Quiet Giants spotlights the small businesses rooted right here in Delaware County — resilient, essential and often overlooked. Who should we feature next? Let us know at news@delawaresource.com.
LEWIS CENTER — Olentangy River Brewing Company truly has a drink for any hour of the day: a coffee to kick things off and a beer to wind things down.
The craft coffee and beer business, located at 303 S. Meadows Green Drive in Lewis Center, will celebrate its eighth anniversary this November.
By day, the establishment features The Roosevelt Coffeehouse. At 8 p.m., the espresso machines give way to beer taps while the brewing operation hums in the back.
“All of our owners are super local, they all live in Lewis Center and the surrounding area,” manager Darren Loeffler said.
Owners Bethany and Scott Schweitzer, Darci and Jed Henry, and Ryan and Sarah Wilkins were simply a group of friends who enjoyed gathering for beer tastings at one another’s homes. Eventually, they realized Lewis Center was missing something.
“There was nowhere cool to just go hang out in Lewis Center, there was no great community space,” Bethany Schweitzer said.
They decided to change that by opening a brewery designed to serve as a gathering place for the community.
Around the same time, one of the original owners was a regular customer at The Roosevelt Coffeehouse in downtown Columbus and had become friends with owner Kenny Sipes. The group then saw an opportunity to make use of the brewery space during the daytime.
The Roosevelt is a nonprofit coffee business on a mission to provide clean water, support justice and fight hunger — a “higher purpose” that Loeffler and Schweitzer said meshed well with their plan.
“It’s one of those things where it’s been really great for us,” Loeffler said. “I’m sure it’s been really great for Roosevelt too, and so it’s just a really good synergistic relationship.”
Today, Olentangy Brewing boasts 15 rotating beer taps alongside two types of drip coffee, tea, matcha and more.
But the community’s response to all of this may be the most impressive part.
A place for everyone
Loeffler said the building was once a traditional office filled with cubicles. After the ownership group purchased the property, they stripped out the walls to create the open, welcoming space visitors see today.
There was never any debate about where the brewery should go — once the space became available in Lewis Center, it was the perfect fit.
“It is intentionally a place for anyone to come and have a meeting or hang out, we want to be welcoming of the entire community,” Schweitzer said.
“That’s really where the inspiration came from. Like I want somebody to have a Bible study over there and someone playing Dungeons and Dragons down the hall,” she said. “I think that’s kind of the vibe you’re going to get here.”
The brewery includes two reservable gathering spaces — a large room alongside the brewing tanks and another just off the main coffeehouse and bar — that regularly host meetings, clubs and community events.
Loeffler believes that atmosphere, combined with the brewery’s dual focus on craft coffee and craft beer, is what keeps people coming back.
“Coffee is a thing that takes a lot of time and craft and knowledge to be able to get good at, and at the same time so is brewing beer,” he said. “I feel like our location, we’re very good at excelling in both of those and putting out a product we’re all proud of.”
In fact, many customers come in for a morning coffee, settle in to work or meet with friends, then find themselves staying long enough for the taps to open.
“It’s just the community aspect of it all, the people we have here — so much is driven by regulars,” Loeffler said.
“Those people are coming in for coffee and sticking around for a couple hours and they’re like, ‘Well, I guess it’s 2 o’clock, let’s start drinking some beers.'”
More community connections
A staff of about 25 people, including eight being full-time employees, are the driving force behind creating that sense of community at ORBC.
Schweitzer said some of her staff members spend 10 hours a week planning events that bring people together outside of simply grabbing a drink. Some examples include: corgi or golden retriever meetups, trivia nights, board game nights and the very popular run club.
Every Tuesday evening, roughly 40 to 50 runners, walkers and joggers head out for a few miles to and from nearby Highbanks Metro Park before returning for a post-run beer.
The group has become so tight that Schweitzer said many members traveled to Puerto Rico together with brewmaster Enrique Iglesias, a native of the island who showed folks around.
“I mean, what other run clubs are going to be like, ‘Let’s go on vacation together,'” Schweitzer said with a laugh.
That community-first mindset extends beyond the brewery’s walls: Schweitzer said customers may not realize a portion of every Roosevelt Coffee purchase supports Redeeming Injustice, the nonprofit arm of The Roosevelt Coffeehouse.
Those proceeds help organizations including the Mid-Ohio Food Collective, She Has A Name, which works to combat human trafficking, and Water Mission, which provides access to clean drinking water around the world.
“We have such a heart for the community and taking care of people and giving back — and so does The Roosevelt,” she said. “What they stand for is really great and it went fit really well with us.”
Since opening, Schweitzer said the brewery has given more than $250,000 away to charity.
Eight years after opening, the brewery has become exactly what the owners and friends hoped it would be: a place where neighbors can meet over coffee in the morning, share a beer in the evening and build friendships somewhere in between.
