When customers sit at the new Henry’s Tavern in Denver, CO, eating dinner and sipping a brew, they are focused on a large Imperial Brown walk-in beer keg cooler holding 102 kegs of beer.
They have to be. The beer keg cooler is in the center of the dining room, with large glass walls displaying the well-lit interior.
It’s one of many high-end projects that Imperial Brown designs and builds for restaurants that cater to craft beer and wine. These types of high-end projects are becoming more and more popular with restaurants and allow Imperial Brown to showcase its ability to customize coolers.
These projects are often described with adjectives such as innovative, artistic, inspiring, imaginative, stunning, elegant, charming, striking, or simply, beautiful.
‘It’s a nice way for us as a company to show our capabilities and something that we can do differently from the competition,” says Tom Housel, Inside Sales rep for the Imperial Brown West Coast manufacturing facility.
The West Coast facility designed and built this project for customer Smith & Greene, a food service design company in Spokane, WA.
“A key to this construction is keeping the product cold but visible,” says Rhoads. “We have been a leader in this.” The cooler windows have to remain free of condensation.
The ability to maximize the viewing area and still have the structural strength needed is the challenge with these beer keg coolers, says Housel.
Henry’s Tavern, a chain, emphasizes a visible beer keg cooler in all of its restaurants. There are 10 windows in the new Denver restaurant beer keg cooler. it sits in an area that contains a structural post, so the design required a notch around the post in order for the cooler to fit. High-density rail construction allows Imperial Brown to customize products to fit around obstructions and in other unusually shaped spaces.
A moment steel frame supports the unit so that it meets seismic requirements. “We used a four steel posts with three horizontal steel beams attached to the posts,” says Nick Stahl, Customer Service Rep for Imperial Brown.
“This type of project continues to grow and presents additional opportunities for Imperial Brown,” says Michael Beachkofsky, Vice President of Marketing & Sales for Imperial Brown.
In addition to the central beer keg cooler, Imperial Brown designed and built a three-unit combo for the Denver restaurant. This unit contains a cooler, a freezer, and another keg cooler.