Ska Brewery Container Restaurant

The Ska Brewery Container Restaurant, sometimes referred to as ‘The Container’ or ‘The Container of Food’, is a small kitchen and dining area attached to a beer brewery. It’s set in beautiful Durango, itself in the far southwestern corner of Colorado.

The brewery, known as the Ska Brewing World Headquarters, opened in 1995. There they have the facilities to brew, bottle, and can their various beers for national distribution. They’ve produced over a dozen medal-winning beers in their history, demonstrating their skill.

Like many craft brewers, they knew that a good additional revenue stream would be opening the brewery itself for tours and having a beer garden on site. But a successful beer garden requires not only beer but food.

Initially, they worked with Zia Taqueria, a food truck serving Mexican food that operated out of an Airstream trailer. However, in 2012, Zia Taqueria decided to use their success to open a brick-and-mortar restaurant in town, leaving Ska Brewery without a food partner.

This is where things got interesting. One of Ska’s co-owners, Matt Vincent, had always been intrigued by shipping containers and thought a creative container restaurant project might be just what the brewery needed. His reasoning was sound: Ska Brewery was already operating with sustainability in mind, from the recycled denim insulation in the walls to the solar light tubes in the roof. They even used the wood from old bowling lanes to make the tabletops.

So using surplus shipping containers felt like a natural fit from a values perspective, and it didn’t help that the corrugated metal aesthetic blended nicely with the industrial warehouse vibes of the brewery. So, they got to work.

The project is made from two 40 foot shipping containers, but there were extensive modifications involved. In order to integrate with the existing brewery building, Ska’s owners decided to merge the back wall of the brewery with the front wall of the ground floor container. This meant completely removing the brick wall from the building.

More importantly, it meant cutting the container down from 40 feet to 30 feet in length, adding a new end wall, then cutting out numerous holes in the sides for windows and serving areas. But the work didn’t stop there. The second container, used as a seating area, was modified similarly to give open-air cutouts for windows, then hoisted onto a metal frame that held it above the first container. Once the metal staircase was added to allow access to the second-floor dining area, the project was ready for business and opened in August of 2013.

Inside, the bottom container is completed decked out as a commercial kitchen. It’s full of all the equipment you would expect for an eatery that has to serve dozens of customers: ovens, grills, sinks, and refrigerators, plus even a deli slicer and a custom 40-inch-wide pizza oven.

In a kitchen that’s only about 30 feet by 8 feet with all that equipment inside, there clearly isn’t much roof for a huge chef staff. Instead, the kitchen is typically manned by one or two people. The most likely person you’ll find is head chef Jeremy Storm.

Jeremy is integral not only to the menu and operation of the container kitchen but also to the creation of it and the ethos behind it. A food-industry veteran with a focus on locally-sourced products, Jeremy was a great fit for Ska’s goals. The fact that he was simultaneously converting a school bus into a tiny home didn’t hurt as they tried to fit a full commercial kitchen into a cut-down container.

The menu Jeremy created centered around pizzas, salads, sandwiches, and sweets. Everything is creatively made with a combination of local ingredients and Ska beer. And the inspiration for many of the menu items comes from the geography of the music for which the brewery is named: Ska.

Starting in Jamaica and eventually spreading to other countries including Caribbean neighbors in subsequent waves, Ska was a fusion of several different musical types. So it’s no surprise that the Ska Brewery’s Container Restaurant serves up food that fuses beer garden staples with Caribbean influences.

We love how the creative application of these two shipping containers transformed the Ska Brewery from what was essentially a manufacturing warehouse into a fun place to hang out with friends and family. They often have live music to listen to, and of course, the award-winning beer and unique cuisine to keep you coming back. But if all of that isn’t enough, you can at least go to stare at the containers themselves!