Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant has announced it will open a new location along the Coastal Highway in Rehoboth Beach by the end of summer 2018.
This will be the Delaware brewery’s 14th planned location on the East Coast and third in its home state.
It will be joining fellow Delaware craft beer pioneer Dogfish Head and six other breweries in that area, helping create a craft beer destination. But Iron Hill president and founder Kevin Finn said that’s not why he chose the location.
“A lot of our customers at the Newark and Wilmington locations vacation in the Rehoboth Beach area and have actually asked for us to come to Rehoboth,” Finn said. "And one of those is my father, who has a place in Lewes and has been pestering me for 15 years to open a place in Sussex County."
The new brewery-restaurant is expected to bring around 100 full-time and part-time jobs to the Rehoboth area, depending on the season.
Iron Hill employs 225 people in the state at its New Castle County locations and its headquarters in Wilmington.
Finn said he’d love to open more brewpubs in the First State, but Delaware caps the number of locations a brewery can operate at three.
“Unless they change the legislation, this will be our last opening, which I think is unfortunate,” he said.
Since opening in Newark in 1996, Iron Hill has expanded to 13 locations (soon to be 14) in the Mid-Atlantic. It's been 13 years since it opened its last Delaware location in Wilmington.
"So, this Rehoboth location has been a long time coming" Finn said.
Craft beer brewing has been a booming industry in the U.S. for the past few years. Last year, the U.S. craft brewing industry employed nearly 130,000 people and accounted for $23.5 billion in sales, according to the Brewer’s Association.
Delaware has taken advantage of the popularity surrounding craft brewing by creating the Beer, Wine and Spirits Trail in 2010.
Iron Hill's new location is scheduled to open at19791 Coastal Highwayjust south of the Tanger Outlets by late summer 2018.
