Settled on the northwest side of the Chatham Street, Old Apex Rd, and N Chatham Street roundabout, is a concept years in the making for two local breweries expanding operations, facilities, and places to have a great time.
Welcome to West End with a tip of the cap to Kyle Greer and the team at MacKenan for helping bring this project to life.
BEFORE
AFTER
Ken O’Berry of Vicious Fishes and Mike Markham of South Line Brewing Company have teamed up to bring a truly unique brewery concept and electric vibe to downtown Cary’s West End. Ken describes the newest Vicious Fishes location as, “this is our flagship location at this point. Downtown Cary is where all the liquid’s going to get produced, where all the fun’s going to be had, where all the live music is. This is just going to be a wonderful place where we’re going to consolidate operations and stage for future growth. This new Cary location is where it’s all going to happen making all locations possible,” said Ken.
Vicious Fishes has four locations: their original brew house is just south of downtown Fuquay where they have a full restaurant and bar they have a beer garden location outside of downtown Apex near the Friendship area.
Ken and Mike Markham are no strangers.
Mike, the owner of Big Mike’s Barbeque and one of the leaders of South Line Brewing, has bought beer from Ken for years to put in his restaurants and bottle shops. Ken shared an interesting story of how this all came to be.
“Mike’s wanted to do a brewery as long as I’ve known him. At one point he was telling me he connected with some developers who were going to transform this awesome area in this emerging part of downtown Cary. I was elated for him that he was going to finally be able to realize his dream, never having any idea that we might be able to be a part of this as well. So we’ve known these guys for a while in a variety of different contexts. It’s kind of like we’re putting the band back together, but the band’s never been together before.”
Barbeque lovers of Cary and Apex are very familiar with Big Mike’s Barbeque. “For me, we’ve been taking our food truck to breweries for so long,” Mike relayed.
“When we first started out, we were going to Full Steam every Friday night, and that’s what really got me into craft beer. I started trying a lot of new beers everywhere and from that I got to know Ken and it grew into a good relationship with Vicious Fishes. Over the years, we’ve professionally bounced ideas back and forth, and so when this opportunity came up for both of us to kind of be neighbors, we both jumped on it because they needed a bigger production facility, we needed our first facility at South Line, and neither one of us could take on 11,000 square feet solo.”
There’s something for everyone at this location, and not just the incredible selection and variety of beers on the premises from both Vicious Fishes and South Line. The renovation and transformation of a couple of old metal industrial buildings into a vibrant expansive courtyard, awesome tap room, and beer production facilities is nothing short of amazing.
As you enter from Old Apex Road at the Chatham Street roundabout, there’s beautiful welcoming arches with ‘West End’ on full display opening up into this wonderful expansive outdoor beer garden with some grassy areas, tons of seating and an area in the back where they have live music. There are also covered spaces where people can just hang out no matter the weather. The vibe here is electric and super cool, and the fact that there are two breweries means it’s a craft beer destination right in downtown Cary.
When folks walk into this space, they’re going to be awestruck by the artwork on the walls and how it matches with the labels on the beers.
Ken explained, “Well, I had the good fortune of connecting with a tattoo artist that does digital art, does tattooing naturally. We started working with him a couple of years ago on all of our beer labels. I’m a very brand focused person and I wanted to make sure that the expressions of our brand were cohesive. So, we’ve been working together with this tattoo artist, Sam Parker, for at least a couple of years, and I was blown away when he agreed to come out and do some murals for us.”
When you walk into the Vicious Fishes tap room, you see three significant pieces of art that tie into their brand and some of the characters that they have for their beers.
Across the pavilion, when coming up with the name for South Line Brewing Company, Mike laughs about it.
“Yeah, we went real sophisticated on the name. We’re on the south line for Amtrak. It’s actually about 25 feet from where we’re sitting right now. Then add our Apex tap room, which hopefully we get everything finalized in the next week or two that’ll be going on the same tracks running right through downtown Apex. It’s a perfect fit,” said Mike.
“Whenever you think about Cary, everybody seems to think about the train station. So it’s awesome for us to be able to tie our beer names into things around downtown Cary that are train related. We’ve got a whole list of all new release stuff that’s going to come out that all have something to do with a little bit of a train influence to it,” Mike added.
Like it’s nextdoor neighbor, South Line has an awesome atmosphere and vibe to it. “For us, this is our flagship store, we needed a big tap room doing sports and having people out here on the weekends, on Saturdays and Sundays watching football,” Mike said.
“One of our main focuses is to try to break the mold on how craft breweries shouldn’t have sports on tv, so we’re going to be that one in downtown Cary where people come hang out for outstanding craft beer with sports on TVs. We’re going to have great food trucks out here as well. We’ll have a South Line branded food truck out here every day serving a sports bar type menu, and we’ll keep a rotation of other local food trucks as well.”
In addition to great food as a top priority next to fantastic beer, music is also a main focus as well.
“The last two weeks we’ve tried to bring in some bands and bring in some different acoustic sounds, and we’ll occasionally have some bigger bands. I think we’ve got a Tom Petty cover band coming sometime in the next two weeks. But really, you just kind of look around and see it’s a great environment. We’re right here on the train track so we can get rowdy and get loud if we need to. But overall, it’s just like a nice chill brewery vibe,” said Mike.
So grab some friends, make it a date night, or bring the whole family out to downtown Cary’s newest brewery experience at West End. Vicious Fishes and South Line Brewing are located at 510 and 518 Old Apex Road, Cary NC 27511.
