Tapped will reopen as Tapped Social House in late March in Maplewood

Almost a year after closing, Tapped is set to reopen under new ownership and a new name – Tapped Social House – by the end of March at 7278 Manchester Road in Maplewood. The restaurant has a new name and a new owner, Reggie Trankle, but will retain its wood-fired pizza and self-pour beer concept, with a few new additions to the menu.  

Like its forerunner, Tapped Social House will still offer 40 self-pour beer taps, with a single pour measuring from as little as 1 ounce and up. The restaurant will also sell 32-ounce and 64-ounce growlers of beer. Whereas Tapped used the remaining eight self-pour taps for wine, Trankle said the new-look restaurant will offer self-pour cocktails, also available in 1-ounce pours and upward. “Sangrias, margaritas, and there are going to be housemade drinks, they’re not pre-packaged or anything like that,” Trankle said. “We’ll be rotating depending on the season; there will be some staples.”

“General speaking, the concept isn’t changing,” Trankle said. “It’s going to be focused on craft beers that you get to do self-pour, sample and taste those beers that you might not get at the bar down the street.” However, with the new cocktails, and a refreshed menu, customers will have plenty of new items to try at Tapped Social House.  

The menu will include 13 pizzas, as well as a build-your-own option. Longtime Tapped customers will recognize some of the pizzas, but Trankle has also added a number of new pizzas, including the Voodoo pizza (cheese blend, chicken, Andouille, peppers, onions and a spicy Cajun cream sauce) and the Pistachio Pie (thin-sliced red onion, Parmigiano Reggiano, rosemary olive oil base and crushed pistachios). “That one I think is going to be really fun,” Trankle said of the Voodoo pizza. “I like the pizzas that you just wouldn’t find necessarily on a menu elsewhere.”

The menu also includes appetizers like pretzel bites, sun-dried tomato bruschetta and cheese curds. Some of those are new, like the stuffed jumbo tater tots with your choice of dip – although Trankle notes that the house beer cheese is a popular item carried over from the tenure of previous owners Lindsay and Ryan Reel. Similarly, the Social Bowls section of the menu includes a combination of new salads and standards from the original Tapped menu. 

Trankle said he already has plans to work with local bakeries on a “cupcakes and cocktails” offering for Sunday lunchtimes. He also wants to enhance the restaurant’s online ordering platform to handle more orders for delivery and pickup. Plans are also afoot to ramp up Tapped Social House’s presence at events, making use of the restaurant’s wood-fired pizza trailer. “I’m currently in the process of hiring a team to run that for catering events, and to do 30 to 32 of the festivals and art fairs and other things like that around St. Louis,” Trankle said. 

Tapped Social House won’t feature the Charity of the Week model that its predecessor followed, where all tips were donated to a different charity each week. Under the new restaurant’s business model, tips will supplement employee wages, but Trankle said he is keen to work with charities to help them host events or raise funds in other ways.   

A veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, Trankle said finding his way into owning a restaurant is fitting path for someone with his resume. “They started the Marine Corps with 12 marines, and that whole branch of service was conceived in a bar, Tun Tavern, in Pennsylvania,” he said. “So it’s nice for a marine to get back to the bar scene, because inevitably it’s somewhere in our DNA.” 

Trankle is waiting for the state and county to approve Tapped Social House’s liquor licenses but, all things going well, he is aiming for a March 25 launch. Follow Tapped Social House on Facebook for updates on the opening.