The pig-shaped barbecue smoker on the sidewalk outside 10 E. Genesee St. will be gone after Sept. 29.
That will be the last day of business for The Copper Pig BBQ & Taproom, the barbecue restaurant Dawn and Marc Schulz opened in June 2016. They announced the closure Wednesday on Facebook.
The Schulzes decided to close the restaurant in order to focus on the imminent expansion of their other downtown business, Prison City Pub & Brewery, Dawn said at the brewpub Wednesday. The expansion is a new facility that will raise the popular brewery’s production of Mass Riot India pale ale and other beers from about 1,000 barrels a year to 10,000.
Dawn said Prison City will decide and secure the site of the facility within the next few weeks. Finding a site that meets their water, sewer and other needs has “been the big hurdle,” she said.
As the facility demands more and more of their attention, the Schulzes decided it wouldn’t be fair to continue running The Copper Pig as an afterthought.
“I just don’t feel like I’m a great absentee owner,” Dawn said. “I want to be involved personally. So we started thinking, ‘Why are we doing this?'”
