Beer City Runner: Meet Chris

Grand Rapids is Home to over a dozen breweries, along with many more in the surrounding western Michigan area. It's been a popular thing here among us natives but we drummed up some national attention when we were anointed "Beer City USA" by the "Father of Home Brew" himself Charlie Papazian. Along with USA Today deeming us  "Best Beer Town", Forbes Magazine naming us one of the "Best Places for Business and Careers" and "Best in Job Growth" (39th & 17th respectively out of 100) and to top it all off we are still expanding! New Holland Brewing Company is opening up a Brew house right on Bridge ST! This is definitely a place live and visit.

SO why is this happening? Because the rest of the world is finally catching up to what we already know! Grand Rapids is Awesome! It comes as no surprise to us, that we are such a thriving city. We live in the hipster vibe of East-town all the way down to the lively atmosphere by the B.O.B.Grand Rapids is host to Art Prize,  Rock the Rapids, Blues on the Mall, Community Yoga lesson put on by Funky Buddah House, Dr. Grinns, Brew HaHA... I could go on and on.

Along with our expanding city exists many entrepreneurial opportunities! Which Brings me to Chris:

Chris runs a Business called Beer City Runner. What it is, is a shuttle bus, cleverly named Hoptimus Prime (gave me a chuckle too), that runs on a loop around to the Grand Rapids breweries. A $10 ticket will get you on and off that bus as many times as you'd like all night. The shuttle bus takes a bout an hour to make it's loop back around to get you, which is plenty of time to enjoy one or two (or three or four) of the finest barley pop's known to man.

Just your Average American Living the dream, Chris has a wife, three kids,  a house, and a steady job working on control panels for a company named Progressive Surface. Chris came up with the idea while at work with a buddy. 

Q: Did you hear about this idea before hand? Because I have to say it's pretty genius.

A; Well, a friend and I were talking about how these brewery tours were so expensive and you only get to visit one at a time. The local breweries are so close to each other too. I was looking at google map and saw the little brewery signs pop up and thought what a nice circuit they made. And it all of a sudden came to me. I looked at my friend and said "a shuttle bus!"

Q: How did you get your wife to agree to it?

A: I just came home so excited about the idea and explained it to her. She agreed that it was a really good idea.... I bought the bus in September, 2014 put two adds out one of them in experiencegr.com and haven't had to advertise since.

Suffice to say, Chris's business is doing pretty well.

Check out his website at http://www.beercityrunner.com/