GILBERT, AZ — Veteran-owned Cider Corps cidery closed down its Gilbert location to the public Wednesday.
The tough move came after two years of challenges in developing the property for occupancy, as well as business hardships from the economy.
On the Cider Corps website, co-owner Jason Duren explained, in part:
"We developed the space in conjunction with our landlord with the understanding that the building had permits and an official occupancy certificate from the Town of Gilbert. We were told that all we had to do was take the responsibility to convert the occupancy from retail to assembly for the taproom. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case and combined with several other hardships to fully operate as a business our Gilbert operation struggled. Without getting into great detail, our struggles came to a crux when our landlord passed away. Now the building has sold, and we are left with one option: To return to our home base in Mesa."
That move will come at a heavy cost, especially since the Mesa location is smaller than the Gilbert one and they won't be able to fit all of their equipment.
"Unfortunately, because of the ceiling heights here versus our Mesa location's height, they're significantly shorter so we'll end up selling off a lot of the larger tanks," Duren said.
"We built [the Gilbert] space to fit this, now we have to build the [Mesa] space kind of to fit all new stuff," he told ABC15.
That's why the business has asked its community for support during the challenging time.
Overcoming challenges, though, isn't something new for Duren.
It's how he got into the cidery business in the first place.
"In 2012, I was deployed with the Marine Corps, hit two IEDs, had two traumatic brain injuries, and so when I came back, I was going through a lot of different therapies and kind of relearning processes," he said.
Learning how to make hard cider with his brother, he said, was one of those therapies for helping him rebuild processes and skills, which eventually turned into the business venture.
To learn more or to make a donation to the Cider Corps Mesa location visit here.
