Second Best

A founder keeping the nautical title

That title is not decoration. The language stayed with him because it belonged to the work before the work became public.

His first long station was BrewDog in Fraserburgh, Scotland, where he was co-founder and CEO from 2007 to 2024. The beers that made that period legible outside Scotland included Tokyo and Tactical Nuclear Penguin, names built to travel through a crowded market without losing their edge. In 2024, he moved into the Captain and co-founder role at BrewDog. In 2026, he began Second Best as a separate founder’s work, closer in scale to the counter than to the brewery floor.

A bar program kept close to the hand

Second Best does not publish a detailed beverage program, and the bar should not be inflated into one by description alone. What is clear is the restraint of the place: minimal wine, casual service, an intimate room, and the kind of back bar that lets a drink land without a speech around it. The method here is less about range than pace. A bar can be built by acquisition, one bottle after another, until the shelves become louder than the person behind them. This one reads differently.

At Second Best, the discipline is scale. The room asks the bar team to keep the pass short, the conversation audible, and the drink in proportion to the night.

Brick, wood, low light

The texture is close before the first order arrives. Exposed brick holds the wall, wood paneling warms the edges, and dim lighting lowers the room into a slower register. Brush Park is just outside the traffic of Woodward Avenue, but Second Best does not lean on that address as scenery. It uses the remove. The bar feels tucked in because the materials do not compete for attention.

That matters in a room with conversational noise. The counter can carry a pour, a check-in, a small correction, the bench-side gestures that make a bar feel worked rather than styled. Casual service here does not mean loose service. It means the hand stays visible without becoming the subject. The industrial shell gives the staff enough shadow to work in, and enough warmth for the guest to stay with the glass.

The separate founder’s station

The separation is useful.