August 5, 2008 : Two life-long friends take over the local pub in their hometown of Bracebridge; and for us, history was made. The idea of a business venture together was born over playing music and the desire to have a place to entertain and add some fun to our community, and have a job we would love. Starting a small business comes with so many challenges, but anything worth doing rarely is easy.
We had a pretty tough start trying to bring our vision to reality which included only serving local beer made in Ontario which was a HUGE change for the Griffin. You could find one of us working almost every hour the pub was open and although we weren’t always winning financially, we stuck to our guns and tried to bring a great local experience to anyone that came through the door. We tried every avenue we could to make our business work from our “Brewmaster’s Dinners” to “Beer Olympics” to themed dance parties and parking lot parties on summer long weekends. We even got into beer-focused events such as the “Muskoka Beer Festival” to bring our pub pillars to a wider audience; craft beer, hand-made food, live music.
We had such great help from our township and the pub became a place for foodies, beer lovers, music lovers, professionals, tourists and everyone in between. Thursday nights quickly became our regular gig and we had a few different players join us over the years, most notably the incredibly talented Jamie Sherman, who became a fixture in the Griffin Pub Band just weeks after we took over in 2008. We’ve played over 700 Thursday nights, and the pub has seen over 2500 nights of live music under our watch.
After nearly 16 years, we two friends with matching griffin tattoos are moving on to focus on our other business ventures and our families. We’re very excited for you to meet the new visionary for the pub, Ben Elling. Ben takes over May 15th and we wish him nothing but success as a pub operator. You’ll no doubt see us playing music at the pub and out enjoying the ambiance from the patron side of the bar.
We want to send a heartfelt thank you to all the amazing staff over of the years that have made this amazing adventure something we will always remember. Working together in a small pub is more like a family than a workforce. Over the years we saw relationships spark, marriage proposals, families raised, retirements, staff becoming doctors, lawyers, engineers, business owners, but most importantly life-long friendships were made.
We could not have had the chance of living this dream without the support of our families and although this is a sad time seeing an adventure come to an end, we will be gaining precious time back in our lives to enjoy with our partners and kids.
Thank you Bracebridge for supporting The Griffin Pub for the last 16 years that we’ve owned it, and 26 years overall, and we hope that you will continue to show the love to this amazing little pub that’s hard to find, but harder to forget.
Jed & Curt
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Thanks for a great pub and great memories.