It was five years ago that the first steps were taken in the development of a new distillery and restaurant located just outside of Moose Jaw on Highway 735.
Now, five years later, Honey Pot Distillery is officially in full operation.
The family-run venture held its grand opening on Dec. 9, featuring music by Lone Rambler on top of plenty of delicious food and libations for the restaurant and lounge’s patrons.
To see things finally taking off has been a satisfying experience for proprietor Cory Martin, especially with the amount of effort that has gone into making Honey Pot Distillery what it is today.
“It’s been a long haul; 2017 is when we started to build and we’ve had a couple of setbacks with the pandemic and everything, which kind of stalled us for a year and a half,” Martin said. “Now we’re finally seeing stuff coming to fruition and it’s been going well.”
The heart of the operation is its on-site apiary, which allows the business to harvest all the honey used in its products. In fact, it was an exceptionally good honey harvest that led to the idea of Honey Pot Distillery in the first place.
“We had a good honey crop year and honey prices weren’t really good, so we had an abundance of honey that we were holding back waiting for the price to rise.” Martin explained. “We didn’t see that happening any time soon, so we thought we’d try something else. We ended up swapping out some ingredients and just using honey to make our spirits and it turned out well, so here we are.”
When it comes to alcohol, the distillery currently has two products available: Honey Pot Distillery vodka and Honey Pot Distillery Whikie. Not whiskey, as for a drink to be called that it has to have been aged three years.
“We’re trying to get our brand going here and we want everyone to know that everything we do is on site,” Martin explained. “We do the extracting of the honey, the fermenting on site and the distilling on site. It’s all from honey, too, and we feel it makes for a smoother taste.”
As for the restaurant side of things, Honey Pot has opted to go with a smokehouse menu, featuring a host of delicious options on their Grazing Trough menu, ranging from burnt ends to pork sliders and a variety of tastes unique to their restaurant.
That’s all by design, as offering something a bit different is how they plan to get folks to visit their out-of-town location. You can find Honey Pot Distillery by driving west on Caribou Street to Highway 735 and continuing for 15 minutes, with the restaurant located just off the grid road.
Folks have been making the trek, though, with the restaurant already having had a few nights where they were essentially filled to the brim.
“Moose Jaw has been really good, and we have people from all sorts of little communities,” Martin said. “Word has been spreading online and by word of mouth, and since we’ve been open, our nemesis has been mother nature. We’ve had a couple storms in there, that kind of delayed a couple weekends, but other than that it’s been going really well.”
The restaurant will traditionally be open every Friday and Saturday from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. but for the month of December is open Thursdays as well.
“We built everything ourselves, and to finally see people in chairs and the till getting used, the reception has been amazing.” Martin said. “People like the little drive out of town, like getting out and about, and while it’s out in the middle of nowhere, more and more people are finding us. Now there are lots of Christmas parties and birthday parties and then we’re starting to book into January, so it’s really been coming along.”
Like every business of it’s type, Honey Pot Distillery is always working to expand their offerings. That includes a full line of alcohol beverages, including fully-aged gin, rum and whisky in the coming months and years.
Other than that, it’s just about growing the restaurant business and seeing how far they can take things.
“It’s been really good so far, we’re just hoping to see it get even bigger and better,” Martin said.
For more on Honey Pot Distillery, including their complete line-up of offerings and their menu, visit their website at www.honeypotdistillery.com and check out their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/HoneyPotDistillery/ for updates on their latest events.
