Oakwell Bets on Beer Spas as Breweries Make Room for Saunas

Oakwell Beer Spa has signed its first franchise agreement, taking its combination of private infrared saunas, botanical baths and a craft-beer taproom to Las Vegas. Husband-and-wife franchisees Andrew and Gina Lanzino are looking for a site, with the Arts District their focus. The September 9 announcement names the partners, not an opening date.

It puts a franchise structure around something breweries and sauna operators have been approaching from opposite directions. In Minneapolis, Pryes Brewing has turned its patio into a winter sauna village. In Boulder, Portal° Thermaculture began on Sanitas Brewing’s back patio before growing into a social-sauna business with an alcohol-free policy.

The taproom has the audience, the place to sit and the habit of getting people out of the house. Sauna gives those people something else to buy. Oakwell is betting that the whole evening can be built that way from the start.

Beer is losing volume. The night out still has customers.

The Brewers Association estimates that U.S. craft-beer volume fell 4% in the first half of 2026. But its consumer survey also found that craft drinkers visited breweries an average of 5.5 times in the past year, up from 5.1 in 2025. Taprooms were its best-performing brewery type by volume change. Beer sales and the appetite to visit a brewery aren’t moving in lockstep.

Meanwhile, Gallup’s July 2026 poll found that 54% of U.S. adults said they drink alcohol, holding at the record low reached in 2025. That compares with 62% in 2023. Seventeen percent said they had substituted nonalcoholic drinks for alcohol.

Neither survey measures demand for beer spas. Together, they describe the commercial problem these businesses address: how to earn a visit, and a worthwhile check, when another pint isn’t a reliable growth plan. Sauna competes for the same evening and the same friends. As social-sauna operators courting the nightlife crowd have already demonstrated, alcohol doesn’t have to be the admission ticket.

Oakwell sells the suite. The taproom extends the visit.

Jessica and Damien Zouaoui opened Oakwell’s first Denver location in 2021. Today the company operates in Denver and Highlands Ranch, while its location page lists Las Vegas as coming soon. Las Vegas would be its first location outside Colorado.

The core booking is 90 minutes in a private suite with an infrared sauna, a rain shower and a hydrotherapy tub. The beer bath contains hops, barley and botanicals, not a tubful of beer. There is no alcohol or brewer’s yeast in the bathwater. Guests can also choose a wine-inspired botanical soak.

That distinction matters for the sauna trade. Oakwell’s infrared room, private bath and shower are a different product from a communal, stone-heated sauna and cold-plunge circuit. The couple or pair of friends buys privacy and a timed room reservation; meeting strangers is optional.

Outside the suite, the self-pour taproom welcomes visitors without spa bookings. It rotates Colorado brewery partners, sells beverages by the ounce and offers wine, cider and nonalcoholic choices alongside beer. Food is light: charcuterie and packaged snacks rather than a full meal service.

There’s a beer made for the concept, too. Spice Trade Brewing’s Spa Sidekick is a cucumber-and-lemon gose developed with Oakwell. A brewery gets a new place to introduce its beer; the spa gets a product tied to the visit, rather than an interchangeable tap list.

Oakwell’s FAQ says guests typically stay 2½ to 3 hours. A 90-minute room booking can therefore support a longer hospitality visit, with the lounge absorbing time before and after the suite. For a designer, that makes lounge seating, changing space and the route between wet rooms and the taproom part of the revenue plan.

A $300 ticket, without a massage-therapist roster

Oakwell’s franchise site lists an average ticket near $300 and a total initial investment of $1,285,700 to $2,537,300. It asks candidates for at least $400,000 in liquid capital and $1 million in net worth. Those are company figures, not independently audited returns.

The staffing proposition is specific: no licensed service providers are required for its model. The package combines self-directed amenities, hospitality attendants and optional massage chairs. It doesn’t depend on selling a therapist’s available hour. Packaged food also limits kitchen infrastructure.

That changes where the work sits. Staff still have to welcome guests, manage beverage service, clean suites and prepare the next reservation. Oakwell says its tubs are drained, disinfected and refilled after each use. Taking massage labor out of the schedule puts more weight on reliable room turnaround.

The franchise site doesn’t publish royalty rates in its FAQ, and a $300 ticket says nothing by itself about operating profit. Utilities, cleaning labor, occupancy, rent and franchise charges still have to fit beneath it. The capital range is a useful corrective to the idea that a beer spa is simply a taproom with a sauna in the back.

The gas meter nearly spoiled the opening

In an August 25 interview on From The Ground Up Show, the founders described testing their hot-water system two weeks before opening. Three tankless heaters had been installed to serve four tubs. When they started filling, the heaters repeatedly shut down with insufficient-gas errors.

According to their account, the building’s gas meter was too small for the new system, even though the interior gas piping had been enlarged. They eventually secured a larger meter in time to open. New equipment inside the building hadn’t solved the restriction outside it.

The founders described tubs of roughly 200 gallons and 27 fills a day. At those stated volumes, that’s about 5,400 gallons of bathwater a day, before showers or cleaning. This is arithmetic from their operating example, not a metered consumption figure for every Oakwell site.

A private-bath model therefore puts a different demand on a building from a shared plunge pool. The drain-and-refill cycle has to fit between appointments. Water supply, drainage and hot-water recovery need to handle the booking schedule, including simultaneous resets. A daily water allowance alone won’t tell a contractor whether the next guests can get into their rooms on time.

For an operator touring a second-generation retail space, the practical lesson is to price the utility service and room-reset sequence before pricing finishes. Ask the engineer and utility to check the full connected load, meter capacity and upgrade lead time. A small footprint can still require substantial infrastructure.

In Minneapolis, the brewery supplies the address

Pryes Brewing’s partnership with Superior Saunas shows the reverse arrangement: put the heat where the taproom crowd already goes.

Its 2025–26 Winter Sauna Village, advertised for November 14 through March 28, offered private rentals and community sessions on the Minneapolis brewery’s patio. The published menu included a 20-person wood-fired sauna at $600 for two hours, six-to-eight-person rooms at $325 and a four-to-six-person barrel at $250, before taxes and booking fees. Community Steam was listed at $26.

These are last winter’s advertised prices, not a booking announcement for the coming season. They show a useful range of things to sell: the whole sauna to one group, individual places in a shared session, or a programmed gathering. Those products use the same site in different ways.

The brewery supplied food and drinks, including hop water, with changing facilities and a bonfire lounge supporting the outdoor visit. Seasonal heat made the patio a place to book in winter. It also gave a sauna operator access to an established hospitality business without having to create an entire destination alone.

The connection went as far as the beer itself. Bring Me The News reported in November 2024 that Pryes launched Kallio, a limited-run pilsner brewed with Nordic yeast and named after the Helsinki neighborhood, alongside nonalcoholic hop water for the sauna season.

A seasonal partnership can test bookings before either party takes on a permanent bathhouse. The costs and responsibilities still need a home: staffing, utilities, cleaning, weather closures, insurance and the division of sauna receipts versus food-and-drink sales. Neither operator publishes the partnership’s revenue split or profitability.

Portal started at a brewery, then built an alcohol-free club

Portal° Thermaculture is the clearest reason to look beyond the beer-spa label. Will Drescher and Rory MacMurdo launched its Boulder pop-up on Sanitas Brewing’s back patio in January 2024. By March, Westword was reporting on the brewery subletting patio space to a business with saunas, cold plunges and changing facilities.

The brewery site solved a real-estate problem. Drescher told Boulder Weekly in August 2024 that finding a landlord who understood the concept had been difficult. Sanitas owner Mike Memsic had taken an interest in sauna and cold plunge and was receptive. Portal could start operating while the founders worked toward a permanent location.

That origin belongs in the same conversation as Oakwell, but the beverage policies diverge. Portal’s current FAQ prohibits substances and intoxicated guests. A brewery helped provide the first address for a club whose social offering doesn’t depend on alcohol.

Its current website lists Denver, Minneapolis and Bozeman, with Austin marked opening soon. SaunaNews has previously covered Portal’s move from pop-ups toward permanent clubs. The brewery patio was a starting point, not the limit of the business.

In a March 2026 Rooster interview, Drescher put the ambition plainly: “People need a dive bar that doesn’t serve alcohol.” The familiar part is having somewhere to go, return to and recognize people. Heat and cold supply the shared activity.

Three businesses, three things to measure

For the trade, these examples are more useful kept distinct:

• Oakwell sells a private appointment. Measure revenue per occupied suite hour, reset time and water-and-energy cost per booking. The taproom can extend spending beyond the room reservation.
• Pryes hosts a seasonal sauna operation. Measure bookings and contribution after partner payments, plus the food-and-beverage sales associated with those visits. A busy patio photograph won’t establish either party’s margin.
• Portal sells a recurring social-sauna habit. Measure return visits, member retention and crowding at peak hours. Its brewery origin shows that a hospitality partner can help launch a business that later stands on its own.

Those measures also keep the build honest. A private-suite layout needs enough time and capacity to reset a wet room. A seasonal patio needs a workable changing-and-cooling route in bad weather. A membership club has to remain pleasant when regulars arrive at the same time after work.

The alcohol policy is part of the product

Oakwell permits eligible guests to bring taproom beverages into suites. Pryes’ published village rules allow beer in the sauna. Portal prohibits substances. These are materially different operating decisions, not interchangeable versions of a wellness night out.

Hospitality positioning doesn’t establish safety. The CDC advises against alcohol before or during hot-tub use. Its aquatic-code scientific annex discusses alcohol-related fainting, falls and drowning risks. Water on the table doesn’t make those risks disappear.

For an operator, the policy affects staff training, service limits and supervision of private rooms as much as the drinks menu. A taproom license also doesn’t answer how a bathing facility will be classified locally, an issue already familiar from the different regulatory treatment of cold plunges. Establish both routes with the relevant authorities before committing to a site.

Oakwell’s Las Vegas deal will test whether its Colorado mix travels. Pryes has shown what a seasonal partnership can put on a brewery patio. Portal has shown that the brewery can be the incubator for an alcohol-free alternative.

The opportunity for sauna businesses is access to an existing social occasion, with customers who already make time for it. The test is whether paid heat, repeat visits and the cost of running the room can support the business after the novelty wears off. At Oakwell, that question reaches all the way back to the gas meter.