USA, OH: Willoughby Brewing Company closes, perhaps permanently

Willoughby Brewing Company has closed, perhaps permanently, the latest casualty of the coronavirus shutdown, Cleveland.com reported on August 24.

Last week, customers noticed the doors on the business were locked and “for rent” signs posted on the windows. The brewery’s president said the closing was the result of a dispute with the landlord over late rent payments.

“We got behind in the rent as we were closed for a little over three months. We have been trying to catch up with limitations placed on us by the government mandates,” Rollin Cooke III said in a statement to cleveland.com.

The Willoughby Brewing Company, which opened in 1998 and is best known for its Peanut Butter Cup and Nut Smasher beers, shut down at the start of the pandemic and stayed that way for three months before reopening in June. Cooke said the rent was overdue by “a little over a month” when the landlord began harassing the staff and telling them to “pack up.”

“While we have not received an eviction notice, he has shut the water off from his inside location, even though we paid the water bill (and it is in his name) he has changed the locks keeping us from entering the building and retrieving product (beer) that is canned that we just started selling to vendors and we cannot open our patio and bar and now we have NO source of income,” he said.

Cooke said the landlord also charged the business for parking spaces that are available for public use and threatened to tow its vans that parked there. Cooke estimated the beer left in the building could end up costing the business “thousands of dollars in sales.”

The owner acknowledged the high expense involved in operating the largest restaurant in downtown Willoughby and the landlord’s right to the rent money but said the brewery never refused to pay and was continuing to make partial payments before being locked out.

“These actions are destructive at the least, and are at this time costing Willoughby Brewing Co., income and loss of products,” Cooke said.

The landlord didn’t respond to several messages seeking comment.

Willoughby Brewing Company is the second brewery in the city to close recently. Brim Kitchen + Brewery shut its doors for good earlier this month.

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