Swampy's Florida

Brewmaster’s was a more exclusive chain with scattered locations in specific areas.

This ad is from the March 24th,1981 edition of the Sarasota Journal. The Sarasota Journal lasted only a year more before ending it’s run in July 1982.

I found this interesting Brewmaster’s background on Facebook:
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Brewmaster’s Steakhouse, 3717 W. Cypress Ave.
Courtesy of Christa Turner Gamelin

The original Brewmaster Steakhouse was started in Tampa in 1971 by Swiss-born restaurateur John Christen. It featured an old-time ticket booth from a Cuban theater and an ornamental Mediterranean-style telephone in a pay phone booth decorated with maroon Spanish Moroccan tiles. Brewmaster’s major marketing hook was free beer and wine with meals. Brewmaster was one of the first casual-diner’s pub-style steak houses. It was also the first Florida restaurant to feature a salad bar. Christen sold the chain in 1983, at which time had expanded to 13 locations, all in the Tampa Bay area.

In 1984, Christen made gourmet salad dressing under the Café Geneva label for grocery chains. In 1985, Christen started the Shells Seafood Restaurant chain, with a single restaurant in Madeira Beach. He built it as a series of separate Chapter S corporations, all of which paid a management fee to Christen. Under his leadership, the chain began a bold expansion program, both in Florida and beyond. Before the recession began taking its toll in the early 1990s, the Shells chain had grown to 28 restaurants, including units located in Atlanta, Mobile, Charlotte, Nashville, and New York. Outside of Florida, and at some places within, the restaurants struggled for profitability, barely sputtering along, and the economic downturn nationally did not help.

Christen then relinquished operational control of Shells, and undertook the rebuilding of the Brewmaster restaurants, using 1990s variations on his original ideas. By 1997, the revamped chain with five other locations in Florida, offered free refills on Stroh’s draft beer, some wines and soft drinks. Christen was still the majority partner, but shared ownership and operational duties with Myara and Vince Auman. Part of the company philosophy was that they do not construct new buildings for their restaurants. In August of 1997, they opened their new restaurant in the the middle of the Kings Island condominium golf course in Charlotte Harbor, in the old Deep Creek Elks Lodge.

According to Auman, “There’s too many empty buildings and empty restaurants already. Why spend a lot of money building a monument to yourself?”

Old time ticket booth from Cuban theater http://news.google.com/newspapers…

New Brewmasters 1997 http://news.google.com/newspapers…

Postcard http://www.cardcow.com/1675…/brewmasters-steakhouse-florida/