With No Beer Flowing Tap Line Cleaning Service Slow

ST. CLOUD -- A very specialized St. Cloud business has been directly impacted by both of the shutdowns of the bars and restaurants this year.

Tom Proell owns Beverage Line Service in St. Cloud. They are a company that goes into the bars and cleans their beer tap lines on a regular basis. The company started in January of 1987 with 20 bars and they've grown to now 150 bars throughout central Minnesota.

Proell says additionally all of those bars now offer way more tap beer options than they used to.

Back 30 years ago if you had six beer lines you had a lot of beer lines, then about 10 years ago with the tap houses like Boulder, 7 West, and Searles they all started putting 40, 50, 60 lines in.  It takes a lot longer now.

Proell says most of his accounts are on a two-week or four-week rotation for cleaning, however, with no beer flowing from the taps for weeks now demand for his services has dried up as well.

He says he's been doing what's called a seasonal cleaning on the tap lines -- similar to what they do at golf courses when they shut down for the season, so when the bars get the go-ahead to open-up again the tap lines will be cleaned and ready to go.

Proell and his wife both work full-time for the company, along with four part-time employees. He works in the mornings before the bars and restaurants open their doors to their customers.

Proell describes this as his slowest year in 33 years.