McMenamins

McMenamins is a chain of 65 brewpubs,breweries, music venues, historic hotels, and theater pubs. The chain is located mostly in the Portland metropolitan area, but has many other locations in Oregon and Washington. According to the Brewers Association, McMenamins is one of the top 50 largest craft breweries in the United States.

History

McMenamins was founded by brothers Mike and Brian McMenamin, who grew up in northeast Portland, Oregon; they trace the beginning of McMenamins to the 1974 opening of Produce Row Café. They created the first post-Prohibition brewpub in Oregon — the Hillsdale Brewery & Public House in southwest Portland — in 1985. That same year McMenamins became the first brewery in the USA to legally use fruit in the brewing of ales (raspberries, for Ruby Ale, one of their standard ales).

Their first theater pub was the Mission Theatre & Pub (1987). The company then entered the broader hospitality business starting in 1990, when they converted a 74-acre (30 ha)-site (that at one time served as the Multnomah County Poor Farm) into Edgefield, which over the years has been expanded to include "vinting, distilling, gardening, lodging, [and] golf". By 1997, food accounted for over half of McMenamins' total sales. The purchase, $4 million remodeling, and 1997 re-opening of the Crystal Ballroom as a dance hall/music venue got McMenamins into the staging of national music acts.