Keg and Case, a marketplace located on Seventh Street on the historic grounds of Schmidt Brewery, provides a space for people to gather and eat.
Craig Cohen, Keg and Case founder, owns other properties and hopes this venture, opened in 2018, serves as a destination for art and fun.
“We have multiple restaurants, a brewery and then an eclectic, diverse, vibrant marketplace, as well as entertainment, music, festival events,” Cohen said. “I envisioned it more as an ecosystem and a community that houses lots of people’s dreams.”
The building’s name comes from its history, as it was originally used to store kegs and cases of beer, according to Cohen.
Because of city regulations on modifying officially recognized historic buildings, the historic building faced some unique challenges.
“It was a moving target trying to imagine it, and then figure out what was actually going to comply with all the regulatory bodies that were overseeing our process,” Cohen said. “The idea was born that we would house one anchor restaurant, which to me was In Bloom.”
Cohen said the building spoke to him. He wanted to see the neighborhood anchored by something remarkable.
“He just kind of had this idea: what if we could renovate this place, and make something really special happen,” said Mary Quinn McCallum, publicist for Keg and Case. “Little by little the interior market filled in as well.”
Keg and Case won Best New Food Hall from USA Today.
“The challenge is to keep curating the market in a way that is interesting and host events that bring in people from all over,” McCallum said. “Many of the tenants have gotten to know one another and they collaborate on ideas for events and even recipes and, you know, you might see the florist selling flowers in a vase that the pottery people made.”
Nick Rancone, owner of In Bloom and Revival, was the first lease at Keg and Case. Rancone describes Revival as Carolina-focused comfort food and In Bloom as fire-cooked Midwestern cuisine, complete with the biggest cooking hearth in the country.
“It was something that was inspired by traveling in mostly Northern Spain and the Basque region there. And they have this really great kind of identity with their local food,” Rancone said. “And there’s a couple great restaurants there that use just fire to kind of translate those ingredients. I thought the ingredient base there and the attachment that they have to their farming history and culture was like a really easy correlation to how we are Upper Midwest.”
Rancone said the space of the market provides opportunities to do things he wouldn’t normally be able to in a less dramatic space.
“It was really important to align with Craig, from a vision standpoint, where we wanted something truly unique and independent in spirit and also celebratory for what we thought is one of the coolest neighborhoods in the whole city,” Rancone said.
Kimberly Christenson, owner of Evla Pottery and vendor at Keg and Case, enjoys the community. Christenson had a store on Grand Avenue for 17 years before closing it to be a merchant at Keg and Case.
“This is unlike any other place I’ve ever seen in Minnesota,” Christenson said.
Christenson said Keg and Case is “hip” and “cool” while Cohen loves the idea of being able to go somewhere fun.
“The food and the smells is all wonderful, but it’s only available because you have people who make it their passion to produce these things. So I love the people. I know all of them,” Cohen said. “I care about their business and I see us all having a synergistic and reciprocal relationship with each other so that no one is bigger than the sum of its parts.”
Rachel Torralba can be reached at torr3544@stthomas.edu.