Montana Opens Its First Community-Owned Brewery
There's nothing like getting 400 of your closest friends together and opening up a brewery.
Or, at least I assume there's nothing like it, because I've never done that - but a group in Ronan did! Ronan Cooperative Brewery is officially open and holds the distinction of being Montana's first community-owned brewery.
The brewery has been in the works for a while - back in 2016, Ronan community members got together to brainstorm some ideas on how to improve the downtown area, and that's where the idea for the brewery was born. Nearly 400 people in the town from all kinds of different backgrounds got involved and now own shares in the brewery. It's the first one of its kind in the state of Montana, and it's a pretty rare thing around the country, too - there are only 40 community-owned breweries in the entire United States.
If you want to check out Ronan Cooperative Brewery, it's on Main Street in Ronan and is open from 12 PM to 8 PM daily. Hopefully it does what it set out to do originally and act as a way to revitalize downtown Ronan.
It's so cool to see a community come together like this to create something unique for the town. I wonder if there's something similar we could do in Missoula? We've already got a ton of breweries, but there's gotta be something that this town doesn't have that could improve it.
What would you want to add to Missoula that you'd go in on with the entire community?