Elephant & Co.

We drove past and immediately wanted in, which is more or less the entire basis of this entry, so take it for what it is.

Elephant & Co. is Eastern Market Brewing Co.’s flagship, opened in July 2024 in the Charlotte Street building that Founders Brewing occupied from 2017 until it pulled out of Detroit in 2023. The elephant is a nod to Eastern Market Brewing’s logo; the “& Co.” covers everything else the company runs. Inside there are more than fifty self-serve taps pouring their own beer plus cider and wine, a kitchen turning out Detroit-style pizza, a small market of local goods, and Dooped Donuts — their all-vegan donut and coffee operation, which lives here under the name Dooped on Charlotte and, by the company’s own account, runs with a robotic barista.

The pizza has an origin story worth knowing. The recipes were worked out during the pandemic at Ferndale Project, the same company’s experimental arm, where the brewing team used what they understood about fermentation to build the dough. It sold out daily and they had to stop taking orders. This is that idea with a proper kitchen behind it.

We haven’t been inside — we’ve looked in the windows and added it to the list, and that’s the whole of our claim. But a wall of self-serve taps, square pizza and vegan donuts under one Midtown roof is a hard thing to drive past twice.