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With craft beer continuing to grow in popularity (and major breweries taking notice), there is a need for places where you can load up and take the bottles and cans home for a decent price. There's the major stores such as Total Wine & More and BevMo! that carry craft, but what of the smaller, mom-and-pop operations?

A cursory search on Google brings up few choices for places that sell just craft in Phoenix, one of which is a relatively new venture — the Craft Beer Hop Stop. The small store is hardly unassuming, as it proudly promotes craft brands on its outer windows. The store, located at 717 West Union Hills Drive in Phoenix, is located closest to ASU West.

However, inside is a quiet space that looks like a liquor store, but is walled with tastes from not only local brewers, but from brewers across the country. Stone Brewing, Abita, Ballast Point and Sleepy Dog all have a spot here, with pint bottles of more "out-there" tastes lining shelves outside of the coolers. With the sheer amount to try, shoppers have the option of going with a range of singles as well, with the ability to custom-build your own six-pack (complete with a carrier).

Ryan Sise is a weekly shopper at the Hop Stop, and said that the store is a friendly place to visit with warm greetings upon entering.

“It’s so clean,” he said. “A lot of places, there’ll be dust all over bottles and you don’t know when it was packaged. But here, he’s (Allen) on top of his inventory.”

Allen Husayno has been running location as Hop Stop with his father, Tariq, since September of last year. Prior to the change, it began as a smoke shop in April 2012. Both originally from Michigan, Tariq ran a small corner convenience store in the state for 20 years. Seeking a warmer climate, they moved to Arizona in 1997.

"I was doing real estate right out of high school," Allen said. "I had my license for about 12 years."

Yet 12 years ago, Allen opened up a store in Tempe called Twins Market, which eventually became Tempe Beer and Deli, and is now run by new owners.

"That kind of started us into the craft (beer)," he said.

From 2005 to 2010, Allen and Tariq ran a liquor store in Tempe that is still running today, though under new owners. 

"Craft beer wasn't that big," Allen said of that time frame. Aside from imported beer, craft beer "was just getting started."

Allen also said that this Tempe shop was a popular choice for kegs. 

"We were mostly selling kegs to the ASU students," he said. "We actually sold the most from one of the distributors, Crescent Crown, in the whole of Arizona. Crescent Crown distributes the likes of Pabst Blue Ribbon and Miller High Life, for example."

"We were number one, and the rep would say that number two was Chase Field," Allen added.  

When Allen changed the name of the Phoenix store to Craft Beer Hop Stop in September 2014, he said that domestic beers were still populating his shelves.

"It only took few days before I suggested to my dad, 'Why don't we not sell the domestics?'", he said. "And he thought it wasn't a good idea because he remembered how much domestic we sold at our other store."

After a few weeks, the two attempted to sell a large order of domestic beer. Allen said that, even at cost, it was difficult getting rid of them — likely due to the name change. A month later, realizing the range of craft beers available, Allen once again suggested a change to Tariq.

"We realized how many new beers are coming," Allen said. "I told my dad, 'let’s not sell the Heineken or the Corona, and the Negro Modelo and the Dos Equis — we'll just keep the craft.'"

They slowly began to disperse the common beers including the imports, bringing a select few back on customer request. That allowed the store to dabble strictly with craft.

Allen said he enjoys the size of the store, but admits they may need more room for new product as more beers are made.

“I like being small because you can control it better,” he said. “You can usually be good with one person working and you have more control with monitoring beer dates. If you have 300 beers, and you expand to 1,000 beers, it’s going to be harder to push all of them.”

6 cases of Stone Xocoveza For The Holidays & The New Year. Stout Brewed with Cocoa, Coffee, Peppers, Vanilla, Cinnamon...

Posted by Craft Beer Hop Stop on Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Allen's biggest fear with the store was the time it took away from being with his family, impacting his relationship with his wife and two daughters. He wants to hire more people so he could spend more time with them away from the shop.

As far as the future went, Allen said that he would like to keep the store small. However, he's interested in adding a growler station with tap handles, but it might be difficult.

"I think that would help us a lot," he said. "It's a small store; we'd have to break ground to do some drainage." 

Sise’s mother, Debbie, was visiting the store for the first time. She and Ryan were preparing for the Detroit Lions game, and said that she used to brew beer with her family back in Michigan.

"It was fun," she said. "And there's no such thing as a bad beer when you're making it."

As for the store, she said she enjoyed how low cost the beers were.

"You're getting a good craft beer at a very reasonable price," Debbie said.  "A lot of stores that do have the craft beers charge a bunch more than they do here."

Related Links:

World of Beer brings hundreds of international craft beers to Tempe

ASU startup cleans wastewater for local brewery


Reach the reporter at Damion.Julien-Rohman@asu.edu or follow @legendpenguin on Twitter

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