Brew Bridge leans into pizza, creative drafts and a chill, inclusive vibe
Photo by Jamie Plain
For Ian Stafford, Brew Bridge is more than just a job. It’s the first place he’s worked where he feels like he can be fully himself.
“I’m personally living a dream,” said Stafford, the front of house manager and event coordinator. “You don’t have that corporate boot that’s on your neck. You just get to be unapologetically you. My boss lets me dye my hair whatever color I feel like. My ears are gauged. He doesn’t care, because he knows we’re good people and he knows that we work.”
That philosophy has shaped the atmosphere at Brew Bridge — a brewery, gastropub, and hangout spot on West 2nd Street that leans into creativity, inclusivity and a slower, more intentional pace.
A chill destination, not just a bar
Stafford came on board a few months before the brewery’s two–year anniversary. Before that, he was just a fan. He started by hosting trivia and bingo “for some extra scratch,” then picked up serving, added karaoke, and eventually moved into management. Now he’s the one running the weekly events that define the vibe — trivia, bingo, karaoke, open mic, shuffleboard, ping-pong, board games, cornhole, and sports on TV.
“We do family things, but all in all, the other stuff we do is for us adults,” he said with a laugh. “We like to have fun too. There’s always good new music. The vibe is just awesome. The beers are always fresh and new. We’ve got one of the best brewers in the state to do it for us.”
Owner David Haynes said that from the start, they made a deliberate choice to push back against the high–turnover mentality that dominates much of the restaurant world.
“When we first started the brewery, I did a lot of research,” Haynes said. “Everything was about turn your tables, get people in, get people out, squeeze every dollar you can out of a customer in the smallest amount of time. And I kind of looked at that and said, ‘Is this actually how restaurants are supposed to operate?’ So we kind of threw all of that out of the playbook. We’ve slowed things down and tried to make more of a personal connection with every customer.”
They make nearly everything in house, and they’re honest that ticket times can be a little longer.
“We really like the more relaxed atmosphere,” he said. “We don’t want people coming in thinking they can get a full meal and drinks within 30 minutes. It’s just not really who we are.”
From Texas barbecue to brick-oven pizza and sliders
Food was never supposed to be central when Brew Bridge opened in 2020, but COVID changed that.
“We did offer food at the beginning. We didn’t want to,” Haynes said. “The only way you could get a liquor license was to have a restaurant license. So we really, really should not have been involved in food, but we just did little things like chips and salsa and nachos and fajitas. It was very basic, easy food to fulfill that requirement.”
Later, they took a big swing: Texas-style barbecue with a chef from Austin.
“I love the barbecue. It’s still my favorite food we’ve done,” Haynes said. “But we made an error in thinking that Owensboro would enjoy Texas-style barbecue, and quite frankly, they just didn’t. We tried it for two and a half years, and it just didn’t work out. We cut our losses and started to pull back on the barbecue.”
When they looked around for what was next, pizza kept coming up. Haynes has always called himself a pizza aficionado.
“We sat down and looked at each other and said, ‘What is one food you’ve never heard anyone hate?’ And pizza was the thing,” he said. “So we said, ‘Let’s try to do pizza, but let’s have our own unique twist on it. Let’s build the ovens we’re going to use.’”
The result is a lineup of brick-oven pizzas with a distinct Brew Bridge touch, plus a menu that’s lighter and more flexible than previous versions.
Now the menu leans into sharable plates, sliders, and pizzas that travel well — along with vegetarian and gluten–free options Stafford is proud to point out.
“We’re trying to get everybody to feel like, ‘Hey, this is a local place, and we want everybody to be able to enjoy some food.’ The pizza ovens were the best idea David had,” Stafford said. “The flavor profiles and what we do have just been extraordinary.”
A brewery built on experimentation
While the food evolved, the beer program has quietly become one of the most creative in the region under head brewer Will Gomez.
Gomez moved to Owensboro in late 2019. An avid homebrewer, he noticed Brew Bridge was under construction and reached out. He volunteered early on, then joined the team about a month after Brew Bridge officially opened.
Mostly self-taught, Gomez started on his kitchen stove before eventually earning a scholarship for online brewing school.
“It takes determination. It takes a good palate, a lot of trial and error, and good friends that will give you honest feedback,” he said.
Now he’s brewing around 50 batches a year, and roughly 70% of those are new recipes.
“We do have some cores we brew throughout the year,” Gomez said. “We have a really good American white lager that’s become our number one seller. We have a core hazy IPA, a West Coast IPA, an amber ale. But for the most part, we try to see what the market is demanding and what our guests want. We do take a lot of feedback. We come up with an idea, we try to execute it.”
Some of those ideas get wild — and wildly popular.
“We do a peanut butter and jelly sour beer,” he said. “That one started off as a one-off. This year we brewed it twice. Next year we’re probably going to brew it at least four times, because that’s one beer where, if we release it today, our cans are sold out by the end of the week.”
Haynes said that kind of creativity is what sets Gomez apart.
“There isn’t really another brewery in our area that’s doing as many different beers as he is,” Haynes said. “He experiments with things. But he also brews traditional. In 2026 we’re going to be doing ciders and seltzers and all sorts of different things. We’re really just trying to keep everything as local and in-house as we possibly can.”
Most of the beer is sold on tap at Brew Bridge, but they also can small runs and distribute locally.
“We have accounts in Owensboro, in Henderson, in Madisonville,” Gomez said. “We had a few in Bowling Green, and hopefully in the next few years we can expand to Louisville and beyond.”
Community built in a once-empty corner
Brew Bridge’s story technically starts in 2016, when Haynes and partner Max Garvin opened Escape Today. They’d always wanted to do a brewery, but at the time, “the city didn’t really know how to deal with a brewery,” Haynes said. The escape room gave them a business and a few years of market research.
They scouted 26 different properties before landing at 800 West 2nd Street.
“Planning kind of shut us down on every single one,” Haynes said. “We’d kind of started to give up a little bit. This last building, I think Max and myself looked at each other and were like, ‘If it’s not this one, we just have to take a break for another year or so.’ We ended up here, and it’s been pretty good.”
The opening — or attempted opening — in March 2020 brought fear and frustration as COVID shutdowns hit. They focused on paying bills, staying out of debt as much as possible, and using social media to promise customers they’d still be around when it was over. They now mark July 10, 2020, as their “real” opening date.
Since then, they’ve worked on turning a corner of downtown that hadn’t seen much sustained business for years into a destination.
“We’re not in a great area for being a business,” Haynes said. “It’s not downtown, and it’s not not downtown. The community coming down, making a special trip for us, is really awesome. We’ve always been a destination.”
On a recent day, Haynes said, the patio captured what they’ve been working toward.
“We had a group of bikers — police, EMS, firefighters, biker guys — that came in for a meeting,” he said. “We had a group of older teachers that came in. Then we had a group of college kids. They were all sitting on the patio, kind of talking to each other. It was just kind of like the realization of five years of really hard work, being able to appeal to pretty much everybody in Owensboro.”
Stafford feels that support personally.
“I feel so privileged just to work for the place,” he said. “It’s hard to get new people to work here, because the people that come here tend to stay. We’re all pretty tight-knit. We hang out after work. I’ve never really done that with other jobs. This place has gotten me closer to even people I’ve known for years.”
He sees it in the customers too — whether it’s a packed karaoke crowd at 11:30 p.m., or a random encounter across the river.
“I was in Rockport at a gas station, just getting some gas, and started a conversation with a lady,” he said. “She’s like, ‘Oh, you work for Brew Bridge? I love Brew Bridge.’ I’m hearing more and more of that. I know we’re getting busier. We all see what it’s capable of being. It’s an amazing business. I’ve never been happier in a job in my life, quite frankly.” OL
