Space Place House

Vice President of the McMenamins chain in Portland, Oregon

Beermeister and Preservationist

Brian McMenamin, Vice-President

Visnja Clayton’s photo of Brian taken by permission at the time of the interview

About Visnja:  I am not much of a beer drinker, more of a wine and vodka person.  But through getting to know the founders and brewmasters behind these Portland breweries I began a love affair with the whole process as well as the product they created.

I wanted to understand the type of person behind a brewery and I wanted to know what it takes to stay on top, or at least, in the running.  I interviewed a dozen founders/ceo’s/brewmasters.  I sat down with each of them, face to face for about an hour and asked a series of questions I felt were pertinent to their industry and to their involvement in it. I interviewed Kurt Widmer, one of the founders of Widmer Brothers Brewing, Brian McMenamin of the Mcmenamins  chain, the founder of hair of the Dog, Alan Sprints, also John Balfe and Scott Barnum, the CEO of Pyramid Breweries and Mactarnahan, Karl Ockert, the Brewmaster and founder of Bridgeport Brewing, Ron Gansberg the founder of the Racoon Lodge and Mike De Kalb the founder and owner of the Laurelwood Brewing Co.  and a few others.  I have found them to be incredibly intelligent, kind, humble and witty.  It is exhilarating talking to people who truly love what they do.

4/4/07

Interview with Brian at the Market St. Pub downtown Portland.

What direction do you think the Beer Craft industry is going?

“Lately it seems like it’s growing again at a pretty good rate.  It was flat for a while there and it had been growing in double digits for a long time.  In the beginning days, in 1985, the city had 3 or 4 breweries now I don’t even know how many there are.  I think every pub should have a brewery if they could.  We are seeing the industry mature a lot.  The bigger guys are getting bought out and merging but I think there is still plenty of opportunity for the little guy to make this niche.   

Do people approach you asking advice on how to do it?

We get tons of phone calls, which is great but there is not enough time to sit down with every one of them, although you want to, you can’t do that.  You don’t have a chance to retrospect very often because you’re doing stuff all the time. This gives you a chance to think about what and why you’re doing something.

I think it’s healthy to combine brewing and the pub atmosphere, you create your own atmosphere.  We make our own wine too, we grow a lot of our own herbs for the kitchens.  We also grow hops just for fun not for real usage.  

What do you think is the style trend for American micro breweries?

Northwest they like hoppy beer but then in general the mass produced beer has appeal to a lot of people.  As a small guy we have the opportunity to do all kinds of beers. 

We have 23 breweries, one for each two pubs, more or less, different water sources, different age of hops, each brewer tinkers a little bit with the grain, they each like their own signatures on it.  So the beers are all a little bit different in each one of the breweries.

Budweiser would shriek at that because they want their beers to taste the same the world over.  If people don’t like a beer we’ll brew another one.  We are also marketing to a general public but more in our own town, and they can drink any beer they like there, not just ours. Our beer is always associated with food. We are more restaurants than pubs now.  Our food sales used to be 25% or 30% and now they are 65%.  

How do the American craft brewers techniques compare to those of Europe?

I think the basics are there.  People thought we were nutty to have a fruit beer, our Ruby was the first one in Oregon but they’ve been doing it in Europe for a long time. 

Do you see a big difference in beer styles in Europe as opposed to the United States?

“25 years ago Budweiser was not available in Europe, now it is everywhere”

Would you open a pub in Europe?

We’re kind of homebodies.  We do everything ourselves.  We don’t have a team that goes out and opens new places.  Our furtherest outpost I probably 3 hours from ground zero.  It is hard to manage place the farther out it is.  

Have you thought about opening more restaurants in the Portland area?

Yes, we’re always looking.  We just opened one on Killingsworth, the Chapel.

On the website:CHAPEL PUB
” We bet you’ll make a vow to return again and again.“

We’ve renovated the beautiful and historic Little Chapel of the Chimes (ca. 1932) to become a new community gathering spot for everyone, young and old alike! The main floor houses a family-friendly neighborhood pub with seating for 100 people, along with a picturesque outdoor patio, while the second floor serves as McMenamins company headquarters. While you’re here, check out the beautiful ironwork throughout the property, fashioned by talented craftsman O.B. Dawson in the early 1930s. Look familiar? Perhaps because Dawson’s work is also showcased at Timberline Lodge, the University of Oregon and Oregon State. Read all about Dawson in the Fall 2006 newsletter. You’re also welcome to enjoy our company artists’ quirky murals and portraits throughout, painted in homage to the building’s history and former life.

Local: (503) 286-0372 430 N. Killingsworth St. Portland, OR 97217

What do you think it takes to stay successful?

We have at times barely survived, and even now we have places that don’t make money, places that have never made money.  But we have enough places that make money so it balances out.  We make enough to keep going which is good.  If someone starts this business the first two questions are ‘how much money do you have and then, have you ever worked in the industry’?  We get a lot of calls from people that have no experience with either brewing or kitchens who want to do what we do and we say, quit your job and go work in a brewpub for a year.  They have to have enough money to open it and to float it.  

What was your beginning like?

We had a rough start, our dad helped us out.  My brother owned a restaurant and I managed it when I was 21.  Then we got into business together and opened a place.  We got out of school, we were seven years apart, we were dumb, neither of us had any business experience.  We bounced around a lot. We tried to figure out things for ourselves, the school of hard rocks.  We survived that time, we are still learning every day.  We were political science majors.  I was thinking about going into law school.  I never really knew him when we were little kids, we were far apart in age.  We became best friend when we got older and we would want to go to that pub together, just because it sounded cool.  We loved beer and we would drive all over the planet to try different beers.  In 1978 or 79 there were only 15 beers available on tap in Oregon, total.  We’d go to Washington state and sample different beers, it was fun.  Mike opened a wholesaler caus he was really interested in importing beers and making that work.  It was not successful, he was ahead of his time.  He then got back in the pub business, where we are now.  We were buying old dairy tanks and doing whatever we could just to make beer.  Our first brewery was put together for just a few thousand bucks.  It was a bunch of old stuff, whatever we could find.  Our brewery was one step above making soup on the stove.  It was just a bigger kettle.  It was ‘that tastes good, or that tastes bad, we have to throw that away’.  We had successful pubs before we started brewing.  The brewing was just a side note in 1985, when we started it.  

What is your favorite beer to drink?

IPA, I like hops.  Europe is very malt oriented, lesser hops.  This is the beer I grew up on.  The first Pyramid ale was great, filled with hops.  

What is your opinion on going green?

We’ve been doing it forever, like using windpower for example.  We also use recycled wood in all of our places.  You could find where the wood comes from in all of our places.  Some of our wood comes from a Seagram’s distillery in Kentucky.  Some comes from a tobacco plant.  We just do it, always have.

Why do you think that there are so many breweries here in Portland?

We have good hops close by, good grain, great water.  The weather, brings more people in to drink beer.  So there is the demand.   The spirit up here is a bit more experimental, big companies do test marketing here.  

Do you have a worthy competitor in the Oregon region?

We don’t even think that way.  One would rather be on a street with 30 pubs than one pub.  There is going to be that much more traffic.

Do you spend a lot of money on marketing your products?

We didn’t know marketing from a hole in the ground.  For the pubs that was great.  Then we started getting bigger properties, hotels, now we have a marketing department, although I am still afraid of it (laughs).  Word of mouth has always been our kind of deal.  We do a lot of marketing now, mostly for the big properties.

You have so many properties to manage, what is a typical day like for you?

It’s gotten a little crazier in the last couple of years.  I don’t know why.  We are pretty hands on and we just opened 3 pubs in like 6 months, which is crazy.  Now we just have a bunch of remodel projects.  We do them ourselves.  There are so many projects, just internally.  A typical day is a lot of driving.  Today I was in Eugene, then I stopped in Salem and then Portland.  Tomorrow I have to go to the office, in Portland.  Friday I am up in Seattle and Olympia.

I read that you have a $70 million empire.  Is this close?

That’s an old number. I don’t talk about numbers.  We’re doing better than that.  Numbers are not that important.  We’re getting close to $100.

Why do you think there is the grass-roots spirit here? You grew up here and why do you think it’s here?

Our parents said whatever you do, do it well.  We were not perfect children.  My mother was upset when I told her I was following my brother into the beer business.  So we said we’d name our first beer after her.  She said, ‘I’m changing my name’.  Then she became our biggest fan.  She still goes to pubs, to this day.

What qualities do the CcMenamin brothers possess that make you unique in this environment?

We survived!  I grew up a pretty introverted kid and had trouble in speech classes.  I did learn, eventually how to  communicate.