Progress : The Bottom Line
If you’re going to call your bar Progress, then make sure there is some over the original bar – and there in lies the issue with this place. It doesn’t offer anything really stellar over the original place – perhaps the opening hours are the selling point. But even knowing that, I’d rather visit the first store for a few beers and some food in the future. That isn’t saying that this is a bad place, maybe I just visited it at the wrong time on the wrong day as it was dead quiet, with nothing really I wanted to drink, and nothing I really wanted to eat. At least there’s no table charge and free WiFi.
Progress : Background
Progress opened in June 2023 in Kosugi-machi, roughly a 4 to 5 minute walk from Musashi-Kosugi Station. It is a sister venue to Bucket, the craft-beer bar in Shin-Maruko Higashi. The concept is very much casual neighbourhood craft beer rather than a destination-style beer pub. The two venues were deliberately different in scale and character. Bucket was the original, larger operation, while Progress was designed as a much smaller, casual stop-in space.
Progress : Atmosphere & Interior
With this place being designed as something for the locals, and also for a quick beer, Progress is spartan on the inside. There’s a few seats along the window at the front of the bar, with some cushions thankfully placed down on the hard wooden bench. A woe is me for my sore backside and legs. There’s also a wonderfully long wooden table in the middle of the bar, perfect for standing against, leaning on, as you watch the football being played on the solitary TV above the bar. Progress also has some free WiFi for you to connect to – with perhaps one of the best WiFi passwords chosen – as well as not having any table charge.
Progress : Beer & Tap Information
Unlike Bucket, Progress is a tap-only bar, with 10 taps on. One of those taps is for whiskey highballs, the ever-popular drink it seems across Japanese bars and izakayas, and the other nine taps being for craft beer, with both domestic and overseas breweries represented. The beers come in three sizes : half pint (240 ml) from ¥820, 300 ml from ¥990, and then US pints (470 ml) from ¥1,180, so there’s sizes for everyone. Though half of the menu on the day I went was for IPAs, there were plenty of non-IPA choices available, with the Minoh Kokusan Peach Weizen being a go to when I see it.
The beers can also be bought to takeaway, as long as you have a suitable container, with prices being charge per 10 ml servings. There’s no happy hour, nor any beer flights here. With this place being smaller than Bucket, unfortunately, there are no fridges for cans, which seems like a shame really, but given the size of the bar, I can’t really imagine where the fridges would go. I guess that means a trip to Bucket to grab some for the journey home.
Progress : Food & Menu Information
There’s no food here – just some peanuts or some giant corn. That’s it. All of the menus have enough English on them to order – beer names and descriptions – but everything else is in Japanese. One final reminder – this place is cashless so remember to bring a debit card, a credit card, or some other form of electronic money as your cash, no matter how much you have, is not good here.
Progress : Bar Details
- Open : Weekday 16:00 – 23:00 Weekends and Holidays 13:00 – 23:00 (L.O 22:30)
- Closed : –
- Happy Hour : –
- Phone : 044-455-4530
- Homepage (in Japanese) : –
- Social Media : Instagram
