Introducing Pup Passport; a Dog Friendly Brewery Passport
The Portland Pup Passport is a new digital guide to deals and savings at dog friendly breweries, taprooms and cideries around Portland and the Oregon coast. This Saturday, July 17th they celebrate their launch and first official event at Uptown Beer Co.’s 1st Annual Dog Days of Puptown event.
Inspired by the Portland Distillery Passport and their love of dogs, local couple Stephen Guarino and Cambrie Burn came up with the idea to start the Pup Passport after adopting a puppy named Riley a few months back. They wanted to bring their new pup out to eat and drink with them, but didn’t know where to start. Oregon pubs have been famously dog friendly, but it’s hard to know when and where you can bring a dog especially with food service, crowds and kids thrown into the mix. The Pup Passport will not only guide you to good places to take your dog, but give you incentives to visit them while benefiting animal related causes.
“Since Portland has a huge craft brewery scene, breweries were the intuitive focus,” says co-founder Steve Guarino. “We also thought it would be cool for people with a passport to get some kind of offer or discount when they arrive. Additionally we wanted to make a digital passport rather than a physical one to make it easy for people to use and so that they could navigate to the breweries on their phones. Being digital also means we can add breweries and partners later on.”
The Pup Passport kicked off with an instagram account on June 1st and the campaign has began snowballing from there. In a short period over 25 breweries have signed up, and even more partnerships have arisen with local pet friendly businesses and non-profits like Oregon Humane Society, Next Adventure, and The Bidwell Marriott. Pup Passport will also be sold as gift cards at The Bidwell Marriott and they hope to sign up more spots.
How the passport works is you purchase for $25 on their website and then get immediate access to a list of participating locations each offering their own deal. The deals only work for you, and can only be used once at each location. Also, each participant is offering different deals. For example: Migration Brewing is offering happy hour pricing on food and drinks. Rogue is offering $4 Dead Guy Ale pints. Binary / Uptown Beer Co is giving away pint glasses with any $5 purchase. Other folks are giving away dog bandanas, some people are doing 1, 2, and $3 off first pint, others are doing $1 first pints, Discounts on to-go beer, discounts on online beer orders, etc. Most breweries average $5 worth of deals per location (some have more, some have less).
“Eventually we would like to create separate passports for Eugene, Bend, etc, and also create a master passport encompassing all of Oregon,” adds Guagino. “I think this idea works so well because we're merging two very passionate groups of people: beer lovers, and dog lovers. There is a ton of overlap, so I think we stumbled onto a very exciting niche with this idea.”
Dog Days of Puptown
This Saturday 7/17 the Pup Passport will be at Uptown Beer Co. on the Portland/Beaverton border to help kickoff the 1st annual Dog Days of Puptown event. This will be the passport’s first official event and raises funds for the Oregon Humane Society, which is a major beneficiary of the Puptown Passport and future fundraising events. Uptown Beer Co. will be celebrating dogs with beer and food specials starting at 1pm, live music by Gabe Hess at 2pm and a Dog Costume Contest which Gaugino and Burn will judge at 3pm.
Tickets for Dog Days of Puptown are $10 here, and earn you a commemorative pint glass, pint of Binary beer, Costume Contest voting, super cool sticker and donation to the Humane Society.
You can register your dog for the costume contest for $5 here, and sleep well knowing that all of the registration money goes to the Oregon Humane Society.
Pup Passport founders Stephen Guarino and Cambrie Burn