QuickTake:

Rather than sell, the company decided it would return to its roots as a smaller purely local brewery. Founder Jeff Althouse said, “It made sense to keep this one location.”

One month after Oakshire Brewing announced its companywide closure and its plans to sell the brand, the 20-year-old company announced Friday, Oct. 23, that Oakshire Public House would remain under existing ownership.

Founder and CEO Jeff Althouse said keeping the brewery under one roof was more economically viable than what the company expanded to in the last decade, operating a production facility along with three taprooms in Eugene, Springfield and Portland.

He attributed that initial growth to market demands of the time.

“Looking back now, I’d maybe be more careful with answering the needs of the market,” he said.

Althouse said the Public House saw a spike in revenue following the closure announcement in late September. After discussions with potential buyers, community members and the company’s current capital partners, he opted to keep the Whiteaker taproom.

Oakshire is community-owned, with 55 shareholders, each contributing at a level that suits them financially. 

“We worked through the economics and felt like it made sense to keep this one location,” he said. “As if we were going back 10 years, rethinking the business as a really small brewery. And that’s what we’re doing.”

A dizzying timeline

It’s been a whirlwind last few months for Oakshire.

In August, the company announced it would pause operations for a few months at Oakshire Commons, the Springfield taproom, to explore a potential shift in offerings to attract more customers. 

The pause was brief: The Commons reopened in early September after a “strong response of support and feedback from the Springfield community,” per a company press release.

Then on Sept. 25, Oakshire announced its companywide closure, including last call dates at the Commons and Oakshire Beer Hall in Portland. No final date was included for the Public House, however.

On Oct. 3, the Public House held a block party for Oakshire’s 20th anniversary, then stayed open in the weeks after, as Althouse met with breweries and other potential buyers of the Oakshire brand and property.

In the end, Althouse decided not to sell the company and instead keep Oakshire rooted at the Public House, saying the company was consistently successful at that location.

Althouse acknowledged the confusion and whiplash of the recent months.

“We’re not trying to play games with the public,” he said. “We’re trying to run a business under very challenging economic conditions and work out a path forward.” 

The path for Oakshire is a return to the microbrewery it began as, with Public House as the new-old face and anchor.

Althouse is finalizing plans to partner with an Oregon brewery to produce Oakshire beer going forward. Oakshire’s head brewer will coordinate with the new production partner.

“I started the brewery because I loved beer and I loved people,” Althouse said. “I think Oakshire is an asset to Eugene. It’s a place to gather. I think it’s great we changed our mind to not sell.”

Taylor Goebel covers Lane County's food and drink scene. She has nearly a decade of experience in multimedia journalism, having reported across the Mid-Atlantic on dining, food systems, education, healthcare, local elections, labor and business. She was most recently a food reporter in Washington state, where she documented a fourth-generation fishing family, covered a David vs. Goliath conflict between a national coffee chain and a small Turkish cafe, and had many culinary firsts, from ensaymadas and gilgeori (Korean street) toast to morels and black cod.