Lonesome Buck brewers know their Stuft

GREELEY — Why turn a successful burger restaurant into Greeley’s eighth brewpub? For Stuft Burger Bar co-owners Jake Fitzsimmons and Tiffany Helton, the opportunity to open Lonesome Buck Brewing Co. was too good to pass up.

“We knew we wanted to open a brewery, and we were looking for a location that was both pedestrian friendly and had production space,” said Fitzsimmons. “I could find one but never the other. I could find great production space, but it was in a warehouse district. I could find great retail space, but it didn’t have production space.

“And then I took a hard look at the building we already owned. It had a downstairs space that was already an extra dining room, so we took that and converted it from a Stuft into a brewpub. We built the brewery downstairs while Stuft was still operating.”

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Fitzsimmons and Helton have been working together for 16 years. “I was in marketing and advertising, but started a deli — Eliot’s Mess, serving ‘untouchable’ sandwiches — in 2003, and Tiffany worked for me as general manager. Problem is, you only get one day part, lunch. Nobody was coming in for dinner. We closed in the middle of the financial calamity in 2007, saw the need for a kick-ass burger place, and made the pivot.

“It was off to the races ever since.”

They opened the first Stuft Burger Bar in downtown Fort Collins in 2008, then expanded to Windsor in 2010 and Greeley in 2012. They closed the downtown Greeley location in March of this year, then opened Lonesome Buck in July in downtown Greeley, with a dining area and bar on the main floor.

The brewery’s name came from the “classic country vibe” Fitzsimmons wanted. “The word ‘lonesome’ kept coming up,” he said. “Actually, the logo came first, modeled after a pronghorn antelope. They travel in packs, and they’re fun to watch. The logo has the pronghorn horns, and the snout has the stem of a Belgian beer glass hidden within it.

“We wanted to embrace our Greeley-ness but didn’t want to be a theme bar — no saddle barstools or wagon wheels. We just wanted to be accessible, fun, maybe a little irreverent.”

Irreverent like the old-fashioned photo booth in the back, in which patrons can sit and have a strip of four photos taken — for a buck, of course. “My wife and I, when we were dating, used to do these at a bar in Fort Collins,” Fitzsimmons said.

Irreverent like the beer flights on specially made wooden boards with a bar across the top to hold a pretzel that’s made with spent grain from the brewing process. “We found a local farmer to take the remainder of that spent grain,” Fitzsimmons said. “He’ll use it to feed his cows, then we’ll buy beef from him for special events. Greeley’s an ag town. That’s our roots. We embrace that. We don’t run from it.”

And irreverent like the new downstairs dining area the pair opened on Aug. 9, right next to the brewery’s fermenting tanks. “It gives us the opportunity to show people the inner workings of a brewery they don’t normally see,” he said. “There’s no ‘Laverne and Shirley’ canning line here. It’s a back-to-basics approach.”

Fitzsimmons plans to use the downstairs space for special events such as a Ladies’ Beer School and beer dinners “where we create a menu and each course — food not normally on the menu — matches to one of our beers. You’ll get to meet the brewer, have fun drinking beer and learn about the process.”

Public access to those tank-side tables makes for one of the cleanest, neatest and brightest brewery spaces to be found in the region, and head brewer Cameron Huff, recruited from De Steeg microbrewery in Denver, rules that basement realm. “Cameron’s a one-man show,” Fitzsimmons said. “His boss had bought another brewery called St. Patrick’s and converted them both to Blind Faith Brewing.”

The 12 beers on tap include a Belgian lager and a watermelon wheat, and Huff plans to introduce more for fall. The biggest seller is a raspberry blonde ale called “Becky with the Red Hair.”

The food offerings are primarily the responsibility of Helton and Jeremy Krieger, who also had been kitchen manager for Stuft, Fitzsimmons said. “We felt it was important to have a smoker-based menu. Reason is, I like that smoke penetration; the meat’s juicier and tender. The smoker uses Colorado oak logs; it’s right behind the walk-in cooler that supplies the bar kegs. We take the meat right from the smoker to the main kitchen, so it never drops temperature until we’re ready to serve it.”

Besides ribs, brisket, pulled pork and cheeseburgers, the menu also features several variations on poutine.

Lonesome Buck’s location also benefits from its Ninth Street location, which is closed off on Friday nights for strolling and live music, and in which customers can carry their drinks outside and from one place to another.

“It’s basically no different than if you’re in New Orleans or Las Vegas,” Fitzsimmons said. “You can walk across the street to Mad Cow or vice versa. The Downtown Development Authority led the charge on that one. The better downtown Greeley becomes an entertainment district, the better success we’re all going to have.”

Could the other Stuft restaurants become breweries in the future?

“The Stuft restaurants are all really busy,” Fitzsimmons said. “Greeley’s building was just far too oversized for what Stuft needed. Building a brewpub is harder than building a restaurant, but I wouldn’t say we wouldn’t do it. It’ll take us a while to figure out what’s working and what’s not, and we’ll just get better every day.

“I’m an entrepreneur. I’m 100 percent focused on Greeley right now. If we take care of Greeley, we’ll get another opportunity.

“Until then, I’ll just keep a hammer in one hand and a cell phone in the other,” he said. “You either embrace the chaos or you’ll burn out.”

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If you go

Lonesome Buck Brewing Co.
819 Ninth St., Greeley
970-473-2825

lonesomebuck.com