The RAD (River Arts District) Brew Co is Asheville’s latest brewery to arrive on the scene amidst several breweries closing their doors for the first time since I’ve lived here.
I’ve mentioned how it feels increasingly hard for breweries to carve out an identity with how many there are in Asheville. I admit I was a bit skeptical of something as generically named as the RAD Brew Co, plopped right in the middle of the RAD, just behind a pretty big hotel development project.
RAD Brew Co does have a great location going for them, nestled (I’m using this word specifically as my favorite Asheville meme account—Crying in Chicken Alley—has an obsession with pointing out how many publications describe Asheville as “nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains”) right behind Anoche, and within walking distance of Wedge, Olde London Road, and Bottle Riot, and I have to say that I was disgusted or anything on my first visit. Still, I wondered, other than location, how it would separate itself.
I found out on my second visit over the 4th of July weekend. The RAD Brew Co has a free popcorn machine.
This may not seem like a big deal to some of you reading, but I assure you, IT IS A VERY BIG DEAL FOR ME.
Growing up in Northeastern Pennsylvania (NEPA), free popcorn was the hallmark of a good bar (not a nice bar, per se, but a good bar). Some places would just put out bowls of semi-stale popcorn, but the best bars had serve-yourself-popcorn machines that I have and do take great advantage of (the servers at one of my family’s favorite bar/restaurants used to joke that they knew whenever my siblings and I had been there the night before because half the popcorn was gone). Unfortunately, even in NEPA, popcorn machines are disappearing (shoutout to The Fishin’ Hole for keeping this tasty tradition alive), but Asheville has been entirely devoid of them…until now.
Call me cheap, or just gluttonous, but I love somewhere that provides something free to munch on, especially when you’re forking over at least $6.00 a pop for a drink, and it’s just too few and too far between, not just in Asheville, but honestly…in the world.
Now, am I counting down the days until the popcorn machine gets canned so that someone can set up a hand-crafted, artisanal, bespoke popcorn pop-up with fucked up flavors like kombucha or lavender/turmeric that one’s asked for? Absolutely. But for now, I’m going to celebrate this win.
AshevilleExplorer 
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