Big Bear Brewing Company

Where Craft Beer Took Root in Coral Springs

South Florida's relationship with craft brewing developed later than the coasts above it. While cities like Portland and Denver were building multi-tap taproom cultures through the early 2000s, Broward County was still dominated by corporate beer on draft and chain restaurants. The shift, when it came, arrived market by market, neighborhood by neighborhood. Coral Springs, a planned city with a strong residential identity and a dining corridor clustered along University Drive, became one of the places where that shift found a foothold. Big Bear Brewing Company, at 1800 N University Drive, sits inside that story: a brewery-format venue that landed in a suburb where that concept was still relatively new.

The address places it squarely within the commercial spine of Coral Springs, where the city's dining options range from fast-casual chains to independent sit-down restaurants. Among those independents, the brewery taproom format occupies a distinct social function. It extends the visit beyond the meal, creates a reason to stay through multiple rounds, and positions the beer program as the anchor rather than the supporting act. That shift in emphasis, from kitchen-first to bar-first with food support, reflects a broader national movement in casual dining that Coral Springs adopted alongside comparable mid-sized Florida cities in the 2010s.

The Craft Beer Culture That Frames the Experience

American craft brewing crossed 9,000 operating breweries nationally in the years following the 2012-2018 expansion wave, with Florida becoming one of the more active growth states in the Southeast. The taproom model, in which the brewery itself serves as the primary retail and social venue, became the dominant format for smaller independent operations. It trades the distribution overhead of getting into supermarket shelves for a direct relationship with a local customer base.

What that means in practice, at venues operating in this format, is a menu designed around the beer program rather than competing with it. Food tends toward items that pair well with a range of styles: fried snacks, burgers, sandwiches, and shareable plates that hold up across lager, pale ale, and darker malt profiles. The social architecture of the room, typically open, high-ceilinged, with communal tables or bar seating, signals that lingering is encouraged. This is the opposite of fine dining's controlled pace. The meal is ambient to the broader session.

In Coral Springs specifically, that format serves a demographic that the city's more formal restaurant options do not fully address: groups looking for a place to watch sport, families comfortable with noise and casual service, and regular drinkers who want a rotating tap list rather than a wine-by-the-glass program. Venues like Tap 42 operate in a related but more polished lane, with a larger craft beer selection and a food program that reaches slightly higher. The gap between those two positions is where much of Coral Springs' casual dining competition plays out.

Reading the Room: Where Big Bear Sits in the Local Dining Picture

Coral Springs is not a city that has developed a single defining culinary identity. Its dining options reflect the mixed suburban character of western Broward County: reliable mid-tier American, a solid Italian presence exemplified by Eddie and Vinny's, casual upscale options like Livello, legacy local spots such as Runyon's, and daytime casual represented by operations like Bagels & A Whole Lot More. A brewery taproom in this context does not compete directly with any of those formats. It fills a different function in the week's dining rotation.

The competitive peer set for a venue like Big Bear is not the Italian-American restaurant or the upscale contemporary dinner option. It is other casual evening destinations where the point is the drink as much as the food, where the check per head stays approachable, and where the atmosphere tolerates a loud table. Against that peer set, the brewery format carries a credential that a generic sports bar does not: the beer is made here, or tied closely to the identity of the place, which creates a reason to visit that a bar stocking national brands cannot replicate.

For those planning a broader evening in Coral Springs, the city's dining options sit across a meaningful range. The full picture is available in our full Coral Springs restaurants guide. Those looking to benchmark what the brewery-casual format looks like against high-end American dining elsewhere in the country can reference Lazy Bear in San Francisco, Smyth in Chicago, or Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Tarrytown for a sense of how far the American dining spectrum extends. Closer to the Gulf, Emeril's in New Orleans and Providence in Los Angeles represent the formal anchor of the American south and west coast scenes. On the fine dining end of the national register, Le Bernardin in New York City, The French Laundry in Napa, Addison in San Diego, Atomix in New York City, Single Thread Farm in Healdsburg, The Inn at Little Washington, and internationally, Atelier Moessmer Norbert Niederkofler in Brunico all mark the upper tier of what the format's more serious counterparts look like.

Planning Your Visit

Big Bear Brewing Company is located at 1800 N University Drive in Coral Springs, Florida 33071, placing it on the main commercial corridor that runs through the city's commercial center. The address is direct to reach by car from anywhere in western Broward County. Because the venue fits the casual taproom format, dress code expectations are relaxed and walk-in visits are the norm for this type of operation, though larger groups during peak weekend hours may find it worth arriving early to secure seating. For hours, current tap lists, or any group reservation needs, checking the venue's current contact details before arrival is the practical approach, as operational details for taproom-format venues can shift seasonally. At the time of this writing, specific hours and booking contacts were not available through our database.