Eat in

Tom Martin certainly takes beer seriously. So much so, in fact, that in 1993 he quit his job as a brewer for Anheuser-Busch, the global colossus, and started his own little firm in Richmond: Legend Brewing Company. For Martin, jumping from a multinational to a tiny operation with one employee—himself—was a huge transition, but he enjoyed serving his very own beer (and sandwiches) to customers in a pub only a few feet away from where he brewed it. By early 1994, Legend was selling kegs, which posed a peculiar problem for the one-man operation: If a client needed a keg during bar hours, Martin had to kick the pub patrons out while he delivered the beer. (They were welcome to wait outside, and he let them back in when he returned.)

Sixteen years later, Legend is still tucked away on West 7th Street, in a Richmond warehouse district south of the James River, but it’s hardly the same place. The space that used to be the entire pub is now just the prep kitchen for an airy restaurant that serves a lot more than sandwiches (clam bake, anyone?). You can see the river from the pub’s deck, and the dining area is big enough to accommodate several football teams. Down a flight of stairs, just beneath the bar, are rooms filled with tanks, vats and bottling equipment. There’s a warehouse filled with kegs, bottles and bags of barley and malt. It’s not a one-man show anymore—the brewing operation alone consists of more than a dozen people.

Today Legend is not only the largest independently owned brewing company in Virginia, but it continues to grow at an impressive rate, despite the lackluster economy. According to Dave Gott, Legend’s vice president of operations, Legend’s sales grew by a respectable 10 percent annually between 2004 and 2008, and last year was even better. After switching to a different distributor, the brewer’s sales shot up approximately 25 percent, says Gott. “And I think 2010 is going to be gigantic for us.”