How a cobbled-together ‘Franken-brewery’ became a craft-beer juggernaut

UPDATE: The launch of Moon Dog Wild West has been delayed, with a revised opening date to be confirmed.

Brothers Josh and Jake Uljans and their school mate Karl van Buuren were hardly shooting for the moon when they launched what Josh tells Good Food was “one of Australia’s smallest and shittiest breweries” in an Abbotsford warehouse in 2010.

They were nothing more than avid home-brewers. “We had absolutely no money, no transferrable expertise, no industry experience,” Uljans says. “We learned how to weld, we bought old dairy equipment off eBay, and we pieced it together into this ... Franken-brewery.” For Josh and Karl, it was literally home, too; they lived out back for some 18 months.

There was plenty they didn’t have. But what did they have? “Youthful enthusiasm!” says Josh Uljans, through a cheeky grin. It’s what got them started but also what’s kept them going.

Against the odds, Moon Dog has become one of the country’s most popular – and prosperous – indie craft breweries. Its beers and seltzers continue to proliferate through Melbourne pubs – and beyond – with pace: its products are stocked at around 550 venues across Victoria.

In an industry currently grappling with closures country-wide, perhaps Moon Dog’s longevity is rooted in its ability to carve out a niche with wild and wacky venues.

You can see this strategy perfectly in action at their third venue, Moon Dog Wild West, opening this week. It has transformed a quintessentially Melbourne site: the old Franco Cozzo HQ in Footscray.

For half a century, the three-storey building was a showroom for the Italian-Australian Cozzo – Melbourne’s most beloved furniture salesman – who ascended to cult-figure status with his ’80s TV ads, his pronunciation of “Footiscray”, and, of course, his baroque wares.

The iconic nature of the location was a lure for Moon Dog. And it lives on, at least in part, as an ode to Cozzo, who passed away last year, at age 88. A mural of the ever-charismatic man remains untouched on the outside, as does the original signage.

Inside, however, it’s been flipped into a beer-fuelled fun park – complete with a mechanical bull, themed food and drinks, and an old western township of faux facades.

The 2024 pipeline is full to the brim. Come winter, Moon Dog will make its mark on Docklands, opening the cleverly christened Doglands – with room for 1500-odd punters – on the concourse outside Marvel Stadium.

At the base of Home Docklands, a new residential development made up of two skyscrapers, Doglands will join a burgeoning food and drinks precinct in and around the stadium.

“To have the opportunity to build something of this scale, in such a central location, is pretty extraordinary,” says Uljans.

As well as a 100-seat all-day diner and bar, expect a cavernous space that will light up on game days, decked out with winding timber walkways, a plethora of palm trees and a big mezzanine.

Beyond that, Moon Dog has plans for a sea change, bringing its frothies to Frankston with a 2100-square-metre, 800-person foreshore venue right on the Nepean Highway.

The suburb “is developing at a rate of knots”, says Uljans. “We don’t have much of a presence in the south-east ... And there are a lot of people [there] that we think would probably love what we do.”

The guys can barely believe where they’ve ended up. “It’s complete lunacy ... I love it!” says Uljans. “Nothing was ever this clearly defined business plan [so] it’s very entertaining to be on this journey. I’m having a grouse time.”

The early, experimental days

Australia’s craft-beer boom was beginning – but hadn’t fully blasted off – when Moon Dog got started 14 years ago. The driving force behind it was a desire to brew exciting, experimental beers the guys weren’t seeing much of in Oz at the time.

“The breweries that were out there were Little Creatures, Mountain Goat, Bridge Road – all making fantastic beers – but we wanted to bring a different approach,” says Uljans.

“We made so many beers!” he says of the early days. “Lots of barrel-aged or wild-fermented, or really big, high-ABV stouts and barley wines, using fruits and spices, and hybridised styles, which are kind of commonplace these days.” They weren’t back then.

“We probably make somewhere around 100 times more beer and seltzer per year now than we did back in 2010.”

Karl van Buuren

Trial and error led the guys to release a new beer every few weeks, bottling it and selling it through Melbourne’s specialty craft-beer shops. Gradually, their playfully named, branded and made brews (like a super smoky, super boozy barrel-aged stout called Black Lung) begun to develop a reputation in the local beer sphere.

In 2014, four years in, opening a brewpub at the Abbotsford warehouse – which remains the Moon Dog OG – was a real turning point, Uljans says. “It gave us the opportunity to talk to our customers face-to-face and get to understand what they like.”

Things snowballed from there, with the guys taking over one factory after another on Duke Street in Abbotsford; they kicked off at number 17, then added 19, then 21, which gave them twice as much space.

“After the first summer brewing with unconstrained capacity, we realised we were going to top that out reasonably quickly,” says Uljans.

Venues zanier than you could imagine

Upping production capacity was what led the guys to open their second venue, Moon Dog World, in 2019, at a 12,000-square-metre site on Chifley Road in Preston. But it ended up unlocking a whole new (ahem) world for the hospitality side of the business. “We didn’t have any plans for it to be on the scale we ended up with,” Uljans says.

It’s as if the team sat around spitballing harebrained ideas – lagoon, waterfall, tiki bar! – but then actually built them. Josh says that isn’t too far from the truth.

There’s nothing cookie-cutter about Moon Dog’s brewpubs, which are powered by that youthful enthusiasm and defined by ambition, adventure and a healthy dose of kitsch.

“One of the things we realised was so unique about [Moon Dog World] ... is that you could come there multiple times and experience the venue completely differently,” says Karl van Buuren.

It’s what they’ve tried to emulate in Footscray: nailing the novelty that will draw the cowboy-curious from all over Melbourne, while making sure it serves the local community in a meaningful way that keeps them coming back for more.

Party at the front, business at the back

Fun and free-formity undeniably run rampant at Moon Dog’s venues. “[But] there’s a really rock-solid business – and team – that’s sitting behind it all,” says Uljans.

Van Buuren adds: “There are different arms to it that are mutually reinforcing and supporting each other.”

For one, wholesale “is a lot bigger than our hospitality side”, says van Buuren – the former bringing in the cash to make the latter a reality, sometimes on a stupendous scale.

Longstanding core beers – like the easy-drinking Old Mate pale ale or crisp German-style lager – seem to be at every second pub. And the 2020 launch of fruity, boozy Fizzer seltzers (both in canned and post-mix form) further diversified the Moon Dog offering.

“We probably make somewhere around 100 times more beer and seltzer per year now than we did back in 2010,” says van Buuren.

It’s a heartening success story at such a tough time for Australia’s craft-beer industry, with dozens of independent brewers across the country forced to close in the past 12 months, and countless others struggling with increasing financial pressures.