The time has come for a change at Sidetrack Brewing, but fear not, for the brewery will be in good hands going forward.

This Friday will feature a going-away party for owners Dan Herr and Anne O’Neill, and a welcoming of sorts for a familiar face to many who will be taking over the business. Pilar Westell, who owns Zendo Coffee next door, is set to become the new owner once all that pesky paperwork clears.

I caught up with the three of them earlier this week to talk about the decision to leave, the decision to purchase, and where the brewery will be heading in the future.

“Anne and I, even over the last couple of years, we’ve been saying are we going to do this forever? What’s the next step? How do we do that next step?” Herr said. “It’s just really been a conversation.

“We knew that we didn’t want to just go to market and look for the highest bidder for the building or the business. But, we wanted it to be more of an assurance that things were going to continue. We like what’s going on here and we put a lot of effort into doing all of that. It was a very deliberate that all of us worked together to pull off.”

To find that right person to keep all that is good about the community hub that Sidetrack has become, Herr and O’Neill only had to look back to the beginning.

“Pilar is the one that initiated the whole thing by coming to us when we were first looking to buy this building,” Herr said. “And, just happened to run into us, right?”

“Yeah, I was just walking (by),” she replied. “I lived down the street. I had a baby that would only take a nap in the stroller. We’d been looking for a place to do a coffee shop for almost a year when I met you. You were just (standing out) here, remember?”

“There was a for sale sign in the building,” Herr continued. “We were looking at it, thinking about this place. We were familiar with the neighborhood. We had an office before in Gertrude’s building (across the street). We were here just looking at the place for sale. We hadn’t even talked with a realtor about getting inside and Pilar comes by and says, ‘Hey, what are you doing here?’”

A partnership was born, in a way, as Herr and O’Neill purchased the building. Zendo came first and Sidetrack would come later, the two businesses side-by-side in more ways than just geography.

“That was the beginning of it,” Herr said. “When Anne and I realized that we couldn’t keep doing this forever, we asked Pilar if she wanted to think about taking it over.”

“I just want to also state that Pilar is the perfect person to take this over,” O’Neill interjected. “She knows our community. She’s got the same vision as we have, and also, I think we need somebody with younger, fresher new ideas to keep Sidetrack going.”

It was Zendo and the success that it enjoyed on an otherwise sleepy little stretch of Second Street that encouraged Herr and O’Neill to pursue the brewery project they had been kicking around as a concept. Zendo built a community, Sidetrack added onto it, and now the block is alive and well with multiple businesses thriving in an all-local zone at the edge of downtown.

“There was an obvious appetite and need for this community base,” Herr said. “The improvement we were able to make in the neighborhood, bringing the foot traffic down here. Maybe we can’t take credit for sparking all of that, but I think we kind of can. If we hadn’t started it out, many other people wouldn’t have said let’s do this (here).

“Everything was slowly working up to what it is. It’s been really successful and it’s been a great community asset. And, that’s where Pilar’s heart is, and she’s much better at that stuff than we are. It’s going to continue to stay what it is.”

The process of changing owners of the brewery began back in January, with the state finally approving the new small brewer license just last week. With all of that part winding down, Westell talked about what brought her to this point and where she will guide the brewery going forward.

“I think to echo what Dan and Anne are saying, this space is sacred to me, for a number of reasons,” she said. “It’s where I raised my kids. It’s where I found this community to support the three of us. I’ve been a single parent for the last 10, 12 years. I lived upstairs when we first started. I had my (second) baby upstairs in a pool.

“But, I think if I sort of summarize it, this is the closest thing I’ve ever felt to having a home. … This was really, I think, probably the first time in my adult life that I’ve ever felt like this is where I’m supposed to be.”

Westell is married now, and the minute that she heard of a possible sale, she and her husband immediately began discussing the feasibility of adding a second business to their portfolio.

“When Dan and Anne were talking about selling, the first thing that came to mind was I have to keep this going, I have to at least get a shot at taking it over,” she said. “You guys have built something incredible, and I on the other side have built something incredible. The two really complement each other so well. We have crossover, but we have two very different sets of regulars, but they’re also in this neighborhood that I love. I wanted more than anything to make sure some Texan didn’t come in and completely ruin the thing that Dan and Anne had worked so hard to build, and by proxy, me.”

Westell said that she has traveled to many bigger cities where the concept of a coffee shop in the morning that transforms into a beer bar/brewery at night is far from rare. Both types of business have the same community-focused ethos, assuring that people have a place to go that suits them day and night.

“I love working in the service industry, the hospitality industry, it’s the thing that gives me my breath in life,” Westell said. “I love talking to people and being able to be a third space where people can come. All sorts of crazy stuff has happened over the last 12 years. You get to be a part of people’s lives in a way that I don’t know if any other job allows you to (be). You get to see people meet for the first time, people have wedding receptions in my shop, and bring their first babies by four days after they’re had them, just to show them off. It’s really just (my goal) to want to continue all of that, for as long as I possibly can.”

Not much will change going forward at Sidetrack, with perhaps the most important component staying put in the form of head brewer Cordell Rincon.

“The absolute best (brewer), I don’t know how I won that jackpot,” Westell said with a smile. “Cordell is — we knew each other on a very superficial level, I made him coffee every morning when he first started here — and now that we’ve bene hanging out for the last few months, he’s just stellar. He has incredible knowledge. He’s doing some really cool things with beer. I’m learning new things every day. And to boot, he’s really salt of the earth.”

Knowing that Rincon would be sticking around made the deal even sweeter.

“My husband Eddie and I were talking about how lucky we feel to have kind of stumbled into something that, A, already has such a huge following, and B, has this great staff that’s being led by Cordell,” Westell said. “I feel incredibly lucky. You couldn’t ask for a better situation to come into.”

Rincon was happy to return the compliment.

“It’s completely mutual,” he said. “She cares as much as anybody. Eddie’s been great. It’s going to be a fun time.”

As for changes ahead, there will be some here and there, mostly designed to make the experience at Sidetrack even more enjoyable.

“I think I really want to, really trying to encourage Cordell to let the big dog eat, so to speak,” Westell said. “Get out there and do more types of beer that he’s interested in. At some point, once we get the dust to settle, I’d like to add some sort of food component. I don’t exactly know what that’s going to look like, but it’s on my horizon, even if it’s just some snack-y bites that we’re able to offer.”

There will be more events, with trivia presented by Basic Wizardry starting up August 6 and running every Wednesday. The majority of special happenings, however, will be very community focused.

“Mainly, it’s just continuing more of what I’m doing at the coffee shop and bringing that (here), in terms of community engagement,” Westell said. “Just figuring out ways to either support our community and be able to host events that need to happen, and also just trying to get people to come and hang out. I love it when this place is full, where everybody knows everybody, or where everybody doesn’t know everybody, and get to know each other. I think just continuing to figure out ways to make that happen in a more frequent way is the main goal.”

As for this Friday, the party kicks off at 6 p.m. It will not be anything over-the-top or crazy, because that is just not the Sidetrack way.

“Our friend Carlos is going to do a smash burger pop-up on the back patio,” Westell said. “I think the plan is we want everybody to come hang out. Dan is going to be around, hopefully, for a little bit longer, helping me with the transition. We just wanted to catch these guys before they left for their two-week trip to England, and before the summer ended and went back to school, get back to regular life.”

O’Neill wanted to add one more thing.

“Everybody has asked us what we’re going to do in retirement, and I’d like to clarify on the record that for the last 10 years I’ve worked a full-time job while doing Sidetrack, and I will keep doing that,” she said. “I’m retiring from beer, but I’m not retiring from work. Nor is Dan. I’ve seen these things from people wishing me luck going out and seeing the world. I wish I was, but no.”

Oh, but they are going to the Great British Beer Festival during that trip to England, so it looks like craft beer will not completely leave O’Neill and Herr’s orbit anytime soon. Honestly, though, they have earned this sort of trip, and we are all a little jealous (and maybe plotting out a future trip of our own).

A huge thanks to Dan and Anne for not just this interview, but for all they have done for the craft beer community in Albuquerque. Their little brewery became the type of neighborhood pub that we never knew we needed, but now we cannot live without. Sidetrack has inspired many other breweries and provided that welcome community, that place to just chill with a pint and have a conversation with friends or even complete strangers.

And to Pilar, welcome to the other brewing community. We know you’re going to love it over here, too.

See many of you this Friday night. It’s not a good-bye party, it’s a thank-you party.

Keep supporting local!

— Stoutmeister

P.S. Cordell added that Cask Fest will be back in all its glory in 2026. He made sure that we included that in here, too.