USA, GA: Good Word Brewing and Public House opens its doors in Duluth

A long-awaited brew pub from the owners of Decatur-based Brick Store Pub opened this week in Duluth’s Parsons Alley dining and entertainment district, Gwinnettdailypost.com reported on November 30.

Good Word Brewing and Public House, located next to Dreamland BBQ, opened its doors on November 28. The restaurant had been teasing on Facebook that it was close to opening for weeks, but announced on the social media site late Monday night that it would open at 5 p.m. Tuesday, November 28.

“It was great,” Good Word owner and brewer Todd DiMatteo said. “We had a blast. A lot of friends from Decatur and a lot of new friends from Duluth (were there), so it was a lot of fun.”

DiMatteo said Good Word will be “completely different” from Brick Store Pub because, whereas the Decatur business is a beer bar, the Duluth restaurant will be a brew pub where the beer is made in-house. The menu at Good Word is also different from the one at Brick Store Pub, he said.

The few common threads, DiMatteo said, are that he is involved in both Good Word and Brick Store Pub, and that both locations deal with beer.

There are a handful of beers brewed at the pub, including an IPA, an American blonde, an American sour and an English Mild.

“Then we have some taps that are from our friends here in Georgia and some are in other brew pubs that are in the state,” DiMatteo said.

Getting to this week’s opening was the result of a long process for DiMatteo and the rest of the team from Brick Store Pub. It was announced a year ago that they would be coming to Duluth, but the process actually began long before that.

“We looked for probably about two years for where we were going to put this place,” DiMatteo said. “We looked all around the perimeter. We saw this area about 20 months ago. It was under development. It was mostly clay and dirt. I think (O4w Pizza) was pretty new at that point, but we kept looking around. We just weren’t sure about the neighborhood.

“Our business partner, Brian Skinner, actually lives in Suwanee so he kept pushing this area and, I don’t know, the feel of the town, it just kind of felt right.”

Good Word Brewing and Public House has nearly 8,000 square-feet of space, including its brewery. It will open nightly, beginning at 5 p.m. It will serve food — with a menu that is equal parts Latin and southern cuisine — until 10 p.m. It will continue serving drinks, however, until 11 p.m.

There are about 200 seats in the restaurant.

And, if anyone is wondering about why the restaurant’s logo features a typewriter, DiMatteo said it is meant to tie into the name.

“The name of the place is Good Word and it’s really all about spreading the good word,” he said. “That means communicating with each other by putting down the cell phones, stepping away from the computers and just enjoying each other’s company.

“We wanted an icon that kind of spoke to that and we felt the typewriter was a time that was before the ‘inundated with everything now’ mentality and so for us, it made sense so that’s why we adopted it as an icon for us.”

The restaurant is located in one of the newly built structures at Parsons Alley, which has already seen several businesses, including Simply Done Donuts, Personify and Maple Street Biscuit Company, open this year. The Chocolaterie and Dreamland opened last year.

Although it is located across Lawrenceville Street from Pasons Alley, Downtown Sub Shoppe Etc. also opened this year.

“We’re super happy that we landed here, honestly,” DiMatteo said.

Good Word isn’t the only Gwinnett business that has gotten into the beer brewing, or distilling, business this year. Slow Pour Brewing opened in Lawrenceville in September and Hope Springs Distillery, which produces vodka, opened in Lilburn over the summer.

DiMatteo said he can see why there has been a rising interest in breweries, and particularly brew pubs, in Georgia in recent years.

“I think that every town kind of needs and wants a place that they can all commune, and sit, talk and drink good beer and have great conversations and eat good food uninterrupted by neon signs and televisions,” he said. “I think that’s as simple as the magic of a brew pub, or a brewery, is.”

Good Word hasn’t been the only restaurant preparing to open in Parsons Alley in recent months though. Korean steakhouse and oyster bar, Noona, has also been getting ready to open in a location between Personify and Maple Street Biscuit Company.

Noona has posted signs in its windows promoting that it is opening soon and that anyone interested in eating there should check its Facebook and Instagram pages for updates. It has not announced an opening yet.

It’s most recent update on Instagram was on Nov. 17, when restaurant officials showed off the logo painted on the building and said they were “almost ready to share Noona with Duluth.”

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