This month Bohemian Bull celebrates 10 years of burgers, beers and bourbon on James Island with a party on Nov. 16. Held from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., the event features live music, specialty cocktails and $10 buckets of oysters. It’s also a chance for loyal customers to revel in the longevity of a well-loved local watering hole.
Look no further than this year’s Best of Charleston awards to see what folks think of Bohemian Bull; the bar and restaurant was voted both Best James Island Bar and Best James Island Happy Hour in 2023.
In 2018 longtime general manager Chad Biel took over as Bohemian Bull’s owner. He’s been franchising the business for two years now, adding three additional South Carolina locations, including a Mount Pleasant location that opened this past spring. You can find Bohemian Bull in Texas, too, and the beer bar opens in Florida soon.
Needless to say, Bohemian Bull’s original business plan was solid from the start.
Long live the beer garden
When Biel chatted with City Paper writer Robert Moss in 2013, right when Bohemian Bull opened, he said, “The beer garden really came about because we were like, hey, we have this big space, and we all love good beer. We actually are on over one acre of land, so we’re fencing in 3,000 square feet.”
2013 was a big year for beer gardens in Charleston, with the opening of Edmund’s Oast and Bay Street Biergarten, too. At the time, Moss noted the proliferation of beer gardens as “the next generation of Charleston beer drinking.”
“I think there were three, maybe four breweries in Charleston when we opened,” Biel told City Paper in a recent conversation. “And now there’s like 40 something. And the growth has been absolutely amazing.”
It’s hard to talk about a beer garden without talking about beer, and Biel said his customers have grown with the craft beer industry.
“I think the biggest thing that we saw was an education piece from our customer’s standpoint when we first opened and we were charging, you know, $4 or $5 for a beer. People were just absolutely shocked by that,” said Biel. “We definitely got a lot of pushback on it. And we were trying to educate people that a … good craft beer is like enjoying a really good glass of wine.
“We would teach our staff in the beginning, find out what they normally drink, and then put them into this category. So if you look at our beer menu, how it’s categorized to this day, it’s categorized by the style of the beer that was done in the beginning to educate our customers.”
Pandemic silver lining
While the success of beer gardens in the area could be chalked up to Charlestonians’ affinity for booze, a 2022 article by FSR magazine suggests beer gardens factored into restaurants’ comeback after Covid.
Citing the National Restaurant Association’s 2021 State of the Restaurant Industry report that claimed that “56% of casual-dining operators devoted more resources to developing or expanding outdoor dining areas since the beginning of Covid,” FSR concludes that “it’s no surprise that beer gardens have become popular destinations for consumers looking for a sense of normalcy.”
Biel seconded that sentiment, saying that Bohemian Bull’s outside space is “the reason we’re still here today.” Taking the government’s PPP loan and giving it back to his staff — Bohemian Bull managed to retain all of their staff except for two people — Biel said the restaurant simply pivoted to an entirely outside model during the pandemic.
“We took all of our tables from inside of our dining room … So we had 200 or so seats. It was super, super busy, and our staff was super excited to be back.”
And while the restaurant survived the pandemic, Biel said not all pivots have been positive. Several years ago Bohemian Bull tried to include a VIP section at one of their monthly oyster roasts; Biel said that customers preferred the low-key vibe of an oyster roast to anything remotely fancy. “That was kind of a bust for us,” he joked.
“I think any time you run a business, you’re trying different things all the time and you’re gonna have failures within that, and you just have to pivot and just, you know, make things work the right way, as best as you possibly can,” said Biel, speaking from a decade of experience with Bohemian Bull.
“I think one of the things for us is we try to, as best as we can, stick with who we are, you know? We are essentially, a craft burger and beer and bourbon restaurant — and that’s who we are … And the biggest thing is our people; we have amazing, amazing staff and so we have a constant focus on always making sure that we take really good care of our people, and that’s a big part of what we do.”
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