Help BrewRiver Survive: Keep the Music and Food Alive

Dear BrewRiver supporter,

We are reaching out to you because Chef Michael Shields and I (Joby Bowman) are facing some incredibly challenging obstacles in our fight to keep BrewRiver Creole Kitchen open and to maintain our culinary standards and existence as an important blues, jazz, and roots music venue. As you may be aware, we have fought through more than our share of challenges over the last 12 years and have always managed to survive. We survived the hill slide at our first location on Riverside Dr. in 2017, which forced us to find a new location and leave our beautiful space on the river. This required us to take out loans and debt to make the move. Our first year at our new location was looking very good but 13 months after opening, the COVID pandemic hit. Again, we were not going to let outside factors shut us down, so we took out additional loans to maintain our standards and survive the pandemic. We tried to provide a place where guests could enjoy food, drink, and music when many were not booking live music at all. We were dedicated to the importance of having a place to hear jazz and blues in Cincinnati. We put our faith in the fact that after the pandemic was over, we would return to our pre-pandemic volume. However, as has happened with so many other restaurants, we have remained at half that volume, 4 years later. The final gut punch was the loss of our lease as the food partner at Sonder Brewing, this past March.

Through all of the previously mentioned, we have fought tooth and nail to survive. Since the pandemic, food costs, labor costs, utility costs, liquor, wine, and beer costs, etc., have all increased more than double and triple the pre-pandemic rates. We have done our best to avoid raising prices and have even created a menu that encourages sharing and makes it easier to get a real bang for the buck. Our reviews have never been better, and we still have our beloved regulars who have continued to support us, yet as stated before, we are still at half the volume of our pre-pandemic numbers.

We fear we are now at a place where we are running out of options to survive in this incredibly difficult restaurant market. We are reaching out to all our BrewRiver guests and fans to humbly ask for your support. We want to survive all of this and continue to be a place for Cincinnatians to get an authentic piece of New Orleans in our fair city. We will only survive with your help and patronage. At the urging of many of our musicians, we have set up this GoFundMe for those who love and support us and want to help keep our vision alive. We also would love to see you in the restaurant. Come eat and drink and listen to music with us!

We are also coming up on the holiday season, and there is no better place to host your next holiday event/meeting/party! We are currently taking reservations for those private events! You can contact us by phone or fb and instagram messenger or message us on our website at www.brewrivercreolekitchen.com

Additionally, we don't believe in asking for help without giving in return. We therefore are planning 3 or 4 music fundraisers at BrewRiver. The tickets will be $25.00 and will include your first bar beverage. Three musical acts will be scheduled each Wednesday, starting Wednesday October 30th from 6pm til 9pm. Wednesday the 30th will include

Tom Gilker from 6pm til 7pm

Cheryl Renee from 7pm til 8pm

Ben Levin from 8pm til 9pm

Tickets are available at Eventbrite:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1058883502059?aff=oddtdtcreator

We are grateful in advance for any support you can give us. This is a difficult ask for us, and we understand anyone who isn’t able or willing to assist. We love you just the same.

Thank you for your kind ear and for always being a supporter of our locally-owned small business.

Chef Michael Shields and Joby Bowman and The BrewRiver Family