These customers donated beer to Charlotte’s Stable Hand. Now, you can bid on it.
From Wednesday through midnight this Friday, you can bid on a variety of beers through Stable Hand’s online auction, with all proceeds benefiting Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina.
Most of the 66 bottles in the auction came from a husband and wife who frequent Stable Hand. The couple, who wish to remain anonymous, found cases of beer they had stashed away while cleaning during the COVID-19 stay-at-home order.
The couple approached Stable Hand’s bar manager, Drew Jordan, and simply told him to “make sure it goes to something good right now.” As to what exactly that was, they left it to the shop. Another of the shop’s regulars contributed, as well.
Initially there was talk of supporting employees who have been furloughed, but Jordan said they are all receiving unemployment until they can come back to work.
Several of the owners have families, Jordan said, and the group wanted to find an organization helping area children. They were all impressed by Feeding America (Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina is Feeding America’s local food bank).
“Feeding America is doing a really good thing right now feeding families where children have lost meals from not being in school,” Jordan said. “We really wanted to find a way to give to that.”
Beer up for auction
The collection of beer includes barrel-aged beers, limited releases and some vintage bottles dating back to 2013. Many of the beers weren’t available for purchase in this area, and others were available only if you belonged to the brewery’s membership club (like Sierra Nevada’s Alpha Hops Society). There are also a handful of special releases from area breweries, like NoDa Brewing Co.’s Monstro or Legal Remedy Brewing Co.’s Barrel-Aged Habeas Corpus.
And though he works around great beer all day, that won’t stop Jordan from trying to get his hands on a 2015 Dark Lord, a barrel-aged imperial stout from 3 Floyds Brewing Co. in Indiana.
“That’s one that I am probably going to end up bidding a lot of money on,” Jordan said.
Stable Hand, which offers beer, wine, coffee and food in the space that was formerly home to Good Bottle Co., held its grand opening on March 7.
“The turnout was great, the grand opening was great,” Jordan said. “I feel like the community really showed up.”
Shortly after opening, COVID-19 forced Stable Hand to close
Jordan describes the new space as a “total redo” from Good Bottle. While Good Bottle Co. once had a large retail program, Stable Hand follows more of a service model, where patrons can stop in to enjoy a bite or a beverage.
That was the plan, at least. Shortly after its grand opening, however, orders to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 required Stable Hand to shift back to a retail model for the time being. The shop is now offering weekly deliveries and is opening its doors on the weekend for online pickup.
“We have really seen a great response,” Jordan said. “I think that says a lot about our shop, but it also says a lot about our community.”
Like other area businesses, the owners of Stable Hand will follow state recommendations and consider other factors — including how safe their employees feel coming back to work — before reopening in Phase One of the plan to reopen the state from COVID-19 stay-at-home orders.
When customers do finally come back inside, they’ll find Hex coffee, craft beer on draft, inventive small dishes (like hopcorn, which is popcorn dosed with Galaxy hops and nutritional yeast) and natural wines.
“We want to be proud of what we have in our space,” said Jordan, who noted that most of the wines at Stable Hand are produced in limited numbers, often by a single person or family. “Natural wine, I think, is a way for us to do that in a way that we feel good about.”
Jordan and the staff are eager to once again open their doors to share all of this. But for now, they have been impressed by the support of their community.
“It hasn’t been normal and it hasn’t been the best, but it’s been the best we could imagine right now.”
