After eight years, two dozen awards, dozens of performers and thousands of customers, Smoking Cannon Brewery is up for sale.
Smoking Cannon covers 1,900 square feet, including a 1,080-square-foot tasting room with a 14-tap bar and the 375-foot-brewery.
“We have tons of mixed emotions. It’s going to be really hard to leave, but it’s time to move on,” said Natallie Phillips, who owns the Ramona brewery with her longtime partner Mike Nelson.
Phillips is also selling Artistry in Hair, a beauty salon in Ramona she’s owned for the past 24 years.
With Nelson’s retirement after 21 years with the Ramona Municipal Water District, the couple plan to spend the next few years traveling and visiting family.
“Most of our families have moved out of California, and we plan to go from state to state visiting everyone,” Phillips said. “Except for when I attended beauty college, I’ve been working since I was 14, so I haven’t been able to travel.”
She said seeing national monuments and learning about the states are major goals, as is visiting family in Iceland.
With the beauty salon already a success, the couple decided in 2016 to open a brewery based on Nelson’s home brewing achievements.
“Mike has been home brewing since the early 1980s and won more than 100 medals in competitions,” Phillips said.
They began construction on the brewery in 2016, and opened the following year.
They said they are proud of the fact they were able to get approval for a brewery in the middle of town. Manufacturing facilities are normally required to be in industrial areas, they said.
Since opening, the couple have won 25 medals at professional brewing competitions.
They make six kegs a week from their three-barrel electrical brewhouse system.
In addition to their beers, the brewery makes ginger soda and root beer.
“We really wanted residents to be able to bring their families, and it’s been a great way to get my little-kid fix,” said Phillips. “Throughout the years we’ve really gotten to know them and watch them grow up and have families of their own.”
The official sale was announced in early March.
Both Nelson and Phillips said they will miss their customers and the musicians that played at the brewery.
“Smoking Cannon was one of the first places Ashley asked to play when she moved here,” said Phillips, referring to Ashley E. Norton. “Once she started playing and started the Ramona Music Alliance with Jon Hasz, it just really took off. And we’ve loved having the musicians at the brewery.”
Both say their customers, and other businesses who sold their beer, such as Marinade on Main, the Cooler and Julian Beer Co. have kept them going over the past years.
“We’re hoping whoever buys the brewery will continue the relationships, as it’s nice to have the community you,” said Phillips.
The brewery comes with more than 200 recipes, a history of awards and all the cannons that are made to scale and actually fire, Phillips said.
They also note that the future purchaser will “inherit the musicians.”
“They are on a nice schedule and they don’t want to go anywhere,” Phillips said.
The 1,300-square-foot Artistry in Hair is home to six stylists, with a private esthetician room. Although it is in the same building as Smoking Cannon, the two businesses are not connected and are being sold separately.
The salon also comes complete, with regular clients and stylists who want to stay.
Phillips and Williams are leaving in June and plan to have a “moving/retirement/birthday/anniversary” on May 18 at their private residence. For more information, Phillips.
Phillips said she plans on picking up at least one new skill while on the road.
“I want to learn to play the guitar, for those long days traveling,” she said.
Smoking Cannon Brewery is at 780 Main St., Suite I. The entrance is on 8th Street. Artistry in Hair is at the same Main Street address, Suite A.
For more information, [email protected] or call 760-519-2480.
New Del Taco coming this year
Del Taco operators are planning to open a new fast-food outlet at the former KFC site at 1025 Main St.
A spokesperson for SoCal Food Group, which operates more than 35 Del Taco locations in Southern California, said the new restaurant will open sometime this year.
Del Taco fast-food restaurants offer American-style Mexican cuisine. The menu at the Ramona Del Taco will be patterned after standard Del Taco menus, the spokesperson said.
Ramona Design Review Board Chairman Scotty Ensign said representatives of SoCal Food Group presented their plans for signs and landscaping to the Design Review Board over two months. The board ensures projects proposed in Ramona comply with applicable design review standards.
The company’s plans for new signs and landscaping were unanimously approved by the Design Review Board on Nov. 21, Ensign said.
The plans call for replacing junipers and other landscaping in the front, back and on property adjacent to the AM/PM convenience store at 1015 Main St., he said. The new landscaping will feature ornamental trees and other decorative landscaping, he said.
Ensign said some longtime residents may recall that a Del Taco restaurant at 1137 Main St. was converted into the Mananas Mexican Food restaurant in the early 1990s.
“Now we’re getting another Del Taco,” he said. “And we have a new Starbucks coming into where Popeyes was.”
The SoCal Food Group spokesperson said a general contractor will design the new Del Taco according to Del Taco’s corporate standards of design. The roughly 2,000-square-foot building will have dine-in seating and drive-thru service, the spokesperson said.
