Great Wagon Road Distilling Co. expands to Waxhaw

Driving the news: Construction on the new location begins in two weeks, owner Ollie Mulligan said Tuesday.

Details: Expect a similar feel to their NoDa location, Mulligan tells Axios, with big barrels of whiskey behind the bar. They’ll produce local batches of honey whiskeys and local forager gins, meaning they’ll use local botanicals to make it taste unique to the area.

• GWR Waxhaw will be located at 122 W. North Main St. The space was previously a bicycle shop called the Bike Depot. 
• The building also served as a GWR pop-up over the winter holidays.

Why it matters: People are flocking to Charlotte’s suburbs, as Axios’ McKenzie Rankin reported. The more people start to call these places home, the more you can expect to see businesses follow suit. Waxhaw is one of the hottest zip codes in the Charlotte area.

• Mulligan and his wife are among those moving to Waxhaw.
• “It’s just such an up and coming area, and I just think it’s crying out for a good cocktail bar,” Mulligan tells Axios.

The big picture: This will be GWR’s third location, joining GWR NoDa, which replaced the LoSo location in 2020, and GWR CLT at Charlotte Douglas International Airport in Terminal A, which operates under the Broken Spoke brand.

What’s next: The Broken Spoke at CLT will include new signage once Terminal A North’s construction is complete by the end of 2024.

• The current space is on wheels and can be moved into Terminal A North.
• “We are starting to focus on more bars of this nature that we can be mobile with, that we can move and put in different parts of the airport,” HSMHost director of concept development & adult beverage Carson Gray said.