Exclusive: an Interview with Patrick Potopsky, Owner of the Brew Garden (Plus, A SECOND MOZGOV COMMERCIAL!)

Occasionally, amazing things happen in this life. One of those things was the Timofey Mozgov ad for the Brew Garden that I wrote 1,700 words on earlier today. However, just that writeup did not fully quench my thirst for knowledge about the 15 seconds of pure magic that is Timofey Mozgov firing a competitor plate aside and declaring that he is hungry for Brew Garden. So I called the Brew Garden and got some initial details from a bartender who was present for the shoot of the ad, and was able to get some information for her. I also left my number for the owner of the Brew Garden, the true mastermind of the ad, in the hopes that I could get the full breakdown of the ad. A few hours later, he called me back. The following is a transcript of what he told me about the ad.

On The Overall Ethos of The Ad:

“When we did the commercial, we thought this is going to go really, really well, or be really odd, but I’ve got a Masters, and I thought quirky works. It’s not going to be perfect, because it’s not his first language, but he was awesome. He had us in stitches. He was only there for an hour, he was there for three hours, and he could not stop eating the food. He was great.”

On The Ad’s Construction: 

“We wanted to pan up slowly, so you could be like ‘who’s throwing this plate? That was the whole idea, that you’re not supposed to know what’s going on the first time, but it gets funnier every time you watch it. So now, when you hear this crash from the other room, you go into the TV room and watch the ad.

On Choosing Mozgov as the pitchman:

“I played college basketball, I like the way he plays, and we were looking for a spokesman. The idea came from watching the Cavs and I thought, the way he plays, wouldn’t it be fun if he swiped the plate and said get that weak stuff out of here – we thought about that guy from Rocky, Ivan Drago, you know, with the ‘I must break you,’ and we said it’s fine if the English isn’t perfect. We wanted to get that feel. It was either him or we’re not doing it. We would have never done a commercial unless it was with him. I mean, it’s perfect.”

On the Jersey Being Backwards: 

“The story behind the backwards jersey is that we wanted the name real big in the front – I’m surprised that you picked up that the jersey was backwards. The plan was to pull the jersey low so it wouldn’t be obvious, but in the take we used, the collar ran up a little bit.” (At this point, I mentioned that basketball fans know that the name on the jersey is on the back, to which he replied, “oh.”)

“For the BG Logo, we ran down to an embroidery place at 9 AM, and they were able to get it done by noon for a 1 PM shoot.”

On the Process of Filming the Ad:

“We did do a lot of takes. We only did 5 takes of the plate, and he nailed the s**t out of the plate takes. The first one, he threw it to the window, and that’s 20 feet away. Originally, the competitor thing was supposed to fly off, but once we saw it fall down, we liked it, and that worked. Like I mentioned, during the takes, he was eating the food, he was eating it so fast — we tried to make enough food for 6 takes. During one take, he almost ate the entire plate, the sandwich, the chips, and everything. And he was like, ‘I’m so hungry, I’m sorry.’ So then we had to cut the production, because we ran out of food.”

“He had difficulty with Rs. He had some trouble with ‘Brew Garden’ and ‘Bartenders,’ but the editor did such a good job with splicing that you can’t even tell. I’m from Ukraine, too, and I know that whenever you come over from Ukraine or Russia the American ‘R’ is really difficult.”

On Where it Goes from Here:

“I had an idea, and I never thought it would blow up the way it has. I had a $20 dollar bet that it would get 50 million blog hits, and it did that in the first hour. We’ve got some outtakes that we’re going to put out over the next couple weeks.”

On The Brew Garden (After some prompting by your editor):

“We just have great food, great people working for us, great place to watch the games, we have one of the largest outdoor patios in Ohio. 30 craft beers on tap, 90% of our menu is scratch. I mean, it’s just great food and great people.”

BONUS MOSGOV: 

Editor’s Note: It keeps getting better.  When we reached out to the Brew Garden, they provided us access to the second (in what is hopefully a long line) of commercials featuring our favorite Russian. His co-star in this is Liz, the 6’1 bartender, who was our original contact at the Brew Garden today. Thanks so much to Timofey and everyone at the Brew Garden for being awesome and generally making our day.