BarFly Ventures announces Florida HopCat location

BarFly Ventures announces Florida HopCat location
BarFly Ventures is planning a new Florida location for beer bar chain HopCat.

GRAND RAPIDS — The expanding chain of HopCat craft beer bars will head oceanside later this year.

BarFly Ventures LLC announced Wednesday afternoon that the brand would soon make its first move into the Southeastern U.S., with a new HopCat location on the Atlantic coast city of Port St. Lucie, Fla., north of West Palm Beach, according to a statement.

A specific opening was not disclosed but the company says the new-construction, $2 million building in the Tradition subdevelopment will be completed in late 2017.

The building is being developed by Kalamazoo-based Innovo Development Group LLC.

“Bringing HopCat to my home has always been a personal goal,” Mark Gray, HopCat COO and longtime Port St. Lucie resident, said in a statement. “The opportunity to open at Tradition offered us the perfect way to introduce our restaurant and craft beer bar to the state of Florida.”

The Port St. Lucie location will be the 12th HopCat location and the brand’s eighth state.

As MiBiz has previously reported, BarFly Ventures has continued to aggressively expand the HopCat brand, propelled by $25 million in high-interest financing from two Texas funds.

Mark Sellers — BarFly Ventures founder and the 2016 ACG Growth Capital award winner — previously told MiBiz the company continues to seek out multiple new locations, including in Cleveland and Detroit suburb Royal Oak.