Boxing Cat Exits the Ring but Plans To Continue the Fight

Boxing Cat Brewery is down for the moment – but not out. Last week, the brewery announced that its Beijing location would be closing its doors, effective Mar 7. A representative told the Beijinger that the closure is due to strategic restructuring, but they will be seeking to open another location in the capital soon.

This is not the first time that the Shanghai-based craft beer giant has up and moved within Beijing. In 2017, having recently won the World Beer Cup in Philadelphia and newly armed with backing from Anheuser-Busch InBev, the brewery landed in Beijing with a pop-up spot in Sanlitun facing a (now closed) Jing-A location, perhaps aiming to test the waters and find out whether there was room in this town for another crafter. Once it was time to close the pop-up, they settled into Xinyuanli – a sizable location that came with plenty of outdoor space to boot, even if there wasn’t much of a view to speak of. What’s more, the neighborhood was blossoming into a hotbed of new and popular restaurants.

With plenty of choices on tap and a menu created by seasoned Shanghai Chef, Simon Sunwoo, the bar managed to fill up its large space on numerous occasions, not least of which its Halloween Parties (they claim to have hosted the first-ever major Halloween party in Shanghai), and lest we forget that, as the official beer sponsor of the Beijinger’s 2020 Pizza Cup, they hosted last year’s Final Four Taste-Off.

The Xinyuanli closure isn’t the only change hitting Boxing Cat either, as one of its co-founders, Kelley Lee, exits China for Madrid after a 16-year-long career pioneering Western Food and Beverage in Shanghai.

As of yet, there’s no word as to where their next Beijing pub might be, but if Xinyuanli was round two for the brewery, then suffice it to say that no good boxing match is complete without a round three. Plus, we reckon this cat still has seven lives left and plenty of fight.

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Images: Uni You, Tom Arnstein