USA, VA: Long Way Brewing opens its doors in Radford

Radford’s new and only craft brewery just opened its doors last week, WDBJ7 reported on December 11.

Long Way Brewing opened shop in the city’s vacant Seventh Day Adventist Church building, sitting above Radford-Fairlawn Daily Bread.

Maintaining the church’s stone structure, original church pews and windows, the space was picked by its owners to help with downtown revitalization.

The idea for the brewery came about six years ago and just so happened to pan out now to open, even during the pandemic.

“We did want to open earlier, but we decided to wait a while. We figured hit 2020 with a bang,” said co-owner Rob Gropman. “Since it’s been so bad this is the good thing.”

Long Way’s mission is to provide free lunch through the Meals on Wheels program downstairs through Radford-Fairlawn Daily Bread. They do this by asking customers to round up to the nearest dollar on each transaction.

Co-founders Rob Gropman, Keith Weltens and Jeff Kleppin hope the space will eventually serve as a venue for special events. The name Long Way comes from the long mission Mary Draper Ingles took to escape captivity when she was captured by the Shawnee. Similarly, the co-founders took a long journey to make this a reality.