Batch Brewing’s owner celebrates their 10th Birthday With a Warning | Eater Detroit

"Celebrating a 10-year milestone after opening in Corktown in February 2015, the brewery is marking the anniversary with a 10-day program that includes a ticketed Valentine’s Day pop-up dinner with Carlos Parisi and the brewery’s executive chef Brendon Edwards, a Saturday, February 15 birthday bash featuring the sounds of Motor City Soul Club and barbecue specialties like brisket, crispy skin pulled pork, spare ribs, and sides like espagueti verde and collard greens, a first taste of the newest creation — a Bourbon barrel-aged double mash imperial stout flavored with vanilla and cacao — called Lush II, and a concluding brunch pop-up on Sunday, February 16 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. by chef Hailey Enszer. Founded with the help of a $50,000 award from Comerica Bank’s Hatch Detroit contest, the space previously housed the Porter Street Station Bar and Grill; within months of opening the operators expanded from a limited bar-food menu to more substantive offerings and, in 2023, unveiled a Saturday side hustle for barbecue. During the pandemic the team converted a parking lot into a sprawling pavilion, installed a walk-up window for outdoor service, used the outdoor space for special events, became a destination for local chefs without kitchens, and invited displaced restaurant workers to "pay what you could" for a hot plate of barbecue. Owner Stephen Roginson has used social media to highlight industry pressures and asked customers for awareness: "We’re coming up on our 10-year anniversary, and instead of reflecting on all that fun and beer, I can’t look past the ever-increasing challenges and obstacles the service industry is facing," and, as he told Eater, "A milestone like 10 years should be a joyous occasion, a cause for celebration, but it is absolutely within the context of this new state of existing in the service industry," adding that "We’re still very much all recovering from the financial reality of the pandemic." He cites specific cost pressures — "The price of beef brisket cost about $3 a pound before the pandemic but has since increased by 60 percent and is now $5 a pound" — as well as upcoming minimum wage and tipped-wage increases in Michigan following a 2024 Michigan Supreme Court ruling and the threat of Canadian tariffs on aluminum sheet (used for beer cans) that "could help to raise the price that the customer pays for a cold one by 30 percent." Roginson emphasizes transparency and staff retention: "We’re just trying to navigate the moment with conscientiousness, and enthusiasm, and optimism, and also to try and find a way to be transparent," and "We’re 10 years into this, and if we’re going to do it for another 10 years, we need our guests to know that we really care, that we understand that price increases are painful for everyone, but they’re just as painful for us as they are for them." He also framed pricing as a values question: "It’s been a bit of a conundrum to find a way to do it that does not require an apology. We don’t want to charge somebody $25 for a cheeseburger. We don’t want to charge $25 for a Cubano. This is grassroots food. It’s salt of the earth food — aside from the fact that we make it so thoughtfully, we have all these steps involved, and labor — it’s still honest food that belongs with a beer." - Serena Maria Daniels