A distillery and restaurant will transform a space at Reston Town Center, possibly at the end of this year.

Open Road Distillery — along with a chef-driven speakeasy-style restaurant Heirloom — will share a space at the former Balducci’s Food Lover’s Market (1871 Fountain Drive), part of numerous changes coming to the shopping-office-residential destination.

The Burn first reported the exact location of the new  business.

Matthew Carlin, president of the West Falls Church-based Metropolitan Hospital Group, tells Reston Now that the end of 2022 is a target date for opening, but it will likely be pushed to the beginning of 2023.

“Having been born and raised in Northern Virginia, I have always wanted to be part of a great landmark like the Reston Town Center. We are excited to bring something truly unique to the Reston community,” Carlin also said in a statement.

The new space will feature a casual dining room, indoor/outdoor patio bar, live music and a tasting room with distillery tours.

The new distillery comes through Carlin and Metropolitan Hospitality Group chief operating officer Vince Spinoso, who have brought forth other restaurants throughout Virginia and D.C., including CIRCA, Open Road, Trio Grill, El Bebe and Salt. The distillery marks a new approach for the pair.

Carlin says they’ll be in need of many workers.

Photo via Google Maps. 

The Brazilian steakhouse chain Fogo de Chão is looking to expand in the northern Virginia region.

Permits show the restaurant is looking to add a location at Reston Town Center at 11915 Democracy Drive across from outdoor dining staple Jackson’s Mighty Fine Food & Lucky Lounge and the Mexican restaurant Uncle Julio’s.

The addition would make it one of numerous additions coming to the shopping district in 2022. It would fill a location that’s been vacant for most of the COVID-19 pandemic after the Chinese and Thai restaurant Big Bowl closed in early 2020 after nearly two decades of business.

A marketing executive with the Plano, Texas-based company didn’t respond to a message seeking comment, but a New York City public relations firm for Fogo de Chão answered, saying they have limited information available and adding that they’ll “be in touch with a bit more insight when available.”

But a manager at the Tysons location tells Reston Now that the new location should open in 2022, hopefully by the middle of the year, noting that the Tysons location will remain.

Fogo de Chão has yet to start hiring for the new location, the Tysons manager said. The Brazilian steakhouse is also working to open another location in Southern California.

Photo by Josh Hrach/Flickr

After stepping away from corporate life, a 35-year-old man who once owned a craft beer bar in Australia is looking to take his knowledge and industry contacts to a new level.

Anton Sagan has taken over Aslin Beer Co.’s old space in Herndon’s Sunset Business Park at 257 Sunset Park Drive and plans to open in December for takeaways and a taproom, creating small batches of fruit-based craft beers with four 132-gallon fermentation vessels, which can create 300 crowlers (32-ounce cans) at a time.

Juicy Brewing Co.’s drinks will range from fruity sours to hazy India Pale Ales.

The space currently features ingredients he’s importing from around the world: malts from Germany, an in-demand product called Phantasm that uses Sauvignon blanc grapes from New Zealand and more.

“We’re already playing with our recipes here,” he said. “Being so niche with hops with the other business, … but having that background … gave us that additional knowledge base with the recipes we want to create now.”

He brewed the first batch for the public last month for private events and a pandemic-induced craft beer called FML Festival at a Hampton brewery last month, and he said he’s looking to have a handful of flavors that rotate each month, starting off with flavors such as peach-banana-vanilla (vanilla from Madagascar, Sagan notes) and Siberian berry.

Sagan, who attended grade school in Cherry Creek in western New York state and went to university in Australia, has lived abroad, including Moscow, but he and his wife and two kids relocated during the pandemic to Herndon this year.

Living for 15 years in Australia by way of Melbourne and Sydney, he got connected with farmers and sold hops through the craft beer-focused distributor Hops Engine, which eventually began selling to Aslin Beer Co. Sagan also got connected with former Tired Hands and Foreign Objects brewer Steven di Eva, who’s serving as his brewer.

“As we grow into it, we’ve got 10 taps we want to be running at any one time,” he said.

He thinks the taproom will allow for 30-40 people, even though the space can accommodate more on paper.

“Having that intimacy is important to us,” he said. “We want to stay small and local and humble.”

He’s looking to work with local shops and farms and is already providing spent hops to a family farm for animals free of charge.

Seven new businesses are coming to Reston Town Center, including a distillery and fitness center.

Owner and developer Boston Properties shared details about the changes on an Oct. 27 earnings call. Company president Doug Linde said a theater operator completed a 50,000-square-foot lease during the third quarter.

The company refused to provide further details, except for listing limited information on three businesses. In a statement to Reston Now, a public relations representative identified those new businesses as the following:

Open Road Distillery, a new distillery concept from Metropolitan Hospitality Group that will include a tasting room with tours, a dining room, indoor/outdoor bar & live music.

Hammer & Nails, a grooming shop for guys providing haircuts, shaves, and hand & foot care, and

Compass Real Estate, a real estate company known for pairing top agents with innovative technology making the searching and selling process seamless.

All seven businesses are slated to open in 2022, according to Boston Properties’ spokesperson.

Linde said the company is close to executing agreements with three more restaurants, and the fitness operator signed a lease in October for a 20,000-square-foot space.

The company declined to disclose any further information, including the addresses of the new restaurants.

Photo via Payton Chung/Flickr

A dentist is seeking to fill a hole in the area with a specialty practice slated to open Nov. 8.

Wonhee (Alan) Lee is launching the endodontics practice, a form of dentistry dealing with root canal issues, at at 11800 Sunrise Valley Drive.

“We have noted limited access to an endodontic specialist in [the] Reston-Herndon area, and our goal is to become a trusted partner to the local dental community and support them [by providing] comprehensive and emergency dental care to the people of Reston,” Lee wrote in a message.

The firm is providing the full range of endontonic services, such as laser-assisted root canal treatment and retreatment, endodontic microsurgery, regenerative endodontics and laser photobiomodulation therapy.

A permit for the business identifies it as Endodontic Excellence. The permit, which the county issued Sept. 29, was for a sprinkler system given the new commercial layout.

Lee has served as a dentist at Bethesda-Chevy Chase Root Canal Specialists. The firm said in an email that he’s no longer with the practice.

Nearby at 11864 Sunrise Valley Drive, a dental practice converted space earlier this year at the former Pica Deli.

While the pandemic has led to a surge in small business, Endodontic Excellence formed in July 2019, according to the State Corporation Commission.

Lee’s business has already hired four full-time employees and plans to expand.

“Our primary focus is to provide an optimal patience experience with the highest quality of treatment and care through seamless teamwork and leading-edge technology,” he wrote.

Photo via Google Maps

A delivery-only chicken wing spot from the owners of Ted’s Bulletin and Federalist Pig has opened at Reston Town Center.

FedWings opened the outpost last month, smoking and frying chicken wings out of Ted’s Bulletin kitchen at 11948 Market Street.

The wings were being served at their barbecue restaurant Federalist Pig (with locations in D.C. and Maryland) prior, but it became clear to the owners that there was a big appetite for this easy-to-eat-at-home, finger food.

“When the pandemic happened, a lot of people wanted more wings,” co-owner Nick Salis tells Reston Now. “And we were trying to figure out how to keep our kitchen staff employed and keep people working… so we launched this wings brand.”

Their first so-called “ghost kitchen” was out of Kramer’s Bookstore in D.C.(which they also own) and have since expanded to eight locations, including Reston as well as ones in Merrifield and Arlington.

Salis says what makes their wings unique is that they smoke them, quickly deep fry them, and, then, toss them in a proprietary rub.

“These wings are not the easiest wings to make,” he says. “We smoke them for an hour to an hour and a half, depending on the wood. Smoking is a little bit of an art.”

Since they started smoking and frying in mid-September, Reston’s FedWings has been doing crisp business, Salis notes.

While the pandemic continues to change and debilitate the restaurant industry, Salis says that the Ted Bulletin’s location at Reston Town Center has been hurting ever since Boston Properties infamously instituted paid parking back in 2016.

“There was a drop in sales of 30% overnight,” he says. “It was like your worst nightmare. It leaves a scar.”

Salis is hopeful though, since sales are climbing back, creeping closer to what it was when the restaurant opened there in 2014.

The hope is that FedWings will help continue that trend. The response has been “awesome” so far and the company is evaluating what the next steps could be, whether that means opening more ghost kitchens or establishing dedicated brick and mortars for FedWings.

“As of right now,” Salis says, “We’re just enjoying serving these wings to the community of Reston.”

Tech company Cloudpermit has set up its North American headquarters in Reston.

The Finland-based electronic permitting company that works with local governments to simplify their building permit process has set up shop at 11911 Freedom Drive in Reston Town Center.

“[Reston] is a very good atmosphere for high tech companies,” Cloudpermit’s Chief Executive Officer Jan Pawli tells Reston Now. He also cited Reston’s location near D.C, Arlington, and points west as a huge selling point for the move here. “There’s easy access to a lot of modern facilities.”

In the press release, he also notes that “Virginia has the highest concentration of tech talent in the U.S. and thousands of tech companies have made Fairfax County home.”

Cloudpermit takes the often-complicated building permit process and digitizes it, putting all the paperwork, payment, and scheduling of inspections online. They currently count nearly 500 local governments across Europe and North America as clients, according to the release.

“Earlier, it could take six months to get a building permit because you need to shake so many hands,” says Pawli. “Today, you can do it overnight.”

Pawli notes that the company made the decision to relocate here without first visiting. This was due, in large part, to Virginia Governor Ralph Northam and a delegation meeting with them in Germany this past spring. T

his went a long way, he says, in convincing them to move to the Commonwealth since it provided a personal connection, good discussion, and a shared frustration in how long the building permit process can take.

While only about twenty employees will be working out of their Reston office by the end of year, the impact of the move goes beyond the number of employees.

“A company like Cloudpermit has many options for a North American base,” wrote Victor Hoskins, president and CEO of the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority, in the press release. “Choosing Fairfax County is an important vote of confidence in our business climate, our assets for company success and the kind of talent it can find here – whether the company is from the U.S. or another country.”

In a follow-up statement to Reston Now, Hoskins added that “the company’s decision to expand its European-based operations here during the ongoing pandemic reflects well not only on the optimism for the post-COVID return to working at offices, but also for the robust business climate in Fairfax County and Northern Virginia.”

The company also has offices in Helsinki, Vancouver, Toronto, San Diego, and Chicago.

Cloudpermit isn’t the only tech company in recent months to move to Reston. Government defense and intelligence contractor CACI debuted their new international headquarters across the street from the (hopefully) soon-to-be-opened Reston Town Center Metro station in June.

Pawli only moved to Northern Virginia in mid-August, but is already enjoying himself. He says, compared to Finland, the weather is much milder and has found the people here very friendly so far.

“I think we made a very good decision on this,” Pawli says on moving Cloudpermit to Reston. “We’re very happy to be here.”