North Park Beer Co. plans new food concept for 10th anniversary

North Park Beer Co. is using its 10th anniversary to remake one of the biggest parts of the taproom experience: the food. At its University Avenue flagship, Kelsey and Amanda McNair have taken kitchen operations in-house after Mastiff Kitchen served its final meals on Sunday, May 3, shifting the brewery from a long-running partnership to a new menu built around the house brand.

That change marks a real operational reset, not just a celebratory refresh. When the McNairs opened North Park Beer Co. in 2016, they had a clear beer vision but little restaurant experience, so they leased the kitchen to Mastiff Kitchen, a food-truck business founded in 2013 by Jacob Bartlett and Eric Gallerstein. Mastiff’s on-site eatery first soft-opened on September 9, 2016, and over the next decade it helped turn the brewery into more than a place to grab a pint. The kitchen became part of the reason regulars stayed longer, ate there with friends and treated the taproom like a neighborhood stop instead of a quick beer run.

Now the brewery is betting it can do more with that space on its own. San Diego Magazine said the new direction centers on global pub fare, with an early-June soft launch planned ahead of a June 23 anniversary party. North Park Beer Co. also planned to bring back some original beers for the celebration, tying the food reset to the brewery’s earliest identity rather than presenting it as a hard break from the past.

The timing fits a brewery that has already grown into its own rhythm. North Park Beer Co. describes itself as an award-winning neighborhood brewery, taproom and pizza shop, and it has expanded beyond the flagship with food concepts including a pizza shop at its Crown Point location. Kelsey McNair’s background helps explain why the beer side could support that kind of experimentation from the start. The brewery says he arrived in San Diego 20 years ago, and San Diego Magazine described him as an accomplished, award-winning homebrewer before North Park Beer Co. opened. His West Coast IPA Hop-Fu! had already won more awards than any IPA in homebrew history, giving the brewery serious beer credibility before it ever started rethinking the kitchen.

For homebrewers and beer travelers, North Park Beer Co.’s move shows how food has become one of the clearest maturity markers in modern brewery culture. A decade in, the question is no longer only what is in the glass, but what keeps people in the room long enough to order another round. North Park Beer Co. is answering that by treating the kitchen as core business, not background noise.