Jackson’s Falls Inn reopens

County entrepreneurs embark on new project

After nearly a year of renovations, Natalie and Drew Wollenberg have reopened the Jackson’s Falls Country Inn just outside Milford. The couple also own and operate 555 Brewing Company and were the original owners of the County Canteen brewpub, which they sold last year just before taking on the Jackson’s Falls project. “We opened the County Canteen in 2015, and it was quite a different environment then. Brewing has been our main passion, and the capacity at the County Canteen was not as big as we wanted, so we ventured up the road and started 555 in 2017,” says Natalie. She and Drew had been interested in the Jackson’s Falls property when it came on the market a couple of years ago. “We’ve always loved Jackson’s Falls. We live down the road and we were here on ‘wing night’ every single week and we had a ball with people here and it always stuck in our heads that we would like to do this, and last year we just thought we needed to switch things up a lot and we were lucky to meet Scott and DJ [Gregor] and we sold the Canteen to them and in the same month we put in an offer and got Jackson’s Falls,” says Natalie. It was important for them to turn the County Canteen over to capable hands. “Everything just fell into place. We wouldn’t have sold the Canteen unless it was to someone like Scott and DJ, because the Canteen is still our baby, and also with the staff there we wanted continuity and to make sure they were looked after as well, So it just happened that the two perfect guys that fit the role and were really good operators would take that and in exactly the same month allow us to put an offer in here,” says Drew. “We always wanted to do accommodation of some sort. There was no way we could have done this and the brewery and the Canteen. The Canteen really ran its course for us and we want to focus on our true passion, which is brewing and also doing this—which ironically took me out of the brew house. Since the day we bought this, it’s been 10 months of renovating here, every single day, and homeschooling the kids, in a schoolhouse, which is kind of cool.”

After nearly 10 months of renovations, Natalie and Drew Wollenberg have reopened the Jackson’s Falls Country Inn.

The inn is located on the grounds of a one-room schoolhouse, to which several additions have been made over the years, plus the construction of an outbuilding. The original schoolhouse is now a communal area for guests, and there are nine spacious rooms available.

The site is large enough so that guests have a high degree of privacy and there are several areas set up so that guests can have a barbecue if they don’t feel like going to a restaurant for a meal. “The plan was to create something comfortable, something where people can relax and get away. We’ve undergone the last 14 months in a pandemic and a lot of people have been cooped up in places where they don’t have the blessings that we do, and here they are able to escape and relax and unwind,” says Natalie.

Starting a new business venture during the throes of a global pandemic was not an easy undertaking, particularly since there was no indication that it would be ultimately successful. “In one respect it was a good distraction away from the pandemic and we were able to put all our energy into a project where we could focus on something else,” says Natalie. It was a bit of a juggling act for the couple to run the 555 brewery, take care of their two school-age children and renovate the inn, where Drew used his carpentry skills and a number of friends helped with electrical or construction work. “Nat would come here with me at 7 and we’d get the kids set up, then she would go to work. She would come back at 6 and I would hand her a paint brush and I would go to the brewery, get some stuff done. Then we would meet here and at 10 o’clock would pack up and go home. It’s been literally every day. We haven’t had a day off since March 14th last year. Looking back at it now, what it’s forced us to do is that the work I thought we’d have done in three years time, what we’d do in the off-season, is done now,” says Drew.

It has been a long and ultimately rewarding journey for Natalie and Drew as they have had to navigate through the pandemic. They made the difficult decision to remain open throughout all of the lockdowns. In the first couple of months, the brewery offered take-away beer with only Drew and Natalie operating it. In the evening, Drew would deliver food and beer sold through the Marans restaurant. “I enjoyed it except for the fact that I had to smell [Chef] Guerin’s food sitting in my car the whole time. I usually hadn’t eaten and it was so tempting just to grab some,” says Drew. Later, when 555 offered take-out pizza, they found they had to change to dough recipe because the pizza had to remain fresh after a car journey and not just being delivered from kitchen to table. They also had to install a canning line at the brewery and create a stockpile of stainless steel cans, because the mobile canning company they used was swamped with other business. All of their hard work paid off. Although they took advantage of the financial supports offered by the federal government during the pandemic, by last summer the brewery was doing well enough that wage subsidies were not needed. Both Natalie and Drew say that one of the big lessons they learned over the course of the pandemic was the importance of maintaining the connection to the local customer base. “It’s about connecting with the locals who support us. That’s always been the primary thought in our minds,” says Natalie.