Shawn Hawkins was just looking for a little room to grow. He wound up finding more than he’d bargained for. But now, after two years of figuring out what works and what doesn’t, his new venture is starting to pay off.

In 2015, Hawkins partnered with Robert Cannon and Eric Charapata to open Tiger Town Brewing Co. in Mitchell, with Hawkins as head brewer and business manager, Cannon as facilities manager and Charapata as operations manager.

The cozy brewpub just off Highway 26 proved popular — so popular, in fact, that it became necessary to scale up the brewing operation.

“I had been meaning for some time to upgrade my brew space,” Hawkins said. “We had long outgrown the little closet we had in the back of Tiger Town.”

So he started looking around. He found a property in nearby Fossil, the seat of Wheeler County — the least populated county in Oregon.

There were two structures on the property, a 3,000-square-foot storage building in the back that Hawkins figured was just right for the brewery and a 5,000-square-foot former restaurant out front that he didn’t really have any use for.

While his partners weren’t ready to invest in an expansion, Hawkins saw a need — and decided to seize the opportunity.

In early 2022, he bought the Fossil property for $240,000 and relocated Tiger Town’s brewing operation to the storage building out back. And by that summer, he was operating a new restaurant, the Royal Stag, at the corner of First and Washington.

“The restaurant wasn’t really part of the plan but the deal came with two buildings,” said Hawkins. “So I thought, ‘OK, I guess this is a good time.’”

Finding the right recipe

Born in Portland and raised in McMinnville, Hawkins moved to Mitchell in 2011 and became a serious home brewer. He had also been trained as a chef and had 15 years of experience in the food service industry.

He brought his passions for beer and food with him when he co-founded Tiger Town with Cannon and Charapata, and now he’s tapping into them again with his new venture.

Getting his new restaurant established has been a challenge, Hawkins admits.

To begin with, it’s a big space in a town of fewer than 500 residents. The dining room, in the front of the building, seats about 60 and has a banquet room that can hold 50 more. There’s a bar in the back, separated from the dining area by the kitchen.

The dining room is a mix of rustic and modern, with framed art on the walls, dark-upholstered banquettes and sturdy wood-and-metal chairs, and light fixtures with an updated Western look.

The bar is more rough-hewn, with pool, darts, a couple of big-screen TVs and its own entrance.

“It’s an upscale atmosphere in the dining room and then a honky-tonk atmosphere in back,” Hawkins said.

Getting the menu dialed in required some trial and error.

“When I first started talking to people in the area,” Hawkins recalled, “they said, ‘We’d like a place that’s more fine dining.’”

But it didn’t work out that way in practice, and Hawkins had to make some adjustments to come up with a formula that suited local palates and pocketbooks. After going through several menu iterations and a couple of different chefs, the Royal Stag has settled on a lineup of classic pub fare.

“I think we’ve finally hit our stride,” Hawkins said. “We’ve got a good crop of regulars. I think people genuinely enjoy the place — but it was a rocky start, for sure.”

Entrees include steak (made with a rotating selection of cuts from Fossil-based Painted Hills Beef), fish and chips, calamari and chicken. The sandwich lineup features a ⅓-pound burger, Reuben, chicken, French dip and Italian beef, and there’s a full slate of appetizers. Vegetarian options include a house salad, caesar salad, pita plate and quinoa garlic gardenburger, and there are gourmet flourishes such as Parmesan truffle fries and Basque-style cheesecake.

On the cocktail menu you’ll find a huckleberry lemon drop, a whiskey sour and the Stag’s variation on a Moscow mule. And the craft beer lineup includes a number of guest taps from around the region as well as Tiger Town’s staple brews.

Hawkins has also weathered some initial turnover issues and assembled a stable core staff for the restaurant. The next challenge: hiring enough additional employees to expand the restaurant’s schedule beyond its current Thursday-Saturday schedule.

“It may pan out to seven days a week,” Hawkins said. “I’d try it if I had enough people.”

Tapping a growing thirst

The brewing part of the operation, meanwhile, has been going strong in its new home since the start of 2022, steadily churning out Tiger Town’s signature beers for both the Mitchell and Fossil locations as well as a short but growing list of off-site customers.

“We’ve got 20-plus recipes that are in regular rotation, and we’re always experimenting with new beers,” Hawkins said.

With two restaurants to manage now, Hawkins has turned over the title and responsibilities of head brewer to Rex Kanode, who said Tiger Town’s best-selling brew is Buck’s Electric Lager.

“Aside from that, our focus is a lot on UK and European-style ales — that was what Shawn originally wanted to focus on,” Kanode said.

“I personally enjoy German or Belgian-style beers. Of course, we do plenty of IPAs also — Oregon is a very IPA kind of state.”

So far, Tiger Town has about a dozen customers around Central and Eastern Oregon carrying its products but is hoping to grow that client base. To do so, however, it will probably have to trade in its old two-barrel brewing system.

“We’re trying to get a larger brew system in there so we can do larger production and distribution,” Hawkins said. “We have more demand than we can supply for just the Royal Stag and Tiger Town right now.”

AT A GLANCE

WHAT: The Royal Stag

WHERE: 415 First St., Fossil

WHEN: Dining room open 11 a.m.-1 p.m. and 5-8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday; bar open 5-10 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and noon-7 p.m. Sundays

ETC.: On-site brewery supplies craft beers for the Royal Stag and the Tiger Town brewpub in Mitchell