Hunter-Gatherer Brewery: So long, old friend
A conversation with brewmaster Kevin Varner as he prepares to close the doors of his beloved Main Street institution
(In a bit of a departure from the usual offerings of Gamecock history on this site, I am highlighting one of my very favorite Columbia institutions - Hunter-Gatherer Brewery - which sadly announced that it would close its original location on Main Street later this month. Owner and operator Kevin Varner was kind enough to spend some time with me talking about the Columbia icon he created, how it all started, and what comes next)
The humble brick building at 900 Main Street in downtown Columbia is a bit of a mystery. Richland County tax records note in was built in 1949, though it looks and feels much older. Some have speculated it was built not long after the turn of the 20th Century. A search of newspaper archives shows it has housed a variety of businesses over the years, its location in a workaday business district just a stone’s throw from the State House in one direction, and the historic USC Horseshoe in another.
An ad in the Columbia Record from 1914 for Black-Frasier Motor Car Company boasts of Hudson automobiles sold at that location. Columbia Electrical Repair Company operated out of the building in the 1930’s; Allied Auto Parts store made a go of it there for a number of years before a 1963 bankruptcy; a bank filled the space for some time before that. Swensen’s, an ice cream chain occupied the building in the mid-1980’s, and TW Muldoon’s sold pints of cheap beer to thirsty USC students with laughably bad fake IDs in the early 90’s. I know, I was among them.
Since October of 1995 though, it has been the home of Hunter-Gatherer Brewery & Alehouse - the brainchild of proprietor and brewmaster Kevin Varner. Varner is a USC grad who, over the last three decades, has parlayed a passion for brewing into an iconic and much-loved Columbia watering hole.
Learning the craft
Originally from Greenville, Varner wears a thick beard, faded bluejeans, and an ever-present work shirt and baseball cap. He is soft-spoken, with the disposition of a scientist, and the heart of a historian - a man born to tinker, to experiment, to create. He spent a year at the University of Georgia before taking a semester abroad at Moray House College in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he developed a love of craft beer.
“I just kind of discovered that beer didn’t just come out of a can, out of a factory - you know, it was more interesting than that,” Varner says.
Varner purchased a home brew kit and started making beer in his mother’s kitchen back in Greenville. He later enrolled at USC where he finished his degree - a fellow history major - and expanded his brewing endeavors to include a 20 gallon operation. After graduation, he wrote letters to “every brewery I could,” looking for opportunities to work and learn more about the craft. He landed at Hales Brewery in Seattle.
After two-and-a-half years at Hales learning the craft and the business, hard work and good timing opened an opportunity for Varner back in Columbia. In 1994, the South Carolina legislature changed an arcane law - a lingering remnant from Prohibition - which forbade the manufacture and selling of beer in the same location. The change legalized micro-breweries, giving rise to the fledgling craft beer industry in the Palmetto State and beyond.
Varner reflects, “After that law changed, I decided I wanted to move back to Columbia and open a brewery. So I started figuring out the finances and luckily I got a loan from the Small Business Administration (SBA) and borrowed a little bit from parents and that kind of thing. I looked at a lot of different buildings and it turned out that 900 Main Street was barely big enough, but we figured we could fit in there. It was really just a crew of me and my friends and family, without much construction experience.
I was very young, maybe too young. I’d just turned 25 when we opened up (in October, 1995). It’s easier when you’re young, before you have a family and kids. You can work all night and you don’t have to worry about money as much, all those kind of things. I don’t know how we got it done… it was a complete mess, but we did get it done eventually.”
Varner and crew installed salvaged, rough-hewn oak and heart pine beams from old farm buildings, giving the space a rustic feel. The bar came from an old general store. To that he added pendant lights from an old church - a flea market find - and original artifacts from Africa, including spears and shields, and a stuffed African Wild Dog which has graced one of the two large windows at the front of the building for 29 years.
“My brother’s father-in-law was an ambassador in several African countries. So with his long career in foreign service, he collected all kinds of crazy stuff that people gave him, including the dog. They had a nice, formal house in Richmond, Virginia. It’s not exactly like you’re going to put a wild dog in there. They passed it along to me. People kind of assumed I was an anthropologist,” Varner laughs, “but it was just a family connection.”
“Just a good gathering place”
Varner’s creation was the first brewery in Columbia in over 70 years. Once home to numerous breweries fueled by a large influx of German immigrants (who also influenced the region’s signature mustard barbecue sauce), Columbia, like much of the country, had been a brewing desert for decades. It was another unfortunate legacy of the wildly misguided Prohibition era.
Other breweries followed Varner’s venture, several coming and going over the last three decades, but Hunter-Gatherer has remained steadfast, and was the forerunner of a now thriving industry in the Columbia area. In 2018, Varner expanded operations to the beautifully refurbished Curtiss-Wright hangar at Owens Field.
Unfortunately, Varner says he was unable to secure a renewed lease for 900 Main Street, recently announcing that he would close his original location on December 28. Though Hunter-Gatherer will live on through its Hangar location, the loss of 900 Main is a blow to longtime employees, loyal patrons, and of course, to Varner himself.
Asked what he considers the legacy of the Main Street operation, Varner offers an understated assessment, “Oh, it’s just a good gathering place. It was a very low-key, cool place to go hang out - we had good beer and good food without all the formal service that you find at most places. So, you know, hopefully a comfortable place for people of all ages.”
It has been all that and much more to so many who have loved it over the years.
A moveable feast
Way back in the fall of 1995, as Varner and crew worked feverishly to prepare for opening night, I was a senior at Carolina, finishing up my final semester. I parked often in those days along Main Street (I had the parking tickets to show for it), and I would eagerly watch the progress at 900 Main as I walked to class. I was there on opening night, and have returned more times than I can count over the years.
Even after moving away from Columbia, first to Greenville, then to Raleigh, I always found my way back to Hunter-Gatherer. I have shared a beer or a meal there with nearly every person of significance in my life over the past 29 years. Some of those people have filtered in and out, as tends to happen, but Hunter-Gatherer has always been there. It is a deeply-etched place, a part of me in that much-loved and timeworn way common to all great public houses.
To sit with a pint in the warm confines of Hunter-Gatherer brings me right back to 1995, and 2001, and 2008, and so on. The memories of friends and family and merry strangers I’ve shared time with there, the nights spent at a cozy mezzanine table, lost in conversation, gazing down at the crowd below; of the African Wild Dog in the window, of those marvelous pints of ESB.
Hunter-Gatherer is ethereal. Magic. One of those places one carries with them. A moveable feast, as Hemingway wrote.
I’ll look forward to future visits to the Hangar, to more rounds of ESB, and to seeing some of those relics that hopefully migrate over from 900 Main.
Until then, thanks to Kevin Varner for the magical place he created those many years ago. To the people who have worked there, and to the patrons who have loved it… cheers, friends.
