Two Bay Area Breweries Will Become One

Laughing Monk Brewing, the San Francisco-based beermaker that opened its Bayview tasting room in 2016, is rolling out two new locations in Sunnyvale and Scotts Valley. The expansion comes in the wake of the brewery’s acquisition by Bedrock Restaurant Group, which launched in fall 2019 and became owner and operator of Sunnyvale’s Faultine Brewing later that year. The two South Bay Laughing Monk outposts will operate much as they did before the acquisition, though Faultline will cease to operate in the spaces.

To be clear, the two breweries will fold together under the Laughing Monk Brewing banner by or on December 1; the Faultline brand will be retired by its new owners. Bedrock Restaurant Group CEO Sam Ghadiri says the synergy between the two businesses was too good to pass up and hopes Laughing Monk’s loyal following and distribution access will rejuvenate the 25-year-old Faultline brand and taprooms. “When you’re giving the keys to historic restaurants and breweries,” Ghadiri says, “it comes with a lot of responsibility. It allows for even more growth for both.”

Laughing Monk Brewery

By and large, the new Laughing Monk taprooms will continue to serve the same food and drink as they did as Faultline, though many Faultline beers will fall off the tap list. Jumping from eight to 10 beers to about 20, the new list will include Laughing Monk standards such as the Holy Ghost pilsner alongside four of Faultline’s beers that’ll remain after the transition: Kolsch, Redwood Ale, Hefe Weizen and Black Dragon Stout, which will be renamed, respectively, the Laughing Monk Brewing Lakeside Kolsch, Laughing Monk Brewing Redwood Ale, Laughing Monk Brewing Hefe Wizen and Laughing Monk Brewing Black Dragon Stout.

There’ll be new food items — most are in the experimentation phase but a few new dishes include an ahi poke tower and a prime rib dip — but dishes including the roasted portobello sandwich and the bacon turkey sando, which were once only available at Laughing Monk in Scotts Valley, will now join the Sunnyvale location’s lineup. The team calls it “the super menu” as the menus combine, though the final menus remain TBD. The original Laughing Monk taproom in the Bayview will remain unchanged.

The plans for Laughing Monk are ambitious, though not overly so for a business that already sells in more than 500 retailers including Whole Foods. Ghadiri hopes to open a taproom in the East Bay down the road. As of November 10, the Santa Cruz Warriors — the NBA team’s minor league companion team — are official Laughing Monk partners, meaning the expanded beer lineup will pour at a Laughing Monk concession stand inside Kaiser Permanente Center. Ghadri, who lives in Aptos, is through the moon about all these plans. “We’re essentially in two new markets,” he says. “We want to feed that market because we expect that demand to be high.”

Laughing Monk Brewing will take over the Sunnyvale and Scotts Valley Faultline locations at 1235 Oakmead Parkway and 262 Mount Hermon Road, respectively, by December 1. Hours of operation remain the samefor now with expanded hours and grand opening events to follow.