The Summer Bow Finally Got Somewhere to Sit Outside
July 23, 2026
July 23, 2026
For anyone who has lived in Bow for more than a season, the shape of a summer evening has been fixed for a long time. If you wanted a cold drink and a picnic table and a place where the kids could wander with a corn hole bag, you got in the car. Concord or Hopkinton. That was the routine.
As of Memorial Day weekend, it isn't anymore. A parcel on South Street that most residents drove past for years now has beer taps, a pizza oven, string lights, and a crowd on a Wednesday.
The address is 516 South Street, just off Exit 1 on I-89, on the piece of land tucked in beside Chen Yang Li, a Chinese restaurant that has long been Bow's only dining option. That geographic detail matters more than it sounds. For years, if a Bow resident wanted a sit-down meal without leaving town, that was the choice. Now there are two front doors on the same short stretch of road.
The site did not become a beer garden by design. Dan and Kelly Thomas originally planned to construct a brewery and restaurant on the property near the public library and Exit 1 off Interstate 89. The proposal included a 2,500-square-foot first floor with a tasting room and restaurant, along with a slightly smaller brewery in the basement. But those plans were derailed by water-capacity limitations at the site. The workaround is what you see on the lot today. Two modified trailers were brought to the site, one serving craft beer from a row of taps and another outfitted with a pizza oven.
That backstory is worth carrying with you when you visit. What reads as a casual summer pop-up is actually the second version of a three-year plan.
The beer garden is now on a regular Wednesday-through-Sunday schedule, and the days it is closed matter as much as the ones it is open.
Those windows come straight from the operator. The Beer Garden is open on Wednesday and Thursday from 4 pm to 8 pm, Friday and Saturday from 12 pm to 9 pm, and Sunday from 12 pm to 7 pm. Stop by to pick up some takeout or stay and enjoy the outdoor dining experience with picnic tables, lawn games, and live music on Saturday evenings starting at 5:30 pm.
Two things fall out of that schedule for a Bow household. Saturday is the anchor evening because of the live music slot. And Monday and Tuesday remain what they have always been in Bow, which is quiet.
The taps and the pies come from two different companies working the same lot. The beer is brewed at Hoptimystic's Enfield location, with a rotating selection of craft brews served on tap at the beer garden in Bow, and the brand also has a tasting room in Sunapee. The food is Manchester's. To bring that vision to life, the couple partnered with 900 Degrees Neapolitan Pizzeria based in Manchester, to offer a wide variety of pies from classic Margherita to more unconventional options like a S'mores dessert pizza. Priscilla Lane-Rondeau, owner of 900 Degrees, said the collaboration was about local businesses coming together.
If the 900 Degrees name is familiar, it should be. The Manchester pizzeria has been on the region's short list of wood-fired favorites for years, and pulling that oven up Route 3A is what elevates the Bow site from beer garden to dinner destination. The opening weekend was busy enough that the crew had to call it a day early on Sunday because they ran out of pizza dough.
The best way to see the shift is not in a press release but in the small logistics of a weeknight.
Before this summer, a Bow parent who wanted to meet a neighbor for a drink after work either invited them over or drove north on I-93 into Concord. Until now, heading out for a drink or even just a place to sit and socialize meant getting in the car and driving to Concord or Hopkinton. That was the friction. Fifteen minutes each way, a parking decision, a table decision, a whole outing.
The new geometry is simpler. Exit 1, park on the gravel, order at the trailer, sit down. The town manager framed the ripple effect this way:
"It'll bring different people to town. They may look around and see there are other opportunities to develop in this area."
That is a longer-run point. The shorter-run point is that a Bow resident can now walk into their own town after work and find neighbors already there.
Two names come up quickly among people who have been to the beer garden more than once. Dan Thomas, who bought Hoptimystic in 2023 and moved it toward his hometown, is one. Teddy Fulton, the 900 Degrees managing partner running the Bow side, is the other. Teddy Fulton, managing partner of 900 Degrees' Bow location, said the project took three years to bring to life and the community's excitement has made the wait worthwhile. "I can really see it in the faces of the people that live in Bow," he said. "They're really excited to have something different, something a little out of the ordinary."
If you want to catch him behind the bar, the schedule is published. Teddy will be at the Beer Garden Thursdays from 4 pm to 9 pm, Saturdays 12 pm to 9 pm, and Sundays 12 pm to 4 pm.
The beer garden does not replace the summer texture that Bow already had, it slots in beside it. A few dates and touch points worth holding onto for the next few months:
None of that is new. What is new is that a Friday after camp pickup now has a walk-up option in town instead of a drive-out one.
One more piece of context before you plan around it. This is a summer-season operation, not a year-round build. The beer garden experience features live music and classic outdoor games and is designed for the May-through-October season. There is no permanent structure yet, which is also why the town manager noted the beer garden currently does not have a major impact on Bow's tax base since there is no permanent structure on the property. Whatever the site becomes long term depends on infrastructure decisions the town is still working through.
For this summer, though, the picture is settled. A Wednesday at 5 pm in Bow now looks like a Wednesday at 5 pm somewhere with more restaurants. That is a real change in the daily texture of the town, and it happened on one parcel, in one season, because two operators and one municipal water problem lined up the way they did.
If you have lived here a while, the practical read is short. Put the Saturday music slot on the calendar. Try the pizza before the first real cold snap in October. And when a friend from out of town asks what there is to do in Bow on a summer evening, you finally have an answer that doesn't start with the word "drive."
If a summer of new options in town has you thinking about your own next move, whether that means staying rooted in Bow or looking at what's next for your household, Darcy Mantel knows this town from the inside and would be glad to talk it through. Let's Connect.
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