Moon Dog Wild West opening in Franco Cozzo building on April 26
Moon Dog will open its ‘Wild West’ Footscray venue in the former Franco Cozzo building on Friday morning, after two failed attempts.
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Moon Dog Wild West is finally set to open its Footscray venue in the former Franco Cozzo building, after two failed attempts.
The brewery will throw open its doors at 11.30am on Friday April 26, following the resolution of a fire hydrant issue which saw its grand opening last week – which had been rescheduled from the week before – abruptly cancelled as guests were arriving at the door.
Moon Dog co-founder Karl van Buuren told the Herald Sun that since then, the business has been working with its fire engineers and the Maribyrnong City Council to rectify the issue.
“The fire hydrant has been recessed into the building, clear and off the footpath, and was recertified to make a complaint to code,” he said.
“We had a meeting on Tuesday morning with the local council representatives, and it was very constructive.
“We talked about what had happened and we came to an understanding.
“The whole goal of that meeting was to understand their perspective, and for them to understand our perspective, and to continue on and make a really great relationship moving forward,” he said.
Mr van Buuren confirmed that the business and council cleared up the misunderstanding about who it was that declared the fire hydrant non-compliant at the eleventh hour.
During the fallout of the bungled opening, Moon Dog had claimed that the council was the one to make the last-minute call, but the council refuted this and said it was a private building surveyor instead.
“We were notified by a private building inspector that the fire hydrant was not to code,” Mr van Buuren said.
“The misunderstanding with that was all cleared up with the council,” he said.
Maribyrnong City Council CEO Celia Haddock said that the organisation appreciated Moon Dog’s recognition “they misinterpreted regulations”.
“We acknowledged their apology for wrongly blaming Council for the issue in a meeting they invited us to on Tuesday April 23,” Ms Haddock said.
“At this meeting they also advised Council they had been able to resolve safety issues with their private building surveyor, enabling the occupancy certificate to be issued.
“We wish them all the best for their opening,” she said.
Mr van Buuren said going forward, the business will exercise a higher degree of caution when it comes to announcing grand openings and big events – a lesson, unfortunately, learned the hard way.
“One of the key learnings is that we really have to assess the risk of announcing openings and parties without having everything lined up 100 per cent,” he said.
“We were working on ticking boxes and we thought that we had ticked them all. Then there were a couple of extra boxes that popped up right at the last minute that we weren’t aware of.
“It was a presumption that we were going to tick all the boxes, and it just didn’t happen.
“For us, it’s about understanding that the chickens haven’t hatched until they actually have hatched and to not make any big announcements before then,” he said.
Mr van Buuren said he was excited to open the doors to the Moon Dog Wild West venue tomorrow and was ready to have a beer with anyone who came down to celebrate the opening.
There’ll be a band playing honky-tonk music, a mechanical bucking bull, pool tables, Moon Dog craft beers on tap, a Tex-Mex inspired menu and a rooftop dotted with cactuses.
Later this year, Moon Dog is set to open a fourth site on the Marvel Stadium concourse in Docklands.
The new venue, dubbed Doglands, is currently being built and announcements about its opening will surface in the coming months.
Once all the chickens have hatched, of course.
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