Bend gas station offers beer ‘fill ‘er up’
At most gas stations, you fuel up, grab a soda or perhaps a six-pack of your favorite beer. Now a Bend station is taking that to the next level.
The Stop & Go Shell station on Highway 20 and 27th Street has something no other gas station in the Northwest. They now have 30 different West Coast beers all on tap so you can fill your 64-ounce (half-gallon) “growler” of beer.
“As soon as we put it in, the reaction on the street was phenomenal,” Kizer Couch, one of the owners of the Stop and Go, said Monday. “Everybody thought this was the best idea, for the Eastside of town in particular.”
Couch says they got the idea from a trade magazine that featured a small 12-tap display at a store on the East Coast.
“We’re right here in the beer capital in Central Oregon,” said Couch. “So we have all these breweries who are doing awesome. They are some of the only people who are successful right now in the economy, so we thought, ‘Boy, I wonder if we can do that here?'”
The Stop and Go featured a small 14-tap selection at first and then decided to double it to the current 30 taps.
The store will not only fill up the traditional growler, but they sell a smaller version called a “growlette.”
“Those are just awesome for all the girls,” said Kelly Wilson, a store employee. “We’ve got ciders, light beers, and we have all the dark stuff too. That’s also a good thing to taste the beers.”
Couch says they hope to feature at least one beer from every brewery in Bend. He added they’ve had tremendous support from all the local brewers, who have backed the idea 100 percent.
