HOPEFUL IN HARNETT
My flimsy bona fides as a wine connoisseur have been propped up by a perverse sort of humblebrag: higher tariffs added an extra $67 to the fall shipment of the wine club I joined on vacation in Montepulciano, Italy, last year.
When it comes to beer, though, I can’t tell an IPA from an Amber Ale. So sharing a table at Local Time Brewing’s new taproom in Lillington with co-owner Kelly Gallagher — who, like me, prefers wine to beer — I found a bit of a kindred spirit.
Mostly, though, curiosity put me there: with craft beer sales and alcohol use waning, why are Kelly and her husband Chris, both career business consultants, pursuing against-the-grain expansion in Lillington in Harnett County — a rural crossroads not exactly known for its cultural buzz?
Tucked in on Ivey Street downtown, off U.S. 401, Local Time Brewing’s taproom opened with fanfare in August. It’s a dogged cultivation of a vibe inspired by the Gallaghers’ international travels and explorations of overseas pubs and local bars — and, in commerce, conditions difficult to manufacture during headwinds: serendipity and perfect timing.
We’re drinking less
Alcohol consumption has been dropping. A new survey reveals 46% of Americans don’t drink at all, the highest since Gallup began posing the question in 1939. It coincides with research reversing the tables on potential health benefits of moderate drinking and, perhaps not coincidentally, broader legalization of marijuana.
Production is dipping, off 3% year to date among the state’s 400 or so craft beer producers.
En route to Lillington, I popped into Hugger Mugger Brewing in my hometown of Sanford to see friend Tim Emmert, who cofounded the business eight years ago with brewer David McComas. Emmert says their enterprise (about 700 barrels annually, with 20% of that wholesaled) was holding its own. But he cited story after story about shuttered breweries and ruminated about the struggles of industry counterparts.
After breakneck growth, the COVID-19 pandemic slammed the brakes on craft beer. Payroll Protection Program loans, Emmert adds, kept open teetering breweries just as a bill as “some sort of a reckoning for bad beer” came due.
But there’s more to closings than poor product quality and misguided business philosophy. Emmert references fickle investors, landlords raising rents to unsustainable levels, and even top-tier makers facing market competition from other brewers controlled by deep-pocketed owners “with a crazy amount of money” whose vanity triumphs over negative cash flow.
‘We could make our own mark’
In Apex, where the Gallaghers lived, the pandemic also helped upend Chris’ work assisting industries with growth strategies and new market development.
“Everything that was interesting, in terms of projects, started to evaporate,” Chris told me. “What got even worse was all the travel was gone. And so when the travel and the cool projects went away, I was like, ‘I gotta do something different.’”
He told Kelly (who still consults with states on federal policies and public assistance programs) he’d seek other consulting work, but she suspected that wouldn’t satisfy him. The couple always spoke of having their own business, so in the summer of 2021 they focused on opening a taproom, on South Main Street in thriving Holly Springs.
“Even though there were already two other breweries there, we thought that, with a good location, a great product and great people, we could make our own mark,” Chris says.
The “local” in Local Time proved an homage to beers that reflect authentic inspiration from places the couple cherished. Its four flagship brews are influenced, and fueled by, ingredients from Austria, Thailand, New Zealand and the Pacific Northwest. Destinations inspiring seasonal favorites include Munich and Bavaria in Germany; Lagos, Nigeria; the Danube River; and Puebla, Mexico.
The taprooms also have select cocktails on draft, seltzers, cider and non-alcoholic drinks, plus a curated wine list. Overarching, though, was a commitment, Chris says, to product, people, brand [see sidebar story] and a welcoming environment. “Local” also meant collaborating with other brewers.
“We didn’t approach this as taking a hobby and trying to open up a business, right?” Chris told me. “You see it in the restaurant industry all the time. ‘Hey, you know, you made a great burger for me on July 4th’ … Hmm. I should go open a restaurant! That wasn’t the approach we took. We approached it as a business … That’s the lens by which we make decisions.”
Picking Lillington
While Local Time was bursting out of the gate in Holly Springs — its beers winning awards, Chris and Kelly earning “business of the year” kudos and plaudits for community engagement — a different taproom-cum-coffee shop operating in downtown Lillington was foundering.
Back in Holly Springs, Chris knew Parm Sandhar, the Lillington building’s owner. Success maxed out Local Time’s brewing capacity. The connection with Sandhar led the Gallaghers to consider shifting the bulk of their brewing operation to that available space in Lillington.
There, a potential neighbor — Danny Babb, whose insurance office shared a firewall with the available space on Ivey Street — got wind of the possibility. He drove the half-hour up to Local Time’s Holly Springs taproom.
“I went and scouted them out,” Babb told me. “They didn’t know me, I didn’t know them, and I just went to see what the atmosphere was like.”
Babb is more than a neighbor: he’s served on Lillington’s town board since 2021. He’s also a vocal proponent of transformation and touts Town Manager Joseph Jeffries’ vision to make Lillington’s downtown a viable, walkable destination — and leveraging the town’s equidistant proximity to Raleigh and Fayetteville.
“We’re also at the intersection of two other booming towns, Dunn and Sanford,” Babb says. “We are a crossroads, but we don’t want to just be a drive-through community.”
Part of the master plan
Babb loved what he saw. Coincidentally, the day surging COVID-19 cases led then-Gov. Roy Cooper to declare a state of emergency in North Carolina, Lillington’s town commissioners approved a new master plan for their roughly eight-square block downtown. It was March 10, 2020, and that vote codified a vision for a vibrant and transformed downtown.
The primary feature, and bug, of downtown Lillington is the U.S. 421/401 intersection a stone’s throw from Babb’s office. Some 41,000 vehicles pass through daily. The nearby Cape Fear River also hems in the town. A hoped-for bypass project will help divert the traffic; the master plan also puts utilities underground, triples downtown parking, improves infrastructure, and adds space for around 20 retail shops, plus condominiums.
Local Time proved an ideal fit. “It’s increased the traffic flow on our block,” Babb says. “It’s taken a building that was out of business for a year and a half and revitalized it. And it’s good for everyone’s business … This means the world to a small community.”
In short, it’s a cultivation of the same atmosphere that evolved Holly Springs. After all, Lillington (population 4,700) is growing, too: 11,000 new residential lots have recently been approved; another 1,000 are anticipated.
Babb’s fellow commissioner, Lillington native Patricia Moss, is also ecstatic about Local Time’s plans.
“I just wanted to hug and kiss them,” she says of the Gallaghers. “I was thrilled to have a business that would attract people to our town, and to help us be a destination — not just a massive traffic jam at that intersection.”
A place to belong
Local Time’s brewer, Devin Singley, thinks Lillington will work for the business because its strategy is simple and focused — and “not trying to be super transactional.” Chris adds that beyond the product, a core value for Local Time is to be a welcoming place.
“We want to make sure that, in our own little way, we help people feel comfortable being neighbors with each other,” he says.
Which speaks back to what Kelly says about the “general vibe” and lifestyle nurtured in pubs in town centers across Europe.
“We see people come in all the time, and they see people they know, and join tables — or meet people at the bar they’ve never met before,” she says. “That communal aspect … you feel like you belong, and it’s a place you want to come back to.” ■
NEW IS NOT A STYLE
Devin Singley wrote so many beer-related papers while earning a master’s in library and information science at UNC Greensboro in 2008 that one professor said, “This seems like an obsession with you.”
So two days after his job at Charlotte’s public library was cut in 2009, Singley went to a brewery with friends and observed: people actually worked there.
Maybe he could, too.
Days later, Singley finagled an interview during a tour of Red Oak Brewery in Whitsett. Hired to manage Red Oak’s Facebook page, he made deliveries and worked the bottling line before learning to brew. After two and a half years, he made beer at a number of Triangle breweries, including Bombshell Beer Company and Fortnight Brewing, before joining Chris and Kelly Gallagher for Local Time Brewing’s launch in Holly Springs. Next, he’ll oversee the construction of a system in Lillington that will triple brewing capacity.
Their partnership clicks over a shared lack of affinity for trends.
“People buy new, right?” Singley says past employers admonished. “They’d say, ‘All right, Devin. Dance, monkey! Make something new!’ And I’m like, ‘Well, this is only new until it’s not.’ New is not a style. It’s not a flavor.”
A brewery doesn’t need a revolving door of hype-driven beers.
“Chris wanted a consistent brand,” Singley says. “He didn’t want it to be only one thing … but he also didn’t want an ‘IPA of the month’ situation.” Meanwhile, Chris touts Singley’s “amazing balance between the art, the science, and the passion” of beermaking.
Like the Gallaghers, Singley thinks beer is a storytelling avenue; a brewer’s taproom, a place for people to connect. He recalls the roof-tarring scene in “The Shawshank Redemption,” where the wrongly imprisoned Andy Dufresne convinces the cruel chief guard to provide his fellow inmates “a couple of suds apiece” as they work under a broiling sun.
“He sits back, smiling, watching other people drink the beer and feeling like free men,” Singley says. “That’s the feeling I have every day.” ■
