We would like to thank The Fort Collins Coloradoan for their article, “CooperSmith’s: The hub of brewpubs in Fort Collins.”
Here is an excerpt:
Before Charmaine Stavedahl and Bruce Jancin moved their young family from Northern California to Northern Colorado, they came scouting.
It was almost winter, 1994, and Stavedahl had been out to visit a few months earlier, reporting back to Jancin with two cities for his follow-up trip. She knew she had a clear favorite and had noticed two “very different vibes,” but she wanted her husband’s unbiased opinion of their future hometown.
That cold November, Stavedahl sent Jancin first to Boulder, where he remembers a real estate agent driving him from house to house in a sports car. The kind with heated leather seats. It was, he said, the first time he had ever sat in them. Then she sent him to Fort Collins, with specific instructions to stop at CooperSmith’s Pub & Brewing.
They moved with two kids to the Choice City not long after.
“You wouldn’t believe how many stories I get like that,” said Scott Smith.
Smith, 54, is the founder and president of CooperSmith’s, which will turn 25 in November. Since its modest beginning in 1989 as Fort Collins’ first brewpub, Smith has grown his company to employ 120 workers. He’s stretched it across Old Town Square, over two outdoor patios and two separate buildings, and with the help of original brewer Brad Page and current brewer (soon to be President) Dwight Hall, he’s gone from four house beers on tap to about 20. Selling upward of 2,000 barrels of beer each year, CooperSmith’s is consistently placed among the U.S.’s top 20 beer-producing pubs, according to Smith. And throughout the years, a handful of successful spinoffs have sprung up across the country, using CooperSmith’s as their model.
Sitting in the restaurant during a steady Monday lunch hour, Smith now exudes a certain preretirement energy. This week, he is waiting on the paperwork that will effectively pass ownership of his brewpub to the three current managing partners, Dwight Hall, Sandy Longton and Chris O’Mara.
The father of Fort Collins brewing, Smith feels that in handing over his business, he is keeping CooperSmith’s in the family. His three replacements have been with him practically since the beginning, when they started as a dishwasher and line cooks. Just as important to Smith, they are actively involved in their community.
You can read the entire article here.
