Tosa Pool Beer Garden Following a Successful Model

Gemutlichkeit.

A good feeling, relaxation, comfort, fellowship – according to the best translations from the German anybody can find. It's a warm, friendly frame of mind, and it often involves beer.

For the Friends of Hoyt Park and Pool, it means all that and more as they progress through the permitting process to create the second beer garden in a Milwaukee County park.

Hoping to open their beer garden by mid-summer, the Friends have a strong, if still very new, model to build on. After just one year in operation, the first Milwaukee County Parks beer garden was an unqualified success.

The Estabrook Park Beer Garden opened in early June in 2012 and by the end of its first season had been profitable for both its landlord and operator.

The on a 20 percent cut of beer sales and 10 percent of soft drink sales, according to a county annual report. The operation of the beer garden was contracted to the Old German Beer Hall, 1009 N. Old World 3rd St. in Milwaukee, which in turn is owned by Hans Weissgerber III.

A unique product in a unique place

Old German Beer Hall was in a unique position to take advantage of the beer garden opportunity. It had a rare and exclusive right to sell imported Bavarian Hofbrauhaus beer, the classic beverage of Munich's eponymous beer hall, packed to the spilling over every Oktoberfest.

Hofbrauhaus licenses abroad only to a few venues it deems in keeping with its traditions. The Estabrook Park Beer Garden, like the Old German Beer Hall itself, fit the bill – although hometown Miller Brewing products were also sold.

"It was great," said interim parks director Jim Keegan. "There were long lines all the time. It was very popular."

So popular, in fact, that the county sought requests for proposals for two more park beer gardens to open this year. The Friends of Hoyt Park and Pool (FOHPP), operators of Tosa Pool, had already come to the independent conclusion that a beer garden was the perfect fit for Hoyt Park.

Keegan said that no decision had been made on how profits would be split at Hoyt Park. The beer garden proposal still has to go through a number of Wauwatosa and Milwaukee County approvals.

At Estabrook Park, Old German Beer Hall pays $236 a month in utilities in a park pavilion and takes its 80/90 cut on beer and soft drink profits, respectively. At Hoyt Park, the FOHPP could either contract operations and accept only a similar cut of profits, or it could operate the beer garden itself and simply buy and resell beer from a distributor.

Notice from far and wide (and near)

Keegan did not have total attendance figures for Estabrook Park Beer Garden's first year but, as he said, lines were long and profits showed its popularity.

So did the ubiquitous Internet. Just over three months out, Cheapflights.com had named it one of the Top 10 Beer Gardens in the World.

That could be a bit of hyperbole, since Cheapflights is a U.S. firm – the Germans might have a different opinion.

But the Estabrook experiment certainly got noticed, and having succeeded by any measure – popularity, profit and, according to all reports, deportment of its customers – it would seem as though FOHPP could succeed as well at Hoyt Park.

A central metropolitan position, with the added attraction of Tosa Pool itself, would argue for a magnetic pull of patrons.

There is much to be settled though. Estabrook Park had longer hours in its first year than FOHPP is proposing for its inauguration. Estabrook was open daily from noon to 9 p.m. The Hoyt Park volk are proposing 3 to 9 p.m. hours from Wednesday through Sunday so as not to overlap much with its main children's hours.

The financial arrangements between operator, supplier and landlord are still unknown.

And deep in that discussion lies the question of: What beer?