It Just Might Work: The Wander Box beer garden

by Eric Ginsburg

So get this: There’s a mobile beer garden, housed in a former shipping container, with 12 craft beers on tap. And the taps are solar powered. And it just debuted in Raleigh in partnership with the Contemporary Art Museum.

The Wander Box, as it has been appropriately and somewhat hilariously dubbed, offers a number of North Carolina beers from outfits including Mother Earth Brewing, Raleigh Brewing and Duck Rabbit. The ever-popular Chirba Chirba dumpling food truck is participating, and an aerial view showing long, wooden tables calls to mind a traditional German beer garden

The folks behind Wander Box are open to bringing it elsewhere — that’s part of the beauty of the concept, and I can’t imagine it would be that difficult to entice them to the Triad. People are dying to see this kind of thing at the Pit in High Point, have talked for years about something like it at the corner of Barnhardt and Elm (now a block from Gibb’s Hundred Brewing) in downtown Greensboro, and I can imagine it taking over Trade Street in Winston-Salem.

Or one of you enterprising, intelligent readers could rip off the concept and open one here. I can easily think of several more ideal locations throughout the Triad — no doubt you can, too. It could be a joint venture of several of the area’s breweries or an independent brew champion.

Whether or not Stone Brewing comes to Greensboro — we’re feeling cautiously optimistic about it though! — the beer scene here is experiencing an uptick. Walking into Beer Co., downtown Greensboro’s new craft beer store, or Hoots or Small Batch in Winston-Salem proves that. There’s even talk about a new brewery in the works for High Point, and discussion of creating a brewery incubator in an empty Greensboro warehouse.

In the short term, can we draw the Wander Box here? And with some planning, what else can we create on our own?