A Durham brewery will expand to Wilmington. Oh, and it’s bringing its pizza, too.
The Durham brewery Ponysaurus is taking its combination of pizza and beer and heading east.
Ponysaurus announced this month that it will open a new location in downtown Wilmington in the summer, making it the first Triangle brewery to add a location on the North Carolina coast.
“Wilmington is just such an awesome city with a great food and beverage community,” said co-owner Nick Johnson. “We’ve had a good reception for our beer down there and thought we were ready for a new challenge.”
The new Ponysaurus will open at 214 Market St. in downtown Wilmington, next door to the historic Burgwin-Wright house and two blocks from the Cape Fear River. With permitting wrapped up, Johnson said the Wilmington taproom should open by August of this year.
‘A cool part of old Wilmington’
Johnson said the new taproom will include 4,000 square feet of covered outdoor space, plus more patio seating with a double-sided fireplace and a pizzeria. All of Ponysaurus’ beer production will remain in Durham.
“We’re excited to be in such a cool part of old Wilmington,” Johnson said.
Ponysaurus will join a Wilmington beer scene that boasts some of the top breweries in the state, including New Anthem, Flying Machine and Wilmington Brewing.
Ponysaurus opened in 2015 as a beer garden and production brewery just off of Fayetteville Street in Durham. Since then, the brewery has expanded its patio, becoming one of the Triangle’s most popular outdoor spaces and adding a covered second story deck.
The brewery is best known for its flagship Biere de Garde, seasonal IPAs and its Don’t Be Mean to People saison, which Ponysaurus is currently using to raise funds for LGBTQ charities.
Last year, Ponysaurus added the pizza stylings of Anthony Guerra, owner of Oakwood Pizza Box in Raleigh. Johnson said the Wilmington location will also feature Guerra’s pies and that the pizzeria owner has joined Ponysaurus as a partner.
“It will be the same pizza,” Johnson said.
Brewery expansions
In the past few years, North Carolina’s breweries have been on an expansion spree. Triangle breweries like Lonerider, Gizmo, Trophy, Barrel Culture, Bond Brothers, FullSteam and others all have more than one taproom locally. More recently, outside breweries like Burial, Hi-Wire and Tobacco Wood have all added Triangle locations.
The eastward expansion for Ponysaurus makes it one of the first Triangle breweries to venture beyond the region. Durham’s Durty Bull announced plans last year to open a taproom in Gastonia.
Johnson said the trend says more about the appeal of the Triangle’s beer scene than anything about its breweries’ ability to expand.
“Of course I’m biased, but this is the heart of North Carolina,” Johnson said. “It’s the crux of North Carolina, it’s a big enough and varied enough market to open multiple places.”
Johnson said expanding Ponysaurus closer to home may have been the easier and more reasonable thing to do, but maybe that’s why they’re doing something else.
“We’ve never chased the easy,” Johnson said. “It’s going to be an adventure for us. This is the first location of anything for us beyond the Triangle. We just thought, ‘What’s the coolest thing we could do that will make the most people happy?’ We don’t care how hard it is.”
This story was originally published January 13, 2022 at 8:00 AM with the headline "A Durham brewery will expand to Wilmington. Oh, and it’s bringing its pizza, too.."
