In 2010, when Barry, Heather and Jackson VanDyke started gutting a former liquor store and house in Grand Rapids, Michigan’s Eastown neighborhood, Harmony Brewing looked less like a strategic business play and more like an ambitious homebrewer’s fever dream. The brewery’s founders were repurposing church pews, salvaging gymnasium floors and lowering converted dairy tanks through a cutout in the kitchen floor to build a brewing system in the basement.
At the time, Grand Rapids was only beginning to emerge as a craft beer destination.
“We thought we had a novel concept,” Barry VanDyke said. “There was Founders and Schmohz and a couple other breweries in town and even Brewery Vivant wasn’t open yet.”
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