SEPTEMBER 2008: BIZ LIFE, TACTICS
BEYOND BEER
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McMenamins is an Oregon-style empire — getting big but
still working hard to be quaint. With more than 2,000
employees, last year the company reached $100 million in gross
revenue, a major milestone for a business that was started by
two brothers who just wanted to open a cozy pub.
“That’s just a number,” owner Brian McMenamin
says, trying to downplay the significance. There never was a
steadfast strategy to get where they are, only the humble goal
to offer up a good beer. “It’s more organic, not
really planned out,” he says.
How many locations are there now? “I am not even
sure,” he says. For the record, there are 55.
Despite the success, like many businesses McMenamins is feeling
the squeeze of a struggling economy and rising commodity prices
such as hops for brewing beer. “We raised prices, we had
to,” McMenamin says. “Hopefully it’s just a
blip on the radar.”
Known for helping pioneer the craft beer and brewpub craze in
the Pacific Northwest, McMenamins has evolved into a stew of
brewpubs, restaurants, entertainment venues and
restored-buildings-turned-hotels. As the business grows larger
another challenge besides the economy is to maintain the image
of being small, while also being original with each new
venture.
McMenamin smiles when he reflects on the days in 1980 when he
was 21 and already the owner of a bar. Then in 1983, he and his
older brother, Mike, opened the Barley Mill in Portland. The
business expanded from beer making and brewpubs when the
brothers bought the Edgefield Manor in 1990, a historic
building on 74 acres in the Columbia River Gorge. It was
restored into a one-stop shop for lodging, movies and live
entertainment, golf, and even winemaking. They liked the
“home-like” atmosphere of it.
“It was a natural progression for us,” he says. It
was also accidental, because they only started buying old
buildings because the brothers saw them as cheaper than newer
ones. “We kind of stumbled into the history thing,”
he says.
Creative adaptation has helped keep the company moving forward
and distinguishing it from the increasing number of craft
brewers in the region adopting its brew-pub model.
That adaption includes how McMenamins has recreated itself as a
historic building rescuer by buying up old buildings and
transforming them into a restaurant or hotel, or both.
“We are just caretakers,” Brian says. “It has
built-in history.” As this aspect of the business has
grown, food sales and lodging now make up the core of their
revenue, not beer.
Considering the portfolio of McMenamins locations throughout
the Portland-metro area, Brian admits the real-estate bust and
economic downturn has hit the business, maybe delaying a
project or two, but he says it without apparent worry. Looking
to the future instead, he sees other business opportunities.
Eventually he wants to have a location in California. He also
wants to expand into the baking business.
“We are nervous about being in a box,” McMenamin
says. “We fight that every
day.”
JASON SHUFFLER
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