Beer lovers might have thought Moon Dog’s one-two combo earlier this month – gaining the council’s green light to move into the former Franco Cozzo site in Footscray plus their plans to open in Frankston – was quite the knockout punch from the fun-loving booze factory. Yet it turns out they weren’t quite finished. Not by a long shot.
Today, The Crafty Pint can reveal they’ll be bringing their unique offering to the heart of their hometown: opening a 1,500-capacity brewpub next to Marvel Stadium.
It will take shape as part of the Home Docklands Precinct, located at 685 Latrobe Street, on the northwestern side of the stadium. Plans at this stage are to create a 100-capacity pub and restaurant that will be open at all times, and to install a brewpub-sized brewery inside a much larger space that would open on game days, for public events, and also be available for hire for large functions.
“It’s just a kick of the footy away from the stadium,” Moon Dog co-founder Josh Uljans told The Crafty Pint.
While the Moon Dog team had been looking at potential sites around Frankston and Footscray / West Footscray before the COVID pandemic started, the opportunity in the Docklands precinct has come about far more recently. They were only approached by the developers behind Home in May, with talks moving fast as the team behind the precinct outlined a vision designed to benefit both local residents and visitors to the Docklands.
“We were pretty keen to find new opportunities, and this just seemed like a really interesting thing to look at,” Josh says. “And different to anything else that we’re doing.
“It’s very hard for small businesses to reach audiences that aren’t actively engaged, so we’re pretty excited to see what these new venues and the Marvel site can do.”
The announcement continues a remarkable journey for the brewing company launched by three mates – Josh, older brother Jake, and Karl van Buuren – in 2010. Back then, they made their name with typically madcap, often high ABV, and always ridiculously-named beers brewed on repurposed dairy tanks in an Abbotsford warehouse near CUB where Josh and Karl lived for a few months.
Few would have pegged them rising to become one of the biggest indie brewers in the country a decade later. Yet a number of factors – among them the creation of an approachable and affordable core range, the addition of the huge and hugely popular venue Moon Dog World, their entry into the hard seltzer market in a manner that outstripped any of their peers – has seen them become of the most recognised names in booze.
Claiming Champion Large Brewery at last year’s Indies awards showed the liquid in their cans was better than ever too, something backed up when their flagship pale ale Old Mate won a trophy in the hotly-contested Champion Modern Pale Ale category at this week's awards.
“It’s exciting,” Josh says of the place in which they find themselves in 2023. “It’s been a very wonderful journey, very strange, and it’s just very exciting.
“We’re 13-years-old now and it’s exciting to still be doing new and interesting stuff. It’s clearly a pretty complicated time for the craft beer industry, and it’s certainly not been a very easy three years for us, so it’s nice to be facing a bright future.”
The success of Moon Dog World in Preston, which blew up beyond even the owners’ wildest expectations when it opened and has been bringing in punters in the thousands each week even through this challenging winter, was the spark that led them down this path.
“It was a great thing to recognise the impact of localising your brand and becoming part of a community,” Josh says. “It made a heap of sense to do more of that: to make yourself a really important part of the community.”
Melbourne’s lockdowns put any plans on hold for a couple of years, until, he says: “We made the decision this time last year that we wanted to get back on track with it. The areas we were excited by [pre-COVID] we were still excited by then.”
As for what gives them confidence they’ll be able to replicate the success of their flagship venue elsewhere, Josh references the broad demographic they attract. The tropical vibes and outlandish flourishes of Moon Dog World were always designed to appeal well outside the beer bubble even before they introduced Fizzer, but he says any given Saturday will see the crowd move from large groups and families into more of a restaurant feel and then those there to watch sport or party with mates.
“It’s a really broad audience,” he says. “One day you could have a group of retirees coming in for a meal and a hen’s night, all co-existing happily because it’s a really big space that delivers a lot of different experiences. It’s nice to be able to do that and not just pigeon-holing yourself.”
“Everyone is looking for something new and different and fun and exciting. And so we think Moon Dog is a pretty broad base and a broad brand these days that can appeal to a whole bunch of different people.
“We make our venues fun and unique and interesting and inclusive. Our service is spot on. we make it inviting, and I think that’s the right approach. We’ll find out!”
Their partners in the Docklands development describe themselves as "Australia’s leading creator and operator of apartment communities exclusively for renters, inspired by the services of great hotels". They have already opened two Home sites in Southbank and Richmond and are set to add both Home Docklands and Home Parramatta in 2024.
The Docklands precinct will feature 676 build-to-rent apartments, spanning two towers, with 2,500 square metres of retail space, and hotel-inspired services. Development manager Matt D’Apolito says their vision is "to create a vibrant, active destination" catering to residents, the local community and visitors.
"Home is delighted to welcome on board Moon Dog Brewing as a coveted partner with a loyal and expanding customer base, following the success of Moon Dog World," he says. "The Moon Dog brand, coupled with their demonstrated ability to successfully operate large format spaces, was an exciting opportunity for us to partner with an operator that could unlock the potential of our 1,900sqm brewpub space.
"We are confident this partnership will provide residents, workers, and the public a space to enjoy.”
Given the flurry of recent announcements, Moon Dog team is clearly going to be kept busy building, launching and filling three more large venues over the coming year, with the three-storey bar complete with rooftop bar in Footscray set to open first. And it’s a situation they’re delighted to find themselves in after the uncertainties of the decade to date.
“I’ve no idea what we’re going to be doing in the future,” Josh says. “I really enjoy building projects and growing the business so it’s back being fun again after a few years of it not being fun.
“Moon Dog has always been a very flexible thing – we’ve changed with the times – and we’ve no idea what the future will bring, but right now it’s really exciting to be focusing on delivering these projects, and to have a whole bunch of other stuff that different people across the business are working on. It’s good.”
Images of the site taking shape taken from the Home Docklands website.
James Smith launched The Crafty Pint in 2010, two years after moving to Australia from the UK. He was taken to Mountain Goat within weeks of landing in Melbourne, joined their indoor cricket team, and is still navigating the rabbit hole that is craft beer to this day.
The beers that turned you on to good beer:
- Watching pints of McEwan's 80 Shilling settle when visiting family in Edinburgh.
- Pints of flat Bass from the jug at the Cap & Stocking in Kegworth.
- A first Paulaner Hefeweizen when working in Munich in 1998: “This smells of bananas!”
- Castle Rock Harvest Pale – how could a 3.8 percent ABV beer be so good? (It turns out it was an early example of the three Cs – Cascade, Centennial and Columbus – in an English bitter).
- Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA poured through hops at the Sunset Grill in Cambridge, MA, in the company of a man who turned out to be the Beer Nut (while we were both covering a double murder case at the time).
- Ordering a Mountain Goat Hightail on my first day as an Aussie resident as it was local and I’d never heard of it; “A dark Australian beer; well I never…”
- Murray’s Icon 2IPA at Beer DeLuxe Fed Square, recommended by a guy I’d not long known who's now the main man at Fixation, served by Mik Halse, now head of sales at Hawkers. How could an Australian beer smell as good as that?!?
You've got three beers to turn someone else on to good beer; what are they and why?
- Any really good, fresh and balanced West Coast style IPA. Punchy hop aromatics are the most obvious way to capture someone's attention and these IPAs, done well, present the key components in beer (if you're sticking to just water, malt, hops and yeast) in harmony yet with the volume turned up.
- Saison Dupont. Arguably a selfish choice here as I bloody love the broad saison style and dearly hope it will finally take hold in Australia one day. Given a choice, I'd probably crack one enlivened with Brettanomyces like Molly Rose Matilde for myself but, when it comes to turning on someone new, you've got to go with the classic.
- Rodenbach Caractère Rouge. Because if you don't enjoy or can't appreciate this beer, I'll never win you over. And because Filip, the fruit and wood specialist at Rodenbach that designed it, is a beautiful human.
The last beer you enjoyed:
Fixation IPA at The Incubator.
Three things that represent you:
- The Soft Bulletin by The Flaming Lips
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- Golden Plains
NB All articles written by James in the first eight years of the site appear as By Crafty Pint. Today, that's used for collaborative efforts by the wider team.
