Does Headlands Brewing have the right recipe to revive a storied Cal gathering place?

Headlands Brewing is betting big on trivia nights, drag bingo and craft beer to revive what used to be the Bear’s Lair at UC Berkeley.

Headlands, originally founded in 2013 in Mill Valley as a roaming “gypsy brewery,” has been expanding its presence in the East Bay, with locations in Lafayette and Walnut Creek. In 2024, it reopened West Berkeley’s beloved Westbrae Biergarten near the Ohlone Greenway.

Headlands ON CAMPUS

2465 Bancroft Way, Berkeley

Open Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday 12-10 p.m; Fridays and Saturday 12-11 p.m.

Its fourth location, just steps away from Sproul Plaza, has been in a soft opening stage since September. An invite-only ribbon cutting is planned for Thursday, Oct. 23, but public grand opening events include a watch party for the Cal vs. Virginia Tech football game on Friday, Oct. 24 (attendees who purchase a beer pint will receive a Cal-branded glass) and a celebration Saturday, Oct. 25 with live music and opening hours extended to 12 a.m., Headlands spokesperson Jonathan Rosales wrote in an email.

In addition to a selection of twenty cold taps, menu highlights include pretzels served with your choice of IPA mustard or beer cheese, seasoned French fries, chicharrones seasoned with tamarind and pasilla chiles, and carnitas tacos. Burgers, sandwiches and salads are also available, and wine and cocktails — including a few with fun names like “Oski’s Eyeball” and “Cardinal Sin” — are $10. Current non-alcoholic menu options include sparkling CBD water, lemonade and soda. (Mocktails are in the works, according to Rosales.)

“We’re not the Bears Lair, [and] we’re not trying to be the Bears Lair,” Headlands CEO Austin Sharp said, referring to the former storied Cal sports bar that once drew the likes of Aaron Rodgers and Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, but has struggled in recent years.

A handful of pub concepts had previously tried and failed to sustain themselves in the current space, which is overseen by the Associated Students of the University of California, the UC Berkeley student government.

Demo Dovolos and Sam Economou, fans of the Minnesota Golden Gophers, flew in from Minneapolis to attend the football game on Sept. 13, 2025. They stopped by Headlands on Campus for a drink and a game of Jenga. Credit: Iris Kwok for East Bay Nosh Credit: Iris Kwok for East Bay Nosh

“The legacy of the Bear’s Lair goes back decades, but the recent years have definitely been a bit challenging,” Sharp said. “So there is a little bit of baggage for us to sort of overcome.”

The history of Bear’s Lair can be roughly split into two periods: before and after modernization. The original location started as a cozy coffee shop in the basement of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Student Union in the ’60s and turned into the go-to campus pub — and a convenient location to celebrate Cal football victories on the way back to the Downtown Berkeley BART station — after it acquired a beer license in the ’70s.

In 2015, after a seismic retrofit of the student union displaced the original sports bar, a new version of the Bear’s Lair reopened on the ground floor of Eshelman Hall under new ownership and with a higher-end concept.

John King, who was at the time the San Francisco Chronicle’s urban design critic, described it as “updated” with an eye to graduate students and older Zellerbach concertgoers, as well as students with fake IDs.” Others thought it looked sterile.

In typical UC Berkeley fashion, some students voiced their discontent by circulating a petition bemoaning the loss of beer pitchers and the “beat the clock” tradition — in which the price of a $6 pitcher of beer would, starting at 5 p.m., increase by the hour until 9 p.m., The Daily Californian, the student-run newspaper, reported at the time.

Headlands hired a recent Cal grad as community engagement manage and plans to hold regular events to attract customers including UC Berkeley students. Credit: Headlands Brewing

The initial student uproar proved to be a harbinger of the struggles to come for the modernized Bear’s Lair, which has cycled through five different owners since 2015 with small name tweaks. (When it shut down earlier this year, it went by the name Bear’s Lair Tavern.) Headlands is the sixth, and has opted to scrap the Bear’s Lair brand entirely, calling itself Headlands on Campus.

Earlier this spring, there had been talks of whether the Berkeley Student Food Collective, a student-run food co-op that sells affordable produce, could move into the space — a proposal that Berkeley City Councilmember Cecilia Lunaparra, a recent UC Berkeley alumna, had endorsed. The UC Berkeley student government ultimately voted to have Headlands take over the space.

Cal roots

Headlands sought to open a location at UC Berkeley in particular because many of its core team members have connections to the school — including alumni, fans, even a former All-American rugby player, Sharp said. (Plus, Headlands’ chef de cuisine and director of design met in the early aughts while working at the Bear’s Lair, Sharp added.)

Sharp said he believes Berkeley residents will be more inclined to visit a brewery that’s rooted in its community, noting that Headlands, which participates in 1% for the Planet, has donated $160,000 since 2022 to environmental causes, including some local to Berkeley, like the Alameda County Community Food Bank, Save the Bay and Berkeley Humane.

It’s also why Headlands tapped Mimi Hoang, a recent Cal graduate and first-generation college student, to be its first community engagement manager and be the “face of the brand” on campus.

Kids play on a new foosball table at Headlands on Campus. Credit: Iris Kwok for East Bay Nosh Credit: Iris Kwok for East Bay Nosh

Hoang said her experience as a transfer student — UC Berkeley’s student clubs are notorious for being selective, and few clubs recruit transfer students — motivated her to apply for the job, which entails meeting with mostly student organizations and organizing events.

“It was really hard for me to find a community… because of how competitive the culture is here at Berkeley,” Hoang said. “It really made me think like there are probably so many other students like me.”

Hoang is hopeful that events like sip and paints, 2000s theme nights and dances can turn the new brewery into a “second home” students will want to revisit even after they graduate.

She also envisions Headlands partnering with biology and chemistry student organizations to teach students homebrewing. Another idea in the works: letting clubs use the space to host events for free in exchange for social media promotion or bringing in a certain number of guests.

An ‘earthy’ facelift

Sharp admits Headlands will have to be creative and adaptable to find success where several others have floundered.

It’s a challenge he’s up for. “[With] the other three venues, we just opened our doors and we were kind of packed on day one,” Sharp said, whereas in the campus location, “people need to find us and it’s not necessarily that we’ve got tons and tons of people walking past every single day.”

One problem his team hopes to address soon with UC Berkeley is the tinted windows facing Bancroft Way, which have the unintended consequence of making the space look closed even when the lights are on. As a stopgap measure, the brewery has been using A-frame signs and balloon towers to make it clear that it’s open for business.

Beyond events, Headlands has made some tweaks to the space to give the space a more “earthy vibe,” Sharp said, including moving in a custom table made from reclaimed wood from the old California Memorial Stadium. The once-bare concrete patio has been carpeted in turf and now features large teal umbrellas for shade, patio heaters and fire pits.

The goal, Sharp said, was to make it feel “like you’re just sort of sitting in somebody’s backyard.”

Headland Brewing revamped the former Bear’s Lair space, but nods to Cal sports remain. Credit: Headlands Brewing

Sharp insists the new location isn’t meant to be a sports bar, though a few Cal football-themed easter eggs are scattered — including a few helmets on the window ledges. Inside the gender-neutral bathroom is a yellow neon sign that reads “Oh, we had a little party down in Newport…” — Cal fans will recognize it as a nod to the opening lyrics of the “California Drinking Song,” a traditional Cal marching band song.

It’s too soon to say whether the sixth time will be the charm, but on a mid-September Saturday afternoon, several hours before a home football game would kick off, the signs were promising. There were so many customers that the bouncer initially turned this reporter away.

Headlands staff had rolled out large outdoor TVs on patio so that Cal fans — including a few regulars of the basement Bear’s Lair — could watch the game outdoors. Some Minnesota Golden Gophers football fans wearing maroon and gold stopped by to pregame on their way to the stadium. As their parents chatted, groups of kids entertained themselves with the gleaming foosball table and freshly polished shuffleboard.

Does Headlands Brewing have the right recipe to revive a storied Cal gathering place?

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