Apparently everyone likes HopCat, and that's just dandy.

You're entitled to my opinion, and in the case of HopCat, I've already inflicted my viewpoint in this June post.

HopCat is coming to Louisville, and it's gonna be yuuuge.

Kevin Gibson asks the important questions and gets the requisite answers. I still think "crack" fries is offensive, and if I venture into HopCat's Louisville hood, I'd rather go to Holy Grale and Cumberland Brews.

But it isn't about me, is it?

Rise of the super bars: Will HopCat affect the craft-beer scene?, by Kevin Gibson (LEO Weekly)

The popularity of craft beer is a trend that continues to skyrocket. At the end of 2015, Kentucky ranked only 38th in the U.S. in number of breweries, but the economic impact of craft beer in the state was $495 million, good for 27th nationwide, according to the Brewers Association.

Louisville has more than a dozen breweries, with more set to open. We also have World of Beer with 50 taps and some 500 bottles, two Craft House locations focusing on regional craft beer, and the well-established Sergio’s World Beers, which carries in the neighborhood of 1,500 bottled and draft beers at any given time.

Craft beer is big business, and big business brings big competition.

Enter HopCat, the growing, Michigan-based chain set to open its latest location, at 1064 Bardstown Road in The Highlands, this Saturday. The restaurant-bar will pour from 132 different taps, with a focus on American craft beer and a few ciders and imports. It advertises itself as having “the state’s largest selection of craft beers on tap.”

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HopCat is coming to Louisville, and it's gonna be yuuuge.

HopCat (no spacing, alas) is a regional chain out of Michigan, one of those "bigger is better" ideas that proliferate in America, where "craft" beer long since has been claimed as a victim of Disneyesque Capitalism, though it cannot be denied that immediately upon planting a location in Broad Ripple (Indianapolis), HopCat started pouring (a) sponsorship money into the Brewers of Indiana Guild, and (b) lots of Indiana-brewed beers.

Duly noted. Duly appreciated. Here's how the Indy branch of HopCat describes itself on Twitter.

130 all-craft drafts, ciders, wines, cocktails + food your Mom would make if she loved beer. Lunch, Dinner, Sunday Brunch.

The forthcoming HopCat location to Louisville has been mildly controversial owing to the familiar spatial and parking issues on Bardstown Road.

Massive Highlands beer bar now has an opening date, by David A. Mann (Louisville Business First)

HopCat – Louisville will open July 30. The big bar, boasting about 11,000 square feet, has been under construction on Bardstown Road in the Highlands, at the former Spindeltop Draperies Inc. property, since last year.

The first 200 people in its doors that day will get a card good for a free order of its "crack fries" every week for a year.

I don't think "crack" is particularly funny as it pertains to fries, or for that matter to much of anything else (remember "crack babies," anyone?) but to each his own. I suppose if a brewery called Special Ed can talk about "'tard tested, 'tard approved," then crack fries is a relatively mild linguistic offense.

Meanwhile, it's bigger and bigger and better and better. One gets the impression that if "cat houses" were legal, the marketing tie-in would be only nanoseconds away.

(The Highlands HopCat) will feature 132 varieties of craft beers on tap, a full menu, three event spaces (including two with private bars) and a rooftop deck with outdoor seating. It will also have more than 200 whiskey selections, including many many Kentucky bourbons, and a small-batch in-house brewery featuring its own creations and collaborations.

Louisville's HopCat will be the chain's ninth, with a tenth outpost to follow in Lexington, late 2016 with the Lexington outpost having opened in the fall of 2015. As Mark Twain once presciently noted, there are lies, damned lies, and press releases.

“We’ve worked hard to make HopCat – Louisville unlike any other,” Mark Sellers, founder and CEO of BarFly Ventures, said in the release. “I believe we’ve created a location that will serve as a hub for Kentucky craft beers and a magnet for local beer lovers as well as those visiting Louisville from around the world.”

The usual dreary boilerplate code language, concocted to gladden the hearts of fetishists who read business news for their jollies.

But HopCat still isn't AB-InBev, so I'd heartily recommend the Kentucky Guild of Brewers prepare an invoice and get out in front of the chain's arrival in Kentucky.

Finally, am I being cynical? Yes, but only when absolutely necessary.

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Muzzling myself: "5 Restaurant Chains Banking on Craft Beer."

Maybe so, but seeing as two of the five are brewpub chains, this article isn't exactly telling us what we'd like to know, and what might actually change the game: When will Ruby Tuesday, Olive Garden and other casuals address their sales decline by getting in the game?

Do their cookie-cutter concepts simply not permit experimentation? Is it better MBA strategy just to spin off new concepts?

What do they do with all those unredeemed gift cards in the checkout lane at WalMart?

5 Restaurant Chains Banking on Craft Beer, by Jason Notte (The Street)

... As of February, visits to casual dining establishments including Olive Garden and Ruby Tuesday are at a six-year low.

People ages 18 through 47 have been shunning such establishments in huge numbers and have dragged down their sales every quarter since 2010, but the numbers get a little better once there's some beer involved. We took a look around the restaurant landscape and found five establishments that are making either the brewpub or taproom model work, with craft beer as a whole benefiting from their efforts.

Conceptual narcolepsy.

It never fails. I read these two seemingly harmless words, and there follows an immediate hair trigger inclination toward propulsive nausea.

Restaurant concept.

But didn't the very notion of "restaurant concept" put the soulless in exurbia? Tiki bars. Honky tonks. Olive Garden. Identical “neighborhood” bistros in 4,234 strip malls nationwide. Texas Roadhouse. Piano bars. The list goes on and on, past Papa John’s assembly line plasticized pizzas and over the horizon to the next PF Chang’s.

Somewhere amid Dante’s infernal rings, restaurant concept mongers occupy torture chambers lined with molten inauthentic intent, right alongside contract brewed Americana beer labels like Pabst.

Isn’t it time for a genuine Portuguese fado "restaurant concept" with port-infused Red Bull cocktails and 34 different bottomless tripe stew recipes? And imported Super Bock (it is neither, though passable ice cold) on tap? There might be deep-fried barnacles; you know, just throw the shells on the floor, and the minimum wage workers will sweep up.

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that my Lisbon "restaurant concept" would work in America, unless we might wangle Jimmy Buffett to sing the haunting Fado in mock calypso, but – damn it all – he’s already licensed for the Cheesburger in Paradise concept and the Landshark Lager megabrewed contract pet shampoo.

Rant over. I'd say it's time for a bleedin' nightcap, but the concept of a nightcap is so very limited … except at our new "concept bar”: Nightcaps – Open all the time because you can’t drink all day and have a nightcap afterward unless you start drinking in the morning … aw, never mind.

Chains: Usually there is an exception to the rule.

My standard reply when asked about "chain" restaurants and bars is to echo my hero, Lew Bryson, and respond: Death to Chains.

However, there was a thread on the Louisville Restaurants Forum asking which chains the purported foodies there regularly visit, and what they ate when visiting, and so I peered deep into my soul for this:

For the most part, I'd rather gnaw on fallen tree bark rather than give my money to multinational chains, but at the same time, I've never denied going to the regional chain Skyline Chili for a five-way, and as many others here have noted, alcohol mixed with White Castle is inevitable a couple times a year. It's the bane of professional drinkers everywhere, and somewhat unavoidable.

That's pretty much it.

I strive to find a local alternative -- coffee boiled in an unrecycled lard can rather than Starbucks,or NA's own locally-owned Honey Creme rather than Krispy Kreme -- and stick with it. Admittedly, integrity is harder while traveling the purposefully barren Interstates, and in airports and sports venues, because the latter are permitted to use spaces constructed with public money to enforce chain monopolies, which frankly sickens me.

But there it is.