Club West Brewing is getting smaller on purpose. The Charlotte brewery’s new owner, Kevin Hadall, says he’s cutting production and moving brewing into a much smaller facility, with production there expected to start in December. The South End taproom isn’t part of that move.
Reference Log
Hadall confirmed to The Charlotte Observer on Nov. 5 that his purchase of the company closed Sept. 30, WSOC-TV reported. Financial terms weren’t disclosed. The news isn’t the sale. It’s the plan that came with it.
Club West Brewing goes smaller, starting in December
“We’re not producing as much as they produced in the past,” Hadall told the Observer, as quoted by WSOC. “We need to cut costs, move to a smaller scale, and start again. We’re taking it down to the studs.”
According to Uptown Informer, that was about restructuring production and costs, not construction at the taproom. Hadall described the new site as a fraction of the size of the old plant. Its address and capacity haven’t been made public.
WSOC reports Hadall’s team negotiated a lease-back with the new owner of the old production building, so brewing can continue there while the smaller facility is built out. Uptown Informer notes the Observer’s companion story described that lease-back as still being negotiated, so the exact terms may still be settling.
Two deals, not one
Two transactions landed in the same week, and they’re easy to mix up. The first is the sale of the brewery business to Hadall, which closed Sept. 30. The second is the sale of the former, larger production building. In a Nov. 5 report, WSOC, citing Mecklenburg County property records, said that building “sold Tuesday” to commercial real estate firm Browder Brown for more than $6.6 million.
Uptown Informer reports that the building was owned by an entity tied to co-founder Sarah Taylor rather than by the brewery itself. The building sale isn’t the brewery acquisition.
What stays the same at Club West Brewing in South End
For now, nothing announced changes the taproom at 2151 Hawkins St. Uptown Informer checked Club West’s site and found the posted hours and food menu unchanged, with the brewery’s five core beers still listed for the taproom and select local accounts. The brewery’s own team page still listed the previous owner as of Nov. 5, so the website hasn’t caught up.
Who is Kevin Hadall?
Hadall, 57, is a Texas-based accountant who lives north of Dallas and travels to Charlotte every couple of weeks, according to WSOC. He has more than 30 years in the service industry and owned his first bar and restaurant in 2011. He started running Club West operations several months before the deal closed, after an earlier announced buyer, Brad Bergman, went a different direction.
“I fell in love with the staff,” Hadall said, per WSOC.
How Club West got here
Club West is the former Sycamore Brewing, once one of Charlotte’s largest breweries, with two taprooms and distribution in seven states, WSOC reports. The South End taproom reopened under the Club West name in March 2026. Our archive still has the Sycamore era, including its 2024 packaging redesign.
What we still don’t know
- Where the smaller production facility is and how much beer it can make
- Whether brewing there actually starts on time in December
- Whether the core lineup or distribution changes
- What happens to the old brewing equipment once the lease-back ends
We’ll keep a receiver tuned to Charlotte for the answers.
Featured image: Patio at 2151 Hawkins St. in February 2025, when it still operated as Sycamore Brewing; not a current Club West photo. Photo by City Dweller 2, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: cropped, color-graded and overlaid with BeerAlien graphics. This edited version is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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