The Brown Bottle is returning, again.
F Street Hospitality, a division of Milwaukee-based F Street Group, announced the restaurant will reopen at 221 W. Galena St. in the Schlitz Park office complex this fall. F Street Hospitality is taking over food service at the office park, and will operate both The Brown Bottle and a fast-casual cafe.
According to a news release, the restaurant will initially serve lunch and dinner, with brunch soon to follow, in the historic dining room and bar. The menu will feature many of the familiar brewery classics, and a private dining space will be available for special events.
The cafe, meanwhile, will provide breakfast and lunch as well as catering options for nearby businesses and events.
Jana Michaelis, F Street Hospitality marketing and creative director, said the cafe will open a little later than The Brown Bottle, either in the fall or winter. She said the cafe will be located to the south of the restaurant.
Schlitz Park is a 32-acre, five-building, 775,000-square-foot former brewery turned office campus just north of downtown Milwaukee. According to the release, the complex's high-impact areas are being renovated. The restaurant and cafe will open as renovations to those spaces are finished, Michaelis said.
"I am thrilled to be part of bringing back an iconic Milwaukee restaurant," Kaelyn Cervero, F Street Hospitality vice president of sales and development, said in the release. "Schlitz Park has beautiful grounds that we can activate for tented events as well as new and exciting outdoor programming."
The Brown Bottle continued operating at the former Schlitz Brewing Co. tasting room even after Schlitz was shuttered in 1981. It became a full restaurant in 1986 but closed in 2004.
It reopened in 2014.
But The Brown Bottle again
closed its doors last spring shortly after a joint venture consisting of San Francisco and Fort Worth, Texas-based
TPG Real Estate and Detroit-based
Crestlight Capital acquired the Schlitz Park office complex
for roughly $101 million.
The new owners in March 2019 notified Schlitz Park tenants and stakeholders the bar would be closing following the resignation of the general manager. The closure allowed the owners "to explore what the next iteration of The Brown Bottle will be," they wrote.
In a statement Friday, the ownership group said they were "thrilled" to be partnering with F Street Hospitality and reopening The Brown Bottle.
"F Street Hospitality shares a similar vision on the future of Schlitz Park and we are excited to bring their expertise and local experience to Schlitz Park tenants and the surrounding community," the statement reads.
The new partnership means Schlitz Park's previous relationships with food service providers Coffee With a Conscience and Davians have ceased, the owners said.
"These are exciting times at Schlitz Park and we will have more to share as the summer gets underway," the TPG-Crestlight ownership group said.
Schlitz Park was developed by The Brewery Works, the development and ownership group led by the Grunau and Sampson families. They bought the complex in 1983 two years after the brewery shut down and transformed it into five office buildings, three parking structures and a chilled water plant.
