GOOD HOPE — There was a ribbon cutting recently for the newest addition to Good Hope’s growing restaurant and retail scene — but most of the guests who flocked to the car-crowded parking lot probably were never aware.

That’s because local microbrewery Ethos Craft Brewing and its Good Hope partner businesses already are attracting guests by the hundreds, packing the newly opened restaurant venue along county road 222 with the kind of crowds that far outnumber the small handful of local leaders who showed up with ribbon-cutting scissors on a recent busy Friday night.

Amid a throng of post-Thanksgiving drinkers and diners oblivious to the official proceedings unfolding on the lawn outside, Good Hope leaders joined Ethos brewmaster Paul White, co-owner Jesse Greening and other business partners involved in the joint-venture concept, with White doing the ceremonial ribbon-slicing honors to officially christen the expansive new brewery, winery and pizza-kitchen restaurant on the city’s western fringe.

First announced in early 2023 and completed in November, the mixed-amenity venue welcomed its first customers about a week before last week’s Nov. 29 ribbon cutting, attracting an instant stream of guests who have kept the place busy ever since. “They opened a week ago,” Good Hope councilmember Susan Eller said, “and it has been nonstop up here ever since. It’s really been incredible to see.”

White’s bespoke batches of locally brewed craft beer are all made on-site and are, in fact, part of the modern, high-ceilinged venue’s visual appeal. Diners nibbling on charcuterie or pizza from the attached Bloom Winery restaurant can take their pick of glimpsing their bucolic surroundings through the dining area’s ample outward-facing windows, or peer at the eye-catching brewery vats through a massive indoor window wall located just behind the bar.

Or, as Good Hope Mayor Jerry Bartlett noted, they can even take their treats outside, where a wraparound porch converges on an outdoor patio with seating around a graveled fire pit. “It’s just great what they’ve done here — both inside and out,” Bartlett said.

“We’ve had people — just passersby and strangers — stopping by here for months, just interested in what it is and wondering when it was going to be open. Now it’s open, and it’s just covered up. It’s really something special for Good Hope and, really, for all of Cullman County and this whole Smith Lake corridor.”

Entirely owned and operated by Cullman and north Alabama natives, Ethos Craft Brewing and Bloom Winery are open seven days a week. Doors open at 11 a.m. every day and close at 11 p.m. from Monday-Thursday, while closing hours extend to 12 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and contract to 10 p.m. on Sundays. Find the brewery on Instagram at @ethoscraftbrewing and the winery and pizza kitchen, also on Instagram, at @bloomwinery.