Couple shares appreciation of beer through Tap & Bottle

Rebecca and Scott Safford have always appreciated beer.

With their three bars/bottle shops in Tucson, they offer customers a variety of brews from independent companies from around the country.

Their journey started with Tap & Bottle Downtown on Sixth Avenue in 2013. They expanded to Tap & Bottle North on Oracle Road in 2017 and then Westbound on Avenida del Convento in the MSA Annex in 2018.

At each location, they offer beer on tap and bottle shops. At The Westbound and Tap & Bottle North locations, they serve spirits and cocktails. The Downtown location has bottles of wine for sale.

Each of its locations has its own distinctive atmosphere and patrons.

With its traditional pub feel, Tap & Bottle Downtown is inside a building from the early 1900s.

“That’s what we always envisioned when we wanted to open a beer bar,” Rebecca said.

Tap & Bottle North is in a larger space, with a meeting room and a patio. The location is in a more family-oriented part of town, so the Saffords incorporated chalkboard paint and a large-scale Connect 4 game on the wall.

“We really looked for an opportunity to do something that we couldn’t do in our Downtown location,” Rebecca said.

The northwestern location’s meeting room has been used for charcuterie workshops, wedding and baby showers and after-work happy hours.

For Westbound, the couple worked closely with a team from the MSA Annex to develop a bar that would appeal to its neighbors. This space has more of an open, outdoor feel, where patrons can grab a bite to eat from a nearby restaurant and venture over for a drink.

This space often attracts active groups who are out for group runs/walks, bike rides or hikes.

“We want to encourage people to make a day of it, go to a few different businesses and support local,” Rebecca said.

The bottle shops give character to the three locations. Boasting 500 cans and bottles of beer, they focus on American craft beer. With their spirits and wines, the couple tries to highlight independent companies.

“We like when people can come in, shop and get something from Pueblo Vida, Dragoon, Arizona Wilderness,” Rebecca said.

“We like the same focus on wine as we do on beer, where it’s focused on more independent, small, something you’re not going to see at your local grocery store…. We have whiskeys that are made here in Tucson, like Whiskey Del Bac, or Suncliffe gin that’s made with ingredients from Sedona. It’s curated. It’s thoughtful. There’s something for everybody.”

“It’s not all local because of the depth and breadth of what we are trying to offer, but we do really want to champion what’s going on in our state because there’s a lot of great things in wine, beer and spirits happening in Arizona.”

Along with Arizona, the bottle shops also carry products from Colorado, California and New Mexico.

Some of the featured beers, though, come from unexpected places.

“During the pandemic, we started seeing beers from places we had never carried before because breweries had to close down their taprooms,” Rebecca said.

“A lot of them moved to canning more of their beers, and they were distributing more beers. So, we saw more beers out of the East Coast and the Midwest that we had never seen before.”

IPAs tend to be the most popular type of beers at the bars and bottle shops, but customers enjoy pilsners and lagers in the summer and dark barrel-aged beers in the winter.

Many companies have creative label art on their beers. Rebecca said that breweries have made artwork a priority.

“There’s a brewery out of Santa Cruz called Humble Sea,” Rebecca said. “They do these great labels with fun artwork, and sometimes people just pick it up… We call our coolers our artwork at Tap & Bottle. You can look in the coolers and try out one you might not have because you think it has a great label.”

Along with American craft beers, the bottle shops also have a selection of Belgian and German beers.

If the stores don’t carry a certain type of beer, the staff can research it and see if it can be brought in or specially ordered.

The Saffords don’t brew their own beer, but they do work with companies such as Tombstone Brewing Co. and Arizona Wilderness Brewing Co. on collaboration beers.

This year for the All-Souls Procession, Westbound is working with Pueblo Vida on a special beer. A portion of sales will go donated to Many Mouths One Stomach, the organization that puts on the procession.

For those who don’t drink, the bars have options such as fermented pineapple beverages, bubbly water made with hops, nonalcoholic beers and root beers made by breweries.

Before opening the Downtown location, neither Rebecca nor Scott were entrepreneurs. Scott worked in retail at Trader Joe’s for 15 years, and Rebecca was employed in the education sector. She had experience bartending and waiting tables to help support herself, especially while in college.

Even though they didn’t have business experience, the 20-year Tucson residents decided to pursue their dream.

“It was really wanting to take the chance and see if we could make it work. We loved Tucson, loved the community and wanted to make a place we wanted to hang out at,” Rebecca said.

Their business model was inspired by bars they encountered while visiting California and Oregon, where customers could purchase bottles and cans to-go.

Running a business was a learning experience. She and her husband applied that knowledge to the newer locations.

They have often looked to other Tucson business owners for advice.

“I feel like that’s a huge thing that people in Tucson do is help each other out,” Rebecca said.

“We have a lot of industry friends that were like, ‘Call this person. This is who to talk to about this.’ Having really great partners, having a great accountant, having great lawyers, all that stuff helps. Basically, figuring out what you don’t know about and finding the people that can help you and being able to ask a lot of questions.”

They are involved with local organizations such as the Living Streets Alliance, which is dedicated to creating safer and smarter streets, and the Tucson LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce as allies of the LGBT community. They have also worked with the Historic Fourth Avenue Coalition.

Rebecca said she and her husband had to get used to working together. Sometimes, having three locations can help because they can each focus on one.

Overall, she has found that it allows them to be their own bosses and live the type of flexible lifestyle they want.

“We wanted to go into business together because we were both working really hard for other companies and other people. We didn’t really get to see each other. But like anything, you are now with your person all the time, and you experience different things together. But there’s also something great about it because at the end of the day, he’s the only one that truly understands what we’re going through because we’re both going through it.”

Tap & Bottle Downtown

403 N. Sixth Avenue, Tucson

520-344-8999, thetapandbottle.com

Tap & Bottle North

7254 N. Oracle Road, Tucson

520-268-8725, thetapandbottle.com

Westbound

267 S. Avenida del Convento, Suite 12, Tucson

520-867-8308, westboundtucson.com

This article appears in Feb 9-15, 2023.