person could step up, they could have that probably opened in two to four weeks because everything is there.”

Augustine, a longtime home brewer, opened the brewery and restaurant with his wife and partners Geoff and Kara Finn last November. The Finns left the partnership, he said, and he continues to work full-time as the director of Wichita State University’s west-side campus.

He said that he wants to eventually purchase a crowler machine so that he can sell his beer in cans. He also plans to experiment with some new beer recipes, and among his goals is to produce a more “assertive” IPA.

Augustino beer fans also will find Iacopelli pouring beer at Saturday’s Prairieland Beer & Music Festival happening at the new Wave venue.

I’ll let you know what happens with the brewery’s search for a restaurant operator.

This story was originally published October 18, 2018 at 2:06 PM.