In less than 10 years, the owners of Whistle Hop Brewing Company have built their brewery into a must-stop spot for families, due to its beer and its outdoor space.

What started with a caboose fueling patrons’ drinking needs has become a spot with putt-putt, a play area complete with a slide made from a culvert pipe, and an astroturfed soccer field. There’s no babysitting service, per se, but all of those options give kids plenty of things to do while parents sit and relax. If parents (or any other adult) wants to play, too, there’s also bocce, cornhole, and a disc golf Connect 4 game.

These aspects of their business have helped the Fairview brewery become a bigger part of its community. 

“That's definitely helped a lot,” said Gina Miceli, who co-owns the brewery with her husband, Tom. “The biggest thing we learned in all this is you have to give kids something to do, or else they're just going to go wild and do what kids do. So definitely giving them the putt-putt, and the slide and the soccer field has been a big help. We’ve kept making the space nice for kids. So that's been a huge part of (building a community).”

One of the ideas behind the brewery was to give their neighbors a spot to congregate. Now they know patrons who’ve met some of their closest friends at their brewery and a couple who met there have gotten married. The brewery has become a gathering location for Fairview residents and for people outside of the East Asheville area.

“We both grew up in Fairview, and we knew we wanted somewhere for the community to come and hang out, because there's a lot of families that live out this way, and there wasn't really a place where the parents could have a beer and the kids could play in the yard,” Miceli said. “We figured we'd do something that was similar to how people got together, just go to other people's houses like they would for a cookout. We needed somewhere the whole community could do that together.”

Now, the family will take the lessons learned from the Fairview location into its next venture: helping rebuild fun experiences in Chimney Rock. 

Whistle Hop announced in December 2025 that it planned for a second location there. The hope is for it to open this summer or fall.

“There's a lot we can take from doing our weekly events and getting people together,” Miceli said. “One thing we're not gonna be able to do right away, but what we've done at the Fairview (location), is make a nice outdoor space for folks to play around. When we open in Chimney Rock, we're gonna have the building itself with the bar in it, and then we'll have a two-story deck that people can be on. But when we first open the yard below won't be open because that's still an active site where people are coming in and doing all kinds of construction and cleanup. Once that all gets cleaned up, and we get the riverwalk put back, we're going to make that a really nice outdoor space, too.”

From food trucks to live music to team trivia, breweries across Western North Carolina are finding ways to build a strong community of patrons. Partnering with non-profit organizations for events, being a welcoming environment for all, and being active in the community (such as Whistle Hop Brewing’s entry in the Fairview Christmas parade) are other ways that breweries are growing their brands.

“Within communities from the mountains to the coast, North Carolina’s breweries serve as ‘third-space’ hubs, providing a welcoming gathering space for friends and neighbors,” said Lisa Parker, Executive Director of the NC Craft Brewers Guild. “Outdoor spaces continue to innovate with fire pits, patios, playgrounds, dog parks, disc golf courses, music stages, and more.  Additionally, events like music bingo, trivia, yoga classes, run and cycle clubs, and crafting nights not only provide a healthy dose of activity, but allow their customers to connect with other like-minded people within their communities. In fact, breweries may provide an effective antidote to our current societal problems of loneliness and isolation.”

Building a community has been an ongoing process for the folks at Lazy Hiker Brewing, which has locations in Franklin and Sylva. Headbrewer Graham Norris said there was a desire for the brewery to be integrated into the community and ownership made decisions with this in mind.

"We really wanted to be a gathering place for the community in Franklin,” he said, “and then we opened up in Sylva in 2019 with the same goal in mind and we've certainly seen those things.”

When Lazy Hiker opened in Franklin in 2015 it was the first brewery in town. Because of this, the staff took it upon themselves to introduce craft beer to the community. They hosted tours and tasting sessions and had a loyalty program for drinkers. They wanted residents to “see what this is all about and just build that community,” Norris said.

“That's how we started initially, and then as things grew from there,” he continued, “as we offered a wide variety of events, like live music most Friday and Saturday nights, open mic on Thursdays, trivia on Wednesdays, music bingo on Tuesdays, and we just started doing game nights on Mondays to get people back into the old school board games. It's a time where you can experience face-to-face communication.”

One community that Lazy Hiker has that other breweries don’t is the individuals who are hiking the Appalachian Trail. The brewery in Franklin is near the trail and hikers frequent it as they through-hike.

Because the hiker community is so tight knit, the hikers talk about the brewery giving new hikers the intel on where to get a good brew.

“We've always been kind of hiker-focused to an extent,” Norris said. “We have a big through-hiker season here in Franklin. From mid-February through the end of May, we see 30, 40, sometimes even 50 hikers a day coming through here. It's fun to hear their experiences. That's a cool thing that we realized from the first year we opened, and what otherwise would be kind of a slower season, we've been able to build that community during March, April, and May before the real tourist season really starts.”

Local breweries are finding ways to encourage communities through the actions and entrepreneurship of owners. As owners move into a new phase for breweries, these communities will continue to be important to the longevity of each brewery’s brand.