HopCat, a Grand Rapids, Mich.-based beer bar, plans to expand into Chicago, opening a spot on Clark Street. Pictured here is the recently opened HopCat in Lincoln, Neb.
When beer bar HopCat opens in Lincoln Park later this year with 130 tap handles — 50 of them from Illinois brewers — there will be one notable omission from the beer list: Goose Island.
A policy across the fast growing HopCat chain forbids serving beer produced by Anheuser-Busch or Miller Coors breweries. That will leave Goose Island — Chicago’s oldest brewery and an Anheuser-Busch subsidiary since a sale to that beer giant five years ago — on the outside.
HopCat owns eight locations in Michigan, Wisconsin, Kentucky and Nebraska, but its location at 2577 N. Clark St. will be the first where its policy against big beer will freeze out a prominent local player.
“We know there are some amazing brewers at Goose Island, but when they were sold to Anheuser-Busch, our owner and founder decided we would no longer be carrying it,” said Chris Knape, HopCat’s vice president of marketing.
Knape said the policy is an effort to show allegiance to smaller and independently owned craft brewers in a consolidating beer industry. Anheuser-Busch bought Goose Island five years ago this month and has since bought six more craft breweries.
The prohibition does not include breweries that have sold to private equity firms or other large breweries, such as Heineken (which bought half of Lagunitas last year) or Duvel Moortgat (which bought Firestone-Walker and Boulevard Brewing). Knape said HopCat weighed whether to drop Lagunitas but felt comfortable continuing to carry it, in part, because Heineken is a majority family-owned company.
HopCat was founded in Grand Rapids in 2008 and soon gained a reputation as having one of the nation’s better (and longest) beer menus. The chain began expanding in 2013 and has locations in Ann Arbor, Detroit, East Lansing and Grand Rapids, Mich.; Indianapolis; Madison, Wis.; Lexington, Ky.; and Lincoln, Neb. A Louisville, Ky., location will open this summer.
HopCat plans to open in Chicago by August, but that is dependent on permits and construction.