First Posted: 5/7/2015
EXETER — The Sabatini name has been associated with pizza since 1958 when Sabatini’s Pizza first opened. Now, the name will become associated with beer.
Lindo Sabatini, owner of Sabatini’s Pizza since 2005, will soon open a new craft beer and retail store next door to the pizza restaurant on Wyoming Avenue.
Trade Eastern, design-build contractors from Wilkes-Barre, began constructing the new store in December 2013 and Sabatini hopes the new place will be open by the end of this month.
Hours of operation will be 10 a.m. to midnight with the possibility of later hours on weekends.
The new bar will be called simply Sabatini’s.
The building in which it’s housed has been owned by the Sabatini family since the early 1990s. It operated as Play Plaza from 1994-2007 and then a furniture store from 2008-2011.
The parking lot of the craft beer building has been shared with Sabatini’s Pizza, but an additional lot has been constructed on the other side to allow for more parking.
Although the beer store and bar will be new, the concept of serving beer is not new to the Sabatini business.
“We’ve been doing craft beer since 1994, 1995,” said Sabatini. “Over the last 21 years we’ve developed a pretty good beer enthusiast customer base. So, in the last couple of years when we had this building that was vacant after the furniture store left, we decided to take it a step further than our monthly events that we have at Sabatini’s now and the extensive list we have next door.”
The new place will not be a restaurant, but that does not mean customers won’t be able to have the best of both worlds.
“If people want to eat, they can come in and say, ‘Hey, we wanna grab something to eat and get a couple beers,’ they will have to go next door, grab something to eat and then come back,” said Sabatini. “If they come in get beers, sit down, drink and they ask for a pizza, we’ll have a runner bring a pizza over, but we’re not doing any other foods. So, pizza will be available here for our beer customers, but if they want only food they have to go next door. That’s a point we have to get across right off the bat because people are going to want to come eat at the new place, but we didn’t build a restaurant — we built a bar.”
Staff will not be shared by the two businesses, Sabatini said, but more staff will be hired to help with the bar. The craft beers that customers have become accustomed to ordering at the restaurant will continue to be served there.
The bar will feature 16 taps on the back wall that will rotate craft beers as well as four taps attached to the bar with four dedicated towers for specific breweries to be rotated in their respective taps. One tap is for La Chauffe, a Belgium brewery; La Trappe, a Dutch Trappist brewery; Schneider-Weisse, from Germany; and Delirium Temens, another Belgium brewery.
One of the bar’s coolest features is its crowler system.
“It allows us to take draft beer, put it in a can, put a top on it, crank it down, hit the button and it’s a table-mounted self-canning system,” said Sabatini. “It will seal the can and allow you to take draft beer to go home in a can.”
Television monitors throughout the building will display what’s on tap. There will also be a room with a fireplace, tables and couches for customers to relax.
An outside patio will seat 54 people.
“We’re going for more of a relaxed feel,” said Sabatini. “We’re not a sports bar, we’re not going to have loud music. We do have speakers throughout the whole place, but we’re looking for a better feel. We’re looking for some place to go and have a beer and wind down after work, not necessarily a place to amp up and want to go moshing.”
The retail side of the store has 28 coolers and five four-sided, 20-foot long shelves and will offer more than 2,000 beer brands.
“I don’t care how good of a beer expert somebody is, there will be a beer here they’ve never heard of,” Sabatini said.
The retail store will sell 12-packs, six-packs and individual bottles only, as 192 ounces is the limit the retail store can sell to a customer at one time.
“I have a good staff,” he said. “I mean, the staff I have at Sabatini’s now has been with me for a long time and I have a lot of faith that we’ll be able to keep that business the way it’s been. My managers that we’re going to have at both places are going to really help us.”
