This month, Beachwood Brewing — a beloved local chain of restaurants — is celebrating 15 years serving brews and food in Long Beach, and 20 years as a company.
“It’s an honor to have new customers and old customers still coming in and buying our products,” co-owner Gabriel Gordon said. “It’s cool to have gotten to the place where we’re industry veterans, and it just feels good that people still appreciate what we do.”
The Beachwood brand started in 2006 as Beachwood Barbecue in Seal Beach, which Gordon said was meant to be “a barbecue restaurant with an exceptionally good tap list of rotating beers.” A large part of their success came from the popularity of their tap list, and the local breweries that they got their beers from couldn’t keep up.
In 2011, Gordon opened Beachwood Barbecue and Brewing in Downtown Long Beach on the Promenade to continue to expand on what he started in Seal Beach with his own brewery attached.
Since then, the brand has grown considerably, despite the sale of the two original locations. They now have five customer-facing locations — three of which are in Long Beach — with 20-30 beers on tap, and a sixth spot focused solely on brewing beer. Through it all, Gordon says the heart of Beachwood hasn’t changed.
“Our core values have always stayed the same. Our level of curiosity and creativity has always been the same, and that drive to make a really great experience for our customers,” Gordon said.
That creativity that has guided the brand for so long is Gordon’s favorite part of owning the business.
“Everything else is just work, but when you get to create stuff, that’s the best,” he said.
As a business owner, Gordon is very customer-focused. If customers don’t like a new drink, it won’t stay on the menu, even if Gordon enjoyed it.
“I try not to have anything be too precious, and get too attached to it, because, you know, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what I like, it matters what my customers like,” Gordon said.
To celebrate how far they’ve come, Beachwood just unveiled a new brew and a limited-edition four-pack at their Bixby Knolls and Huntington Beach locations, available until they sell out. The new beer, Solar Echo, is described as a “hop-forward West Coast IPA with dank aromatics and notes of passion fruit, ripe mango, and tropical berry.”
The limited-edition “Friends Pack” includes four flavors, each made in collaboration with a partner brewery ranging from Tenma Beer Project in Oakland, California to Cervecería Hércules in Querétaro, Mexico.
Beachwood Brewing has three locations in Long Beach: one in Bixby Knolls, one Downtown, and one in the 2nd & PCH shopping center. Hours vary by location. For more information, visit their website.