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ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Crooked Run Fermentation has signed a lease for its first Alexandria taproom and begun sharing details of the concept, co-founder Jake Endres said in a Substack post Saturday.
Construction is underway at 2003 Mount Vernon Avenue, the former home of neighborhood dessert shop Dolce & Bean, and the 800-square-foot space is on pace to open later this year, Endres wrote. The Northern Virginia brewery filed an Industry Brewery Application with the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority for the Del Ray address in March, as The Alexandria Brief first reported.
Endres said Crooked Run began scouting Alexandria locations in January 2025 and first toured the Mount Vernon Avenue space in October. The lease took longer to finalize than the company expected, pushing construction back several months from its original timeline.
The Del Ray taproom marks a departure from Crooked Run's most recent expansion. The company's DC location at Union Market pairs a mid-sized taproom with a full J&J Pizza restaurant, and Endres said the team initially wanted to replicate that model in Alexandria. Three obstacles redirected the plan, he wrote: available spaces did not match the square footage a full restaurant requires; he and co-founder Leland "Lee" Rogan were coming off three years of intensive work and wanted to scale back the next build; and raising capital from smaller investors has grown more difficult in the current economic climate.
The Del Ray space is roughly the same size as Crooked Run's original Leesburg taproom, which Endres described as the company's lowest-revenue location but its highest-margin, and the easiest to staff and supply. The Leesburg build-out was heavily bootstrapped, he wrote, while the Alexandria project will be properly resourced from the start.
Crooked Run was founded as a nanobrewery in Leesburg in 2013 by Endres and Rogan. It now operates three locations: the original Leesburg taproom, a larger Sterling taproom and restaurant that also serves as the company's production facility, and the DC location at Union Market.
Endres said the company is putting unusual emphasis on design for the Del Ray project. He spent the past six months compiling furniture and decor references and visiting Del Ray on weeknights and weekends to absorb the neighborhood, he wrote, before approaching a designer with a concept tailored to the location. Monica Alford, an Alexandria native who has worked with the brewery on marketing, is providing on-the-ground design support during the build-out. Rogan, who spent seven years as a project manager at a major construction company before joining Crooked Run full time, is overseeing construction.
The food menu has been in development for about four months. Endres described the planned offerings as elevated bar fare made in-house rather than sourced frozen. The space's smaller footprint means it will not carry the full New York-style pizza and wings menu offered at the DC location.
Endres said Crooked Run filed for many of its permits and licenses before signing the lease, lined up subcontractors in advance and has begun working through staffing.
