Brewery Celebration

Highly anticipated Fort Worth brewery opens with a wildly patriotic party

Wild Acre will open its facility on July 4.

Photo courtesy of Wild Acre

One of Fort Worth's most exciting new breweries has set an opening date, and it's on the most patriotic day of the year. Wild Acre Brewing Company is celebrating its debut by throwing a party on July 4, with an afternoon-long event that includes beer and live music.

The brewery is at 1734 E. El Paso St., a hallowed location about a mile southeast of downtown that was the former Ranch Style Beans complex.

"The opening is kind of a flash deal," says Wild Acre founder John Pritchett. "We were telling people we were opening in July, and at some point, I decided we should just open on July 4. If you put it on the calendar, you manage to get things done."

For Pritchett, a beer industry veteran who was previously a manager for distributor Ben E. Keith, having a tap room that was open to the public was an integral part of his vision. It's a 5,000-square-foot air-conditioned tap room with windows, where you can see all brewing equipment and tanks. Garage doors lead to a landscaped outdoor beer garden with picnic tables.

"It's a pretty stylish brewery," Pritchett says. "It's an older building, so it has a brick façade that we took down to the original brick."

It also has two palm trees. "Having those puts you in a different place," he says.

Pritchett and brewer Mike Kraft have already deployed their first round of beer to the market. They've issued four brews that are not the usual humdrum quartet: a bock, an India red ale, a stout, and a wheat ale.

Eventually, they'll begin putting it in cans to be sold at retail outlets, but for now, they're just taking it one step at a time, by distributing kegs to a few select bars and restaurants. Their first deliveries were on June 17, when they had launch parties in Fort Worth at Flying Saucer, Woodshed Smokehouse, and Pouring Glory.

"I thought it was important to start in bars and restaurants, so that we're associated with cool places and cool experiences that you have with your friends or spouse," Pritchett says.

breweries craft-beer

Chef News

Fort Worth's Will Rogers Memorial Center welcomes bright new chef

FortWorthtx.gov

Will Rogers Memorial Center

There's a new chef in town: Waylon Cornelius, named executive chef of catering and concessions for Craft Culinary Concepts, the food and beverage provider at Will Rogers Memorial Center.

Will Rogers Memorial Center is the 120-acre entertainment complex anchoring Fort Worth’s Cultural District, owned and operated by the City of Fort Worth. Cornelius will oversee menus for trade shows and other events at the center which bring in more than 2 million visitors a year.

Craft Culinary Concepts is headquartered in Glendale, Arizona, and manages food and beverage programs for entertainment, sports and cultural facilities.

Chef Waylon Corneliusfortworthtx.gov

According to a release, Cornelius joined the team this summer and is already shifting the expectations of guests from a typical “BBQ and beans” menu to a bill of fare satisfying every kind of palate.

“We always have fajitas ready to go, but we also make a beautiful Beef Wellington or baked salmon with a pink salt crust,” Cornelius says in a statement.

For consumer trade shows, Craft and its partners Caribou and Taco Heads offer more choices for the thousands of guests who attend events at WRMC annually.

“Some of our equestrian guests are away from home and here for several days, and they need more than popcorn and hot dogs,” Cornelius says. “Our concessions offer biscuits and gravy, burritos made in-house, strawberry salad, fruit and yogurt cups.”

A native of Mansfield, Cornelius grew up helping in a farm-to-table kitchen. He was raised on a farm with his mother, grandmother, and grandfather -- a Vietnam veteran who enjoyed vegetable gardens and raising hogs and chickens. He studied computer science after high school and holds an associate's degree in Cultural Resource Management and Policy Analysis from Tarrant County College.

He's a 2003 graduate of AIMS Academy of Culinary Arts in Dallas where he was mentored by a number of great chefs. While training as assistant executive sous chef at the AAA four-diamond Grand Hyatt DFW, he worked with Executive Chef Sutti Sripolpa, chef Eric Dreyer (who went on to be Oprah Winfrey’s personal chef), and Chef Jean-Claude Plihon, under whom he honed his French cooking skills.

As executive sous chef at the opening of Perry’s Steakhouse and Grille in Southlake, Cornelius gained expertise with volume. While at HG Sply Co., he learned about gluten-free items and other food allergies.

HG Sply is also where he crossed paths with Chef James R. Schell III, Craft’s general manager at WRMC, who recruited Cornelius to the complex.

"James said he needed someone who can hit moving targets, push the culinary team to be more avant-garde and use locally sourced, seasonal ingredients, so here I am," Cornelius says. "Culinary is a small world."

“I want people to say, ‘When we were in Fort Worth, you won’t believe what we got at Will Rogers!’” Schell says. “Even the celebrities who perform [in the auditorium] are surprised. When Chicago played here recently and we served dinner backstage, they said they felt treated like the Rolling Stones.”

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