Aaron Templin Cultivates Community Through Front Street Taproom, The Cellar Comedy Club, And Risk

What does it take to build a bar from a vacation daydream into a ten-year Fargo institution? Aaron Templin, proprietor of Front Street Tap Room and Cellar Comedy Club at 614 Main Avenue, sits down with Conrad Fargo to unpack exactly that. Aaron's path runs from an accounting degree at Concordia College to managing 60 part-time employees at the Scheels Arena by his mid-twenties, before quitting, taking a trip to St. Petersburg, Florida with then-wife Lindsay, and returning with a bar concept inspired by a local-only Florida tap room. Back in Fargo, Aaron navigated the city's restrictive beer and wine license cap and eventually landed in the former One World Boutique space on Main Avenue, financed by Bell Bank after pitching nearly a dozen lenders. Front Street opened in October 2016 with a strictly Minnesota and North Dakota tap list. By March 2018, opportunistic buys at closing-venue auctions from places like Ushers helped Aaron furnish and launch the Cellar Comedy Club downstairs on the cheap. Today the Cellar drives most of the revenue through private events and live comedy. The conversation also covers the Peter Principle, what it actually means to step back from your own business, a brief detour into industrial hemp processing in Wahpeton, and why community may be the thing Fargo needs most right now.