WASHOUGAL — 54-40 Brewing Co. will open a new location — with a full-service restaurant and taproom — at the Evergreen Marketplace in Washougal later this year.
“We have been struggling for years now to figure out a permanent kitchen,” said 54-40 Brewing owner Bolt Minister. The brewery leased suites next to its Port of Camas-Washougal location to put in a permanent kitchen. “The costs just got so darn expensive over the last couple of years, and I realized that it wasn’t going to happen. Once we finally realized that, I started looking elsewhere, and I found the Pizza Hut location next door to the old Blockbuster. We’re taking both of those spaces.”
The Evergreen Market location, 3307 Evergreen Way, Washougal, will feature a full kitchen and pizza delivery when it opens in June or July, according to Minister.
“Once we actually started thinking about it, (we realized that) we could throw a whole lot of money down here to build out suite Nos. 3 and 4, or we can have an existing kitchen because Pizza Hut just basically picked up and left,” he said.
54-40 Brewing’s current Washougal location, 3801 S. Truman St., at the Port of Camas-Washougal’s industrial park, will continue to brew beer on site and offer a full complement on tap, as well as a limited food menu,.
“The tap room down here at the port was always supposed to be sort of a community hub and was never supposed to be a restaurant in the first place,” he said. “We’ll be able to do community events and a lot of other things.”
Minister subleased the unused suites at the port location to Portland-based Swift Cider, which will use the space for beverage production and canning.
54-40 Brewing will offer six Swift beverages on tap and provide space for Swift cans in its retail coolers.
In return, Swift will can 54-40 beers.
“It’s sort of hand-in-glove because we were kind of pulling out of the can game just because of the cost, and they actually have their own can lines, so now we’ll be able to cross-utilize their canned line for our product as well,” Minister said. “We’ll be able to get back in the can game and get cans back on the shelves.”
