McMenamins build on history
"Some people would say we're way too involved," he shouts, gesturing around at the project that will soon be the latest in a string of pubs to carry the brothers' name. "But that's just the way we are. We're hands on."
Hands on or not, it seems to work. The Old St. Francis School, as it's called at McMenamins Inc., will open this fall as the 53rd in the company's empire of pubs, theaters and hotels stretching along the Interstate 5 corridor from Roseburg, Ore., north to Mill Creek. Besides the Mill Creek location, the company's Washington properties include three pubs in Seattle, another in Centralia and two in Vancouver.
The Bend complex will be the first east of the Cascades but merely one more in a series of historical renovations for the company.
"They are legends," Paul Shipman, founder and president of Seattle's Redhook Brewing, said of Mike McMenamin, 53, and Brian McMenamin, 46. "What these guys have done utterly defies conventional wisdom."
Conventional wisdom says people prefer the feel of locally owned watering holes to chain-owned operations. But McMenamins keeps on growing.
"They got a concept, stayed true to it, built it like they wanted to build it and now they've become the name in microbreweries," said Bill Perry of the Oregon Restaurant Association.
The brothers spent a recent day in Bend checking out the bars being built, watching contractors install custom lights and strolling around to get the feel of rooms as walls went up.
"The initial plans are just sort of a starting point," said Mike McMenamin. "You have to wait till a project is taking shape before you know where it's going."
That attitude has led to midstream changes at nearly all the chain's building sites. But that, too, is part of the reason the brothers' vision of iconoclastic gathering spots has captured Northwest beer drinkers' imagination, allowing the company to tap into regional demand for craft brews.
The brothers, majority owners of their private company, are close-lipped about financial details. But they say 2003 sales were above $70 million, up from a reported $50 million in 1998.
The brothers bought the 2-acre Old St. Francis School property for $1.6 million in 2002. They estimate they will spend $3 million converting the school and five adjacent buildings into a sprawling complex with a brewery, central restaurant and pub, intimate bars, movie theater, 17 guest rooms, four rental guest houses and a 50-person "Turkish bath."
Mike McMenamin opened a door on a recent day to reveal a muddy courtyard between the complex's two largest buildings. "It's going to have torches and cobblestones on the ground, beautiful plants," he said. "Once you've been doing this for a while, it's easier to visualize what things will be."
Brian McMenamin is the numbers guy. His role is less design and more logistics, checking the layout of the kitchen, for example, or the tanks in the brewery.
The genesis of the McMenamins' kingdom was a 1973 trip to Europe that Mike McMenamin took with his wife. They were charmed by pubs in Britain, beer gardens in Germany, coffee shops in Cyprus.
The places served alcohol, but they weren't the dark, smoky taverns found in the United States where a mostly male clientele went to imbibe. Instead, they were cheery establishments where whole families assembled, adults ordering beer, wine or coffee while the children snacked and played.
"We got into the whole pub scene," Mike McMenamin said. "We saw how much more integrated into the neighborhoods they were."
The McMenamins' signature business began in 1983 with the opening of the Barley Mill Pub in southeast Portland. Despite some money troubles in the early years, the McMenamins Greenway Pub in Beaverton and McMenamins Tavern & Pool in northwest Portland soon followed.
None of the early restaurants was a brew pub, though, because Oregon law prohibited breweries from selling beer on premises. That law was later changed after the brothers became de facto lobbyists, along with Dick Ponzi of Ponzi Vineyards and Kirk and Rob Widmer of Widmer Brothers Brewing, among others.
Once breweries were allowed to have their own pubs, the McMenamins expansion began in earnest. The Hillsdale Brewery & Public House opened in early 1984 and began selling beer brewed on the premises that October.
Since then, the chain has opened an average of 2.4 establishments annually over the past 20 years.
Many of the outlets involve the renovation of historic complexes, including its 38-acre Edgefield complex, the former Multnomah County Poor Farm, the one-time Masonic & Eastern Star home in Forest Grove and Portland's Crystal Ballroom dance hall.
Historic-preservation purists have reservations about the strategy.
James Hamrick, the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department's assistant director for heritage conservation, likes that the brothers care about old buildings. He isn't happy, though, that when they refurbish their properties, creativity outweighs historical accuracy.
"They do historic preservation, but it's not a philosophically pure historical preservation," Hamrick said.
Mike Raleigh, who started as a McMenamins pub worker in 1988 and left in 1997 as a general manager overseeing seven restaurants, says the company has lost something important as it has grown.
Raleigh, who owns the Low Brow Lounge in Portland, says the fact that employees move from establishment to establishment as they get promoted means regular customers can't count on knowing the people behind the bar.
"Customers go in one week, there's some people working there, and they go in the next week, and it's a completely different feel," Raleigh said.
Mike McMenamin concedes that growth brings change. For one thing, with 1,200 to 1,500 employees — depending on the season — communicating to workers has become more difficult.
"You get forced into a corporate model if you want to survive," he said. The brothers try to keep things enjoyable even as the scale gets larger, he said.
"There's more bureaucratic hoops to go through now. The trick is to keep it fun."