At this point, it is probably not a well-kept secret that I, Stoutmeister, am huge a Bayern Munich fan. My family lived in Bavaria (Southern Germany) in the early 1980s, so when it came time to pick a European soccer team to root for, well, that choice was easy. I recently got to attend my first match at the Allianz Arena, hanging out in the Südkurve (South End) with the true die-hard fans to watch a 4-0 win over Werder Bremen.

Luckily for me, Bayern fans in Albuquerque have come together to form New Mexico Roten, and our chairman smartly worked out a deal with Sunday Service Motor Company to make the brewery/coffee shop our home base for watching games. After all, a place that is already open early to serve coffee can be perfect whenever Bayern hits one of those stretches when the games start at 7:30 a.m. here (3:30 p.m. there, which is so much more reasonable for us night owl types). One and all soccer fans are welcome to join us on game days.

Anyway, that long, rambling intro leads to how I ended up doing a quick post-watch-party interview with SSMC co-owner Kevin Anderson for his brewery’s entry in the Look Back/Look Ahead Series. We hit the three big questions — biggest challenge in 2025, biggest accomplishment, goal for 2026 — that we are focusing on this year.

One of those did require a follow-up question as I did learn that an expansion, of sorts, is now officially official on the brewing side.

First up, that big challenge that Sunday Service faced this year was something rather specific that I had not really considered would affect a brewery like it did.

“Oh, the government shutdown,” Anderson said. “We had some licensing pending (and) the neighborhood we’re in has a lot of government workers. The example I give is the the Indian (Pueblo) Cultural Center. That’s pretty much 100-percent government-funded. So our our Monday through Friday business took an insanely drastic hit with no end in sight. That was really rough. It was pretty shocking, too.”

Luckily for Sunday Service, and millions of Americans, the shutdown ended and things have returned to relative normalcy.

“Previous accomplishments, we’ve actually had a fun year,” Anderson said. “We’ve had a couple events that hit hit some records, with a couple record months (too). That’s kind of from the business side.

“We have our our bigger brewery online. And so, you know, getting that thing wound up and operational was a huge accomplishment. This has been a really good year, so we’re pretty excited.”

Yeah, something we had to keep under wraps for Sunday Service was that secondary brewing location, which will now handle the bulk of their beers. We were waiting on the state small brewer license to go active, which it did in recent weeks. It is a location familiar to craft beer drinkers in the Northeast Heights, a few miles away from Sunday Service on Fourth Street in the lower North Valley.

“So we are now in the space in where Kilt Check was,” Anderson said. “And so, we are really focusing there (just) on brewing. So there may be a little bit to come as far as a taproom or another coffee shop.

“But for now, we’re just focusing on brewing. And there will be more news to come out of that as it as it turns out. But effectively, we’ll have that production brewery going with the current brewery here at Sunday, or at the Fourth Street location, focusing on one-offs and kind of more of (an) experimental lab.”

More beer is always a good thing, and we will be sure to follow up in the new year about this development for the old Bossfight/Kilt Check/Drafty Kilt location. For now, as Anderson said, they are just brewing there, and the taproom out front remains closed to the public.

As for the other goals for the coming year, Anderson said he is keeping his options open, but also does not want to rush into anything too ambitious with the economy still in flux for small businesses.

“2026, let’s see, so this isn’t brewery related, (but) we’ve really made some strides on the coffee side with consistency and sourcing,” he said. “What else have we done? And then, on the (food side) and getting the word out around there, working with more local businesses, getting them in and getting their products in Sunday Service.

“And the biggest, you know, the big pushes really are just kind of keeping going right now. There isn’t a huge objective, you know, as far as like expansion or you know anything along those lines. It’s kind of just now that we’ve found a little bit more of our grooves sticking within that and keeping it going.”

We do appreciate when a brewery owner still feels optimistic about the future, even with all the present uncertainty. A big thanks to Kevin for the interview, and for letting a bunch of soccer fans take over his brewery once a morning almost every weekend for nine months out of the year.

New Mexico Roten will gather for the Bayern match against Stuttgart this Saturday at 7:30 a.m. Join us, won’t you?

Keep supporting local!

— Stoutmeister