This is a factual but personal story about my daughter & son-in-law’s entrepreneurial, creative, community and philanthropic spirit in the business they created together. These two inspire me.
In the Crossroads area of downtown Kansas City, Missouri, directly across the street from the attractive brick façade of the former Kansas City Star Newspaper, resides Casual Animal Brewing Company.
On the outside, a colorful mural is painted above a window that opens like a garage door when the weather favors outdoor seating. The bar stools, where customers sit and sip cold craft beer, overlook the sidewalk as pedestrians pass by.
Inside, industrial steel cylinders are tucked under open ceiling beams and skylights. Hanging Boston ferns trail down from above and a tall Umbrella tree reaches upward to the central skylight. The seating is mostly handmade wooden tables. Refinished log stools line the sides of one long table. Leather sofas and cushioned chairs are placed in cozy conversation corners surrounded by potted green plants.
Colorful oriental carpets lay on the cement floor in a patchwork fashion. Shuffleboard, darts, and boxes of board games are ready to play with family or friends. Strings of lights are draped throughout, exposed brick walls create texture, along with original art wallpaper and paintings designed by head brewer, Kyle Gray. He also happens to co-own Casual Animal with his wife, Lara. The overall atmosphere of this craft brewery exudes laid-back ease with an infusion of warm ambience. You want to sit down, order a beer from one of eleven full taps, and just hang out for a while.
Kyle runs the “back of the house”; creating beer recipes, brewing twice a week in a 7- barrel system, canning, designing logos for labels or merchandise sold online and directly from the brewery. Lara takes charge of the “front of the house”, staffing and training, social media and marketing, taproom events, distribution and delivery in local restaurants, liquor stores and bars.
Lara is also the current President of the East Crossroads. This is their neighborhood organization whose goal is to unify all area businesses as a destination entertainment district for locals, conferences, business travelers, and vacationers. One important aspect is to increase traffic and retail business for the diversity of restaurants, small shops, craft breweries, and cocktail bars in Crossroads. Recently she has helped the neighborhood receive $35,000 in grant monies from the city of Kansas City. This will be used for commercial branding, highlighting the district with streetlight pole banners, directional signage, and other resources.
The Beginnings Through a Pandemic to Today
The background of how Casual Animal Brewery was first dreamed and conceived by Kyle and Lara in 2017-18 is a compelling story of its own, and told here: Becoming a Casual Animal
The story of the opening of the larger, plant-draped conservatory side of the brewery began just before the shutdown of the Coronavirus pandemic. In November 2019, Kyle was taking trash out to a dumpster in the back alley. A secretary from a neighboring business was standing outside on a break. She asked Kyle if he knew the building next door to the brewery was for sale. At the time, it was a truck storage warehouse with zero infrastructure. But it was big and shared a common wall.
Kyle called the owner, toured the space and applied for a loan in February of 2020. They closed on the property in May of that year when the whole country was hibernating at home amid the uncertainties of Coronavirus. Kyle’s brother, Alex, was hired as General Contractor and moved into their house for the next nine months.
The risk of taking on a new, larger loan and beginning a complete renovation to expand Casual Animal (by more than doubling its size) started in earnest while a global pandemic was raging. Kyle had serious doubts and anxieties about moving forward, but ultimately decided there was no better time to expand the brewery than with this serendipitous opportunity.
Crafting a New Craft Brewery
Deconstruction before construction. Kyle, with Alex and their father, Kass, jump started the demolition. There was junk removal of heavy lath, bundles of old wire, and equipment. The linoleum floor tiles were scraped clean to the concrete underlayment. In the rear space that now houses four 15-barrel fermenters, an old ceiling of tin, wire, and plaster was painstakingly cut out, dropped, and hauled away.
Plaster walls were blasted with a jack hammer to reveal the brick underneath. It was hard, excruciating and dirty work. Finally, Alex said, “Stop. Leave some of the wall plaster and call it done.” It is an attractive stopping point. Alex then got busy and built bathrooms, the new, larger bar area, and engaged in even dirtier work by climbing high into the ceiling rafters to painstakingly clean away 100 years of industrial dust and grime!
Subcontractors installed electricity, HVAC, plumbing, and the front garage door window to match the original side of Casual Animal. Creating openings into the common walls required considerable consultation with structural engineers because both buildings are more than a century old. In the end, doorway-sized holes were sawed through two walls (one for each building) and reinforced with steel beams. And just like that–the taprooms and brewing areas were connected.
Debut Side 2
In January 2021, nine months after taking possession, with the mask mandate and six feet of separation still in full effect, Casual Animal, side two, opened to the public.
From the beginning, the word got out, and the people flocked in. The high ceilings, the big windows and skylights, the greenery and wide spacing between tables and “living room” conversation corners were a welcome reason for being with friends in public again. There was a feeling of being safe in your own “pod”. Families, and dogs, welcome. Everyone loves the casual-animal-dogs-are-welcome theme.
The Current Vibe
Last fall, with the garage door opened wide on a perfect autumn day, I sat in my favorite spot next to the wall at one end of the bar–the best vantage point to soak in the early afternoon atmosphere. Sunlight was streaming in from the central skylight, customers were working on computers or talking in quiet conversation around the room. Mellow music provided soft background sound. The back brewing area behind the big tap room was clean and quiet. Tables were laid around the tall central Schefflera tree in a spoke-like pattern over the oriental carpets. Kyle-designed merchandise was hung on hangers, or neatly stacked on shelves––t-shirts, hoodies, baseball hats, water bottles. Next to the merchandise, a glass front refrigerator displayed the current variety of canned six-packs for take away. Customers regularly strolled to the bar to place an order.
Seven women entered as a group. None of them drank beer. They ordered red sangria (locally made and canned, but not in-house), rosé wine, and vodka spritzes (a house-made cocktail on draft). The friends sat down to play Kansas City Trivia in a lively fashion.
It’s now late Friday afternoon. The scene is growing steadily livelier as more people arrive, order a beer, and mingle with friends. Darts and shuffleboard are active. A group of twelve takes up the center court tables under the skylight and tree. They are standing, sitting, talking, laughing, taking pictures and enjoying themselves.
Kirstie, with 4+ years on staff, works the tap room, knows and can talk in detail about every style of beer. She offers a taste to customers who are particular or unsure. Erika has also worked at the brewery for four years. She spent 2 ½ years brewing with Kyle. Now she works in the front of the house, serving and chatting up customers. Ethan started at Casual Animal in 2018 when the first side opened. He left two years later, then returned in 2024 to become the assistant brewer with Kyle. These three, along with the rest of the employees, embody the small business model of a loyal Casual Animal family. They know their regular customers and suggest who I might approach with a few questions.
I sat down with a couple who told me they live within walking distance and often come after work or on a day off. What they love; always a likeable beer flavor in rotating fashion, the ambience of hanging lights, skylights, garage-door-open windows, the mash-up of decorating textures, the food pop-ups. As to the beer, he likes all Lagers, she is more experimental and willing to try different styles.
Another couple has a newborn. They have been coming to Casual Animal since the time of Covid when their first baby arrived. After getting vaccinated they brought the infant with them to get out of the house into a cool environment to sit and talk and sip beer. Now they are repeating the cycle three years later with baby number two. They love the plants, the trees, the natural lighting, the soft seating. They wish food was served regularly but enjoy the pop-up vendors that rotate through on a regular basis.
Madi has been a regular casual animal for 3-4 years. She comes in the early afternoons during the week, when it is mellow and quieter, to work on her computer. She always sits at the bar, knows and likes the staff, and chats with them while working.
Commitment to Community
Local Motive is the name of Casual Animal’s fund-raising beer selection, sold to support Kansas City non-profit organizations. It was written into their business plan from the start, as a way of giving back to the local community. It began as a quarterly offering for the first two years. However, for half of 2020 and all of 2021, during Covid, it was placed on hold.
Now Local Motive rotates to a new charitable cause every two months. Two dollars from the sale of every pint of one specially selected “Local Motive” beer is donated to the non-profit’s cause at the end of a rotation period. Each non-profit can organize events at the brewery to educate the public and optimize giving during their cycle. Some of these have involved trivia nights, live music, or bringing in rescued kittens and puppies for adoption.
Lara and Kyle annually select from a wide variety of Local Motive applications submitted on their website, choose about 15 that meet the criteria they have set, and present them to the staff. The staff votes for six non-profits as local motive recipients for the upcoming year. By the end of 2025, over the past 8 years, Casual Animal will have hit a new marker for giving back–more than $100,000 flowing into the Kansas City community and helping 30+ organizations.
Better Together
There is a collaborative relationship between Casual Animal, other breweries, and even farmers. Kyle has generated several co-branding ventures to promote a new beer, such as with Odell Brewing in Ft. Collins, Colorado, Cinder Block, Double Shift, Big Rip and others in the Kansas City area. This is usually a one-of-a-kind endeavor to co-produce something different and even experimental in the craft beer industry.
Then there are the livestock farmers. Kyle has always donated his spent grains, barley, oats, wheat and rye, to farmers as feed for pigs, chickens, cows. In the past several years a joint relationship was formed with KC Cattle Company. Head rancher Marc Wermersen has loved cows since childhood. He is in charge of hand raising and feeding 275 head of selective Wagyu beef cattle.
Wagyu is the American version of the highly marbled, tender, Kobe beef from Japan. For these cows, fed largely on pasture grass, the small grains extracted from Kyle’s tanks (mixed with corn) are a high energy supplemental food. As Marc says, “Good feed equals good beef equals good taste.” The relationship is reciprocal. The brewery receives Wagyu summer sausage and shaved peppered beef to serve as charcuterie meats in the taproom. Marc often gifts the brew team with steaks, ground meat, and award-winning beef hotdogs.
Special Events
Planning and organizing events is one aspect of Lara’s on-site job description. Currently, Casual Animal offers special taproom evenings such as Wednesday Art Night, where coloring and painting supplies are available to dabble in, or pop-up food vendors serving inside or from trucks on the street. There is an annual Earth Day celebration on April 22.
Perhaps the most popular and very highly attended event is the Kitten Pop-Up Party. KC Pet Project, a no-kill pet shelter as well as a former Local Motive recipient, currently sponsors a bi-annual Kitten Party offering rescued babies for adoption. Foster parents bring their kitten charges in baby buggies or pet carriers and customers are allowed to cuddle, play with, and love up the kitties while foster moms and dads supervise. Singles, couples, families, and kids all participate in a standing room crowd.
Being Beer Specific
And what about those beer flavors served up from Kyle’s creative, revolving list of recipes? There is a favorite taste for every palate–hazy IPAs, sours, dark stouts, lagers, Kolsch, cold IPAs, West Coast IPAs, wheat beer, nitro offerings, including some atypical choices such as an Ice Cream ale.
When I asked Kyle and Lara to name Casual Animal’s most requested and top selling beverage choices, they said (although it varies somewhat), #1 is the Hazy IPA, #2 is a Lager, #3 a Wheat or Sour choice, #4 and #5 rotate between another kind of IPA or the Local Motive choice. Moving up in line of popularity is the Vodka Spritz draft cocktail made on site and sold on draft as a gluten free option. There is always a hard cider on tap for non-beer palates as well.
Styles of beer have creative names that are usually animal-related to the brewery theme. Animal Control Cold IPA, Bear Hug Brown, Climbing Wolf Hopped Lager, Hyper Lynx French Pilsner, Vipers in the Garden Hard Cider, Blue Flamingo Fruited Sour, Luminary Canary Kolsch, and my personal name favorite–Chaos Monkey Hefeweizen.
This is Your Third Place
So, what’s left to tell? Perhaps it’s time to stroll into Casual Animal when you find yourself in Kansas City or peruse their creative website for merchandise if you’re not. Go with friends, with family, or by yourself to work on a quiet afternoon in a beautiful environment, to attend an evening event, to plan a gathering, to sit and drink good craft beer, to listen to background music or watch a special sports event like the Super Bowl with a crowd.
Casual Animal is the classic drop-in, home-away-from-home, relaxed and easygoing brewery you have been searching for. Meet friends and stake out your favorite seats in the house.
From its origins, Casual Animal was conceived of and built to represent the “Third Place”. That other place you seek after home and after work. It’s the place you go to relax and let go, to find joy and camaraderie, to feel safe, and to have fun. It’s not just about the beer or the greenery or the skylights. What it is…no actually, what it’s about, is being somewhere else, spending good time with people in warm and welcoming community surroundings.
Isn’t that something we all need?
CASUAL ANIMAL BREWING COMPANY
1725 McGee St, Kansas City, MO 64108, USA
Telephone: +1(816) 648-0184
Hours: Monday-Thursday, 12-9PM, Friday & Saturday, 12-10PM, Sunday, 12-7PM
www.casualanimalbrewing.com
Facebook: Casual Animal Brewing Co.
Instagram: casualanimalbrewing
When the first side of Casual Animal opened in early February 2018, the Gray family was brewing their first baby, and daughter Sloan was born in October 2018. When they closed on the building for the second side, in May of 2020, son Isaac had just entered the world on May 13. The Grays today are a beautiful family of four.
