DETROIT – Greek-American John Linardos, the owner, CEO and founder of Motor City Brewing Works was featured in Click on Detroit for opening a second location. The business started with Linardos’ first beer, the Ghettoblaster, an “English-Style mild ale, fondly called a Detroit-Style mild was created to deliver lots of flavor while still being a light beer,” Click on Detroit reported.

Linardos “first came up with the beer in 1994, started putting it on the market in ‘95, and in ‘97 paired it with his love of music, marketing it with a compilation CD of Detroit artists making it ‘the beer you can hear,’” Click on Detroit reported, adding that “Linardos got involved in the [craft beer] industry when he began working with Ben Edwards, the original owner of Traffic Jam and Snug, a popular restaurant in the Cass Corridor.” Edwards “wanted to brew and sell his own beer, something that would require what we now call a brewpub license,” Click on Detroit reported, noting that “Edwards, Linardos, and others worked to get new legislation pushed through to allow brewpubs, and finally succeeded in 1992” and “this opened the doors for businesses to get brewing.”

“I was there at the ground floor,” Linardos told Click on Detroit. “What interested me was the beginning of a new industry in the state.”

Motor City Brewing Works’ Livernois taproom opened July 12 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony including Greek-American owner John Linardos. Photo: Facebook/ Motor City Brewing Works

The menu at Motor City Brewing Works evolved as tastes changed over time. “At the beginning, they were just a brewery,” Click on Detroit reported, adding that “in 2001, they added a taproom so people could come in and try their beers” and “as the Cass Corridor continued to flourish and more people were in the area they added food to their menu as well; namely, pizza.”

“We ended up with pizza because an acquaintance of mine’s restaurant had closed and he had a pizza oven available,” Linardos told Click on Detroit which added that “just this past summer, they opened a second location on the Avenue of Fashion (Livernois Ave, in Detroit).”

The new location “will function much more like a restaurant with more seating and an expanded menu,” Click on Detroit reported, noting that they will continue serving their famous pizzas, “but now offer many sandwiches, burgers, nachos, and more” plus, “they will be doing some small-batch brewing there as well.”

Motor City Brewing Works’ original location is in the Cass Corridor at 470 West Canfield Street, and the second location is on the Avenue of Fashion at 19350 Livernois, both in Detroit.

More information is available online: http://www.motorcitybeer.com/.