PDX Pup Passport: Origin Story
How did Pup Passport get started? With a puppy, and a love for breweries, of course! We decided to adopt a puppy in April of 2021. Riley, a 5 month old mutt (who looked like a miniature white labrador with pointed ears like a German Shepard) was a handful (as puppies are), and we wanted to find dog friendly places to bring him instead of leaving him in his crate. This got us looking on Yelp and Google, making spreadsheets, and we had a hard time figuring out who was actually dog friendly. We decided to go to Golden Valley Brewing down the street from us in Bethany, and that was how it all started.
We had done the Distillery passport in Portland before, and we used that as inspiration. Dog lovers are a friendly bunch of people so we started asking around if anyone knew about a dog friendly brewery passport. Nobody had heard of one, and Google didn't know about one either, but everyone seemed excited about the idea! Stephen, being an entrepreneurial nerd, set out to outline what the passport should look like. We wanted a digital passport so that you could easily navigate to each location. We sat down, made a list of breweries and cideries that allowed dogs, and the rest is history! We didn't quite know what to expect at first, but we quickly discovered that people were wildly interested and excited to join the passport.
We thought about how else we could benefit the community, so we set out to find other dog loving businesses around PDX that would want to help out. This was also an overwhelming success!
We had endless discussions about what the passport should do and how it should look. We asked breweries what they would want in a passport. We felt it should be simplistic but also represent our roots in PDX, and embrace everything that Portland and Oregon is as a whole. We also wanted it to be easy and inclusive for breweries to join so that they can focus on running their business.
We wanted to build an inclusive platform where people could have fun, and it's been fun putting it all together for you! We're excited to give you a passport that helps you and your furry friends explore Oregon breweries, and get savings at the same time! We hope you enjoy!
You can buy the PDX Pup Passport here