PEABODY — Jeff Marquis and Rob Dunn have been brewing beer together for more than 10 years, ever since a friend purchased a Groupon from a Danvers homebrew supply store.
They started out in Dunn’s kitchen, making a few batches at a time. When Dunn’s wife became pregnant with their first child, they moved everything out to Marquis’ single-car garage, installing an electrical system and plenty of other equipment to turn it into a single-barrel brew house.
In just a couple of weeks, the lifelong friends will celebrate two years since they officially opened their own brewery, downtown Peabody’s Granite Coast Brewing.
“We saw this space after they gutted it from a long-term renter, so we walked into a blank canvas,” said Dunn. “Everything we could do ourselves, we did.”
Dunn isn’t exaggerating. Everything from laying new floorboards, painting, drywall, building furniture and retiling the bathrooms was done by friends, family, and Dunn and Marquis themselves.
They’ve been open for almost two years, but their employee roster still includes friends who have helped them along the way — even the woman who originally purchased the Groupon, Amy Luckiewicz, now serves as the company’s marketing and events manager.
The brewery is known for its wide variety of beer styles, with a range of lagers, IPAs, kolsches, sours, wheat beers, shandies, porters and more always on draft, and new brews getting tapped all the time.
“The beer world has such a variety of styles, and that’s the beauty of our model,” Dunn said, explaining that they never want a customer to feel like all of their options taste the same. “You can introduce people to new styles.”
Ten months after Granite Coast’s May 2019 opening, the COVID-19 pandemic shut the company down. While Marquis and Dunn were able to offer to-go and delivery options, their events and everyday customer interactions were put on hold.
They quickly pivoted by starting to run online events like trivia nights, Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, Scattergories and Jeopardy. Their popular monthly trivia nights have raised money for causes like Newhall Fields Community Farm and Last Hope K9 Rescue.
“The online events were never about making money,” Marquis said. “It was about maintaining clientele and helping them maintain their sanity.”
Marquis said that these events even helped them expand their following, with many of their fans stopping into the taproom for the first time after they reopened.
In addition to their online events, the brewery regularly hosts local food vendors so that customers coming in for a beer can also get something to eat and abide by the state’s COVID-19 protocols for restaurants.
While the requirement that customers purchase food will be lifted by Massachusetts at the end of the month, Granite Coast will continue to partner with local food vendors to offer meals.
Other breweries have been good partners as well. One larger local brewery offered up an unused brewhouse to let Granite Coast and other companies can their beers for distribution, something that they had never been able to do before.
“I’ve been amazed at how supportive the brewing industry is of each other,” Luckiewicz said. “I see the reach-out. It’s really nice to see.”
Meanwhile, Granite Coast regulars have been slowly coming back. While Marquis and Dunn said that their patronage comes and goes on any given day, the company’s dedication to strict COVID protocols and transparency — along with their community-oriented events and desire to be a downtown hub of activity — has kept their customers loyal.
“We try to make sure this place is a welcoming environment to everybody,” Dunn said. “People say ‘I’ve lived in Peabody my whole life, and it’s good to see things happening downtown again.’”