Signs announcing Brickyard Hollow Brewing Co. will be coming soon are seen recently at the site of the former Chipotle Mexican Grill at the Marketplace at Augusta. The Yarmouth-based chain of brewpubs plans to open a counter-service restaurant in Augusta this fall. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

AUGUSTA — Following a 12-month period during which Brickyard Hollow Brewing Co. has opened four new locations across Maine, the Yarmouth-based craft brewery and pizza chain plans to open its ninth location in Augusta by mid-fall.

Brendon Medeiros, vice president of operations for Brickyard Hollow, said the latest location in the Marketplace at Augusta is attractive to the company for a couple of reasons.

One, Medeiros said, is that pizza is not currently on offer elsewhere in the shopping mall. The other is that it’s a favorable location to draw a lunchtime crowd, which will be able to order whole pizzas or just a slice.

While Augusta’s overnight population is about 19,000, the city’s daytime population is nearly three times that, thanks to its role as a retail and service center for central Maine and as an employment hub, due to the concentration of state government jobs. That daytime population boom is one of the factors that draws restaurants to central Maine’s largest city and to places like the Marketplace.

Keith Luke, director of economic development for the city of Augusta, said the vacancy rate at so-called lifestyle centers like the Marketplace, just off Civic Center Drive, or Augusta Crossing on Western Avenue, is at near zero.

“If you are owned and managed by a leading retail lifestyle center business as both of those facilities are, you are doing just fine,” Luke said.

Brickyard Hollow is moving into the space of the former Chipotle Mexican Grill that closed amid a labor dispute in mid-2022.

Like that restaurant, customers will order their food at the counter and either eat in or take out.

“I love the idea of doing a limited-service restaurant there, like our Freeport location,” Medeiros said. “We are not going to do our burgers and sandwiches. We’re going to do our appetizers, pizza and bowls. You can eat in, but you won’t have a server. We’re testing a quick-service restaurant model.”

And, of course, there will be beer.

“We’ll have four packs to go and draft beer,” he said. “We’ll have six to nine taps.”

That scaled-down approach has also been tried in Freeport, and it’s been successful, he said.

Brickyard Hollow, which got its start in Yarmouth in 2017, makes both craft beer and craft pizza. The original plan had been for a just a brewery, but Yarmouth zoning did not allow a brewery without food. 

Since then, the company has extended its presence in Maine, growing both through expansion and acquisition.

In December, it opened locations in Skowhegan and Eustis. In May, it opened a location in Brunswick. And through its purchase of the former Nu Brewery, it added both a brewpub and brewing capacity that opened as Brickyard Hollow over the Memorial Day weekend.

In addition to Freeport, it also has locations in Portland and Ogunquit.

And next year, he said, a 10th location is expected to open in Biddeford, likely in mid-spring.

Medeiros said the company plans to continue its mission to support the communities where it has locations by hosting fundraisers and community nights. It will also continue collaborating with other local restaurants to raise money for Full Plates, Full Potential, which aims to end childhood food insecurity in Maine.

“We’re excited to go to Augusta and test our (business) there and see how we do,” Medeiros said. “We’ve been able to maintain a lot of employees and been able to contribute to an employment pool. That’s the reason why, if anything, that we have been successful — we’ve been able to keep our staff.”