By KIRSTEN LASKEY
Los Alamos Daily Post
kirsten@ladailypost.com

When Doug Osborn joined Bathtub Row Brewing Co-op as its general manager in 2017, he firmly decided not to get mixed up with food.

“I always said that I would never do food,” he told the Los Alamos Daily Post Wednesday afternoon. “Foods’ hard. It takes a lot of attention; you gotta be really good at it. We had good restaurants and we still have good restaurants in town.”

As time progressed and the restaurant at the Los Alamos County Golf Course clubhouse became available for leasing, Osborn said he reconsidered.

An avid golfer himself, Osbron said he felt the building was underutilized.

“It is a phenomenal golf course, but it could be a lot more,” he said. “It’s the most beautiful sports complex building in the County and maybe in Northern New Mexico … when we found out that it is going to be open … we kind of circled together and said, ‘do we want that to be just another restaurant or do we want that building to actually serve the County and serve the constituents and the people of the County?’ That’s our mission statement … is to offer spaces where we can reach out and touch our community and do good for people. I can’t imagine a better opportunity … I just can’t imagine being able to fulfill our mission statement any better than with that facility.”

As a result, Los Alamos County Council unanimously approved a lease for the 19th Hole Sports Pub LLC to operate out of the restaurant during its regular meeting Tuesday night.

19th Hole Sports Pub, LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Los Alamos Beer Cooperative. It is a separate business entity from Bathtub Row Brewing Co-op, but has the same managing partners.

The intended start date of the lease is June 1.
Before the new restaurant moves in, County Community Services Department Director Cory Styron reported Tuesday that some high-end maintenance is needed in the restaurant space. He said this includes thorough cleaning as well as painting and replacing some of the floors.

Bathtub Row Brewing Co-op Head Brewer Adam Auden told the Daily Post Wednesday the exact timeline for opening the pub isn’t completely clear. Hours of operation are also not yet known, he said it is dependent on staff. Plus, the idea is to build up slowly.

“We’re trying to move everything along as quick as we can … we’ll be there as soon as we can be, doing as much we can, we can’t promise what that is necessarily going to look like from day one,” he said.

As far as the food, Osborn brought in his long-time friend Tom Kerpon as the chef.

“He and I have done this before a few times … we opened a few restaurants together,” he said.

The menu is up in the air; the County would eventually like to see breakfast, lunch and dinner served at the restaurant. Osborn gave a general preview of what people could expect: nachos, chili cheese fries, chicken wings and smash burgers. As the clientele’s tastes are known, the menu will be modified accordingly.

What is clear and evident is the co-op’s excitement to serve a new set of customers in a different part of town.

“I think it’s a different space in a different part of the town so it’s not going to serve exactly the same audience,” Auden said. “What we built here and what’s been successful here, we want to take into that space … the reason it’s worth doing is because … we want to make that building work for the whole community – the golfers, the people who want to eat in the restaurant, the people who just want to come enjoy what is also a public park … and be able to serve everyone who wants to make use of that space. We are definitely going to have our beer over there.”

He added there is an opportunity to bring in out-of-state beers as well as wines and spirits.

Bathtub Row Brewing Co-op Board President Bill Myers told the Daily Post that food service isn’t entirely foreign to the co-op; he recalled when it first opened, the co-op had a food truck, but the lack of a commercial kitchen caused the co-op to sell it. He added the co-op team regularly does barbecues.

Styron said that three entities submitted statements of interest to run the restaurant.

According to the agenda documents, these entities were:

• 19th Hole Sports Pub;
• Fiori e Sale; and
• 9th at 9.

Styron added that the restaurant’s most recent occupant, Cottonwood on the Greens, did not submit a statement of interest. Styron noted the County’s agreement with 19th Hole Sports Pub is different than its existing one.

“This is very different; the previous one was a service agreement, and this is an outright lease,” he said.

“The previous agreement was basically we shared part of the revenues generated; this just does it differently,” County Attorney Alvin Leaphart told Council Tuesday. “This is more of a straight lease. You lease the space, you have to do a certain amount of things, you pay us a certain amount of money and whatever you make in your business is yours to keep … It just seems like a better way to go about it.”

The agenda documents laid out the key terms of the lease:

• Approximately 4,318 square feet of net usable kitchen and restaurant seating space will be leased.
• The restaurant is to be open daily for no less than 95 percent of Golf Course operating hours.
• The County will own the kitchen equipment and restaurant furniture, which will be part of the monthly rent.
• The lessee will provide a varied menu including breakfast, lunch, snacks, and evening meals, competitively priced with similar golf course operations and local food establishments.
• The lessee will provide food and beverage services for golf tournaments and special events and may lease the multi-functional community room from the County for such purposes.
• The lessee is entitled to use the existing Los Alamos Golf Course Governmental Liquor License, subject to all applicable regulations.
• The rent is set at $25 per square foot, totaling $107,952 annually.

Osborn summed up the new venture nicely: “We think it’s going to be a hoot. More than anything we think it is going to be a lot of fun.”