Founders Brewing Co in Grand Rapids

This is one of those places that makes me regret being so generous with five star ratings because Founders blows the doors off everyone else. SIX STARS! LOLSeriously, atmosphere, service, food, prices are all on point. And if this team of amazing, talented, friendly, fun (and Halloween-costumedfolks wasn’t already world-class, they freaking SAVED SOMEONE’S LIFE today. Apparently a guy had a heart attack and without missing a step, they took care of him and kept things rolling. Seriously, this is one of the best experiences I’ve had at lunch.

New flavors new tastes but always the same Great Experience 😉👍🏻 💯 recommended, don’t missed

Sandwich was super dry and bread was hard. And we waited 45 minutes for it. It was the pastrami with horseradish, sounded so good. Beer was just ok. We had one and left. Very disappointed because we were really looking forward to enjoying a couple of hours here.

The service was excellent. We got a table right away and our server was on top of everything. The beverages were most awesome. The food was ok. They were "out" of quite a few items and as it was my first trip I had no idea I was getting an over priced deli sandwich. The food tasted ok for what it was. I would go back, specifically for the beverages and maybe just get appetizers.

Gee whiz I cant put in words how much I enjoy a All Day IPA!!! That being said I went on vacation to Annapolis Maryland for family visit and was pleasantly surprised to find it. I was able to eat some of the finest seafood and top it off with the finest IPA!!! The table next to us over heard my excitement and ordered one also very cool!!! Great job as always and representing Michigan stupendously!!!!

Fun place, we went there at opening, 11am on a Saturday and sat outside. The outdoor bartender was nice. You place your order with him and get a buzzer. When food is done, you go grab it. It’s a good system that makes things quick. 84* Mid September isn’t bad at all for MI! Go to Founders and enjoy!!

This place has a great vibe but can be hit or miss depending on how busy the bar is. The tap menu is, as should be self evident, stellar. The food menu is sufficient for the needs of the place. They have been improving year over year, but dont expect anything much besides sandwiches, some appetizers, and some fantastic wings. I always pay a visit here when Im in Grand Rapids due to the memories I have associated with this place. Ive had some amazing times here and that alone warrants a 5/5.

Did not go to the brewery. We have been buying founders beer in stores for several years, until the last few. Your dark, stout beers are great, but Your product is way too expensive now!! They just wanted to charge me $24.99 for 4 beers@!¡! I gave it back to them and walked out of the store.That is not cool dudes!! We will not be buying your product again unless prices drastically drop.

With craft beer that’s mid and yucky sandwiches, this place survives on clout for being the original. But other breweries have surpassed Founders in quality since the 90s. The positives are the atmosphere on the patio and the servers are decent. Stopping in Grand Rapids? It may be time to try a new brewery.

Large indoor and outdoor seating areas. Frootwood is my favorite beer from Founders. The beer cheese dip and cuban were really good.

Great Tour! Love that they also make Hard Seltzer. Such a fun day & spectacular tour guide. We were here for the ESTO Tourism Conference.

It was a little too big for my taste in breweries. I prefer smaller more family owned breweries but the beer was good nonetheless and our server was great. Food was pretty good.

Cool vibe on a Saturday afternoon. We stopped in for a snack and a beer. It seemed family friendly and Im a huge fan of the beer and food. I got a 2017 CBS. There was a party in the beer garden, adult only. Overall, highly recommend.

We had to stop in because of the Founders name recognition. The beers were really great and tasted fresh - it was cool to try things exclusive to the tasting room that you could won’t find other places.We just got a side of macaroni and cheese (and it was goodand the other food looked good as well!They offer tours and have an extensive gift shop as well. The service could have been better and wasn’t quite as friendly and interactive as the other breweries we went to, but still worth stopping in (especially if you are visiting).

Oh no, what happened?! The beers is still awesome, and the food is fantastic especially for a brewery. The service and system of serving….. what happened? I get it post Covid and help is needed everywhere, but last night we were a party of 6 on one tab, easier than splitting them up. Took us almost two hours, we would have been happy with 60-90 minutes. I see now that the servers are also pouring all their own beers behind the bar? Our server stopped by about every 15 minutes. Order beers, 15 minutes later our beers arrive, and she was off with 10 more beers on her tray. We asked for the check, I looked it over very briefly and sent it back with a CC. We ended up with our print outs almost 30 minutes later.Founders you need to change this process. It is badly broken.

Absolutely huge sandwiches! The pretzel with beer cheese and mustards was phenomenal! If you haven’t tried the peachy trouble imperial IPA you are missing out! The peach really balances the hops out well! We will be back for sure!

We flew in from Miami to celebrate my husbands 50th birthday as it’s his favorite brewery…. and it did not disappoint. We did the brewery tour (tip… book in advanceand Ivan our tour guide was excellent. Not only informing us about the brewery but also the history of Grand Rapids. It’s was great to try beers that could only be bought there (the bottled versions safely made it back to Miami). The food and service was also very good. We will be back… no milestone birthday needed.

We had been looking forward to stopping by here on our roadtrip and it did not disappoint!Wait staff was very friendly and helpful in selecting food and beers. It was cool to be able to go to the gift shop and get bottles to go as well.Definitely worth the stop if you are in Grand Rapids and enjoy a good beer.

They tried to hide my bad review from being seen… I’ll post again so you can have an HONEST idea of what your first experience here might entail.Tonight me and 4 friends’ visitedFounders for the first time, we grabbed drinks in the beer garden waiting to be sat inside. Sat, we waited a short while and still feeling pretty neutral/ happy about our experience. 5 waters were sat on the table and we were rudely greeted by a guy with poor hygiene, he stated “this is when you guys tell me if you want food, do you ALL have tabs open already? What’s the names on your tabs?” And all without letting us speak to give our order or answer his questions as he pressed us. My significant other then requested appetizers- the server scoffs. Someone more tidy looking brought out our apps, thankfully. We discussed quietly the severs behavior as off putting and bad taste. When he eventually came back he questions us about feeling a confrontational vibe from us. My friend Dev asked for his name, he proceeded to tell us we could call him “Mr. Founder” so Dev insisted he tell us his real name which is Blake and so essentially Blake told us he’s sorry that we caught him at a bad time during his work day. I believe if he took a shower he might feel better. So hopefully you understand I wasn’t comfortable with the hygiene of this worker neither their condescending service.

Founders is always a great experience. I have been visiting off and on for many years and have had great service every time. I love the food menu and plan on stopping in when I am in town next week. Great people and great food!

Great spot that we frequented on our trip to Michigan multiple times! Friendly staff, great beer, nice clothing shop! Perfect for intimate groups as well as groups of 25 or more!

Visited from hours away and was recommended this place by a friend. When being seated they said "go ahead, bar seating is free for all." However it was full, and the tables have a wait-list apparently so we stood inside the building being ignored not knowing what to do. When we finally did sit down at a bar seat on the wall, it took the waitress forever to notice us and was apathetic and seemed annoyed the whole time. Overall, the hot wings were delicious but the sandwiches and staff were just plain eh.

Well, we WERE stoked to end our Grand Rapids trip here. We had a box of pastries that we thought due to the absolute sweltering heat that it would be fine to have just literally sit on a table. Otherwise the very expensive pastries would have all melted into a pile of goo. We had no intention of eating these pastries because who really wants to mix beer and sweets. Dude bro told us to put them in the car. I didnt even bother arguing with this dude we just bought a souvenir for my dad and left. We just wanted to say its incredibly disappointing the lack of consideration and compassion for your customers due to horrible weather out of everyones control. With record highs everywhere maybe consider that asking someone to put food in their car will literally ruin it. When someones car isnt turning into an oven in the parking lot, sure ban bringing in a box of pastries. When you can cook an egg on the sidewalk maybe have staff consider your customers needs instead. We would have ordered food and drinks and instead are just going somewhere that will allow us to have a pastry box sit on a table. Cheers.

I prefer seltzer over beer so was super pleased to see they offer a couple ! Loved the lime seltzer and the laid back atmosphere. Would order the pretzel with cheese again too. It was super busy, but it didn’t take long at all to get drinks and the food was pretty quick too, considering the crowd.

I’ve been to Founders three times now and this was the first time I was disappointed. They have revamped their menu and I wish I had looked prior to going there for dinner. The beer is always good and I have zero complaints about the staff. They do need to have more than basically sandwiches though. Last year they had pizza and it was good and the year before that they had dinner specials that were out of this world. These things need to make a comeback

This place was easy to enjoy. The food was an amazing compliment to their variety of original brews. The outdoor seating made for a memorable experience. Definitely recommend!

Terrible service. Ive been a Founders fan for years and was excited to visit from out of state but this experience really turned me off their beer. The place was slow later Sunday afternoon (5/29and there were plenty of employees- sometimes eight clumped together at the end of the bar- but really tough to get anyones attention or a refill. Our bartender was pleasant enough but that was it- no brewery info, no suggestions, no inquiries of our beer preferences, no chatting and really no checking back on us...having to flag her down every time, or call her back mid service and once ask another server going by (who rolled her eyesif she could get someones attention from the other end of bar for us. Just a really poor showing for a brewery tasting house. There was a huge selection of beer and we shared a half dozen 5oz samplers and a couple of pints, which were mostly tasty as was the hearty helping of guacamole. However, Ive already canceled a Founders barrel I was ordering for my bar because the experience was that off-putting/disappointing/annoying.

Loved the food and service there. The environment was great and the beer cheese dip was delicious. One of the better breweries been to and was very family friendly. Would go back next time in town

Awesome beer, tasty food, dope music, economical prices. Must visit!

Limited food choices and the ones available are not very good. The beer is ok, but in my opinion overrated. The patio area is fine but nothing out of the ordinary. Don’t order the guacamole unless you like the taste of seasoned ground beef in your salsa.

Great place. We chose to not wait the 45 minutes and go inside and order our food and sat outside under heated area and picked it up when the buzzer went off. Well worth it. Our appetizers were perfect. This is a very open area outside and lots of seating indoors, but you need to reserve. Advice here is just go and wait for an outdoor table which is just as good. We will return.

Super nice waiter! I think his name was Dan. The food was absolutely amazing! The beer ahh it was sooooo very delicious!!! I got the Lush beer I can’t remember it’s full name but I loved it! My dad liked his so much he bought a six pack of it! My mom and I split the devil dancer sandwich(spicysuper delicious and my dad got a huge BLT and that was super too! We where seated outside I was a little bit chilled but it was still very nice! Thank you for this super nice evening everything was so good and such a nice atmosphere.

It wasnt a real warm day but a good day to get out. We ordered the Brisket pizza and I had a seltzer. Both were good.

I suppose if you brew fantastic beer, you can have fantastically horrible customer service and keep the business alive. I do want to mention that our waiter did a great job (dark-hair guy with a beard). The rest of the experience was disappointing to the point that we will not return. There are plenty of other good breweries in Michigan to explore.

First time here exploring the city and of course I looked for reviews of where to eat. Well very cold hot wings were not what we were hoping to get but atleast the sandwich was ok. They did ask to remake the wings but I should have received them warm to begin with.

Phenomenal experience and atmosphere. I drove 10 hours from western NY to get here and try it out and it’s well worth it! The breakfast stout is incredible and the Dissenter sandwich is the bomb! Here’s the full menu.

We ordered a flight and the signature cheese dip & chips. It was our first time. The name of one of the beers had watermelon and we did taste a hint of watermelon. We asked if it has real juice of watermelon in it or if its an artificial flavor. The bartender said " Not sure. I think its not really important but I can check." I was kind of disappointed that the bartender said its not important whats in the beer of their original menu and what they sell.Also, the cheese dip was okay. I dont think its not so special. The flavor was too strong for us too.

Varieties of local brews and great atmosphere. We probably waited 20+ mins (it was super busy weekendOur server was sweet,kind and gave great drinks recommendations. Hot wings were great in taste. Although chips and salsa wasn’t that great. The outdoor fire place and seating was nice.

While I generally love coming here, and have been doing so for years, I felt it was time to write a review of how bad the service is. It’s like the staff are just some kind of collection of slow hipster robots that go about doing their job at a mechanically sluggish pace. No one ever seems to smile, welcome you with a warm friendly greeting, thank you for coming in, or engage in any kind of conversation to ask you about you, where you’re from, what brought you in, are you enjoying your experience, nothing. When you think of the Grand Rapids beer scene, Founders is a well established name. The beers are of quality not found much elsewhere in the country. The facility is great, the outdoor seating is pretty nice. The food is always fresh and good. It would just be nice if they could somehow motivate their staff to be more welcoming. I’m under the impression that all service staff share a collective tip pool. Maybe I’m wrong, but could that have something to do with it?

Met Wes and Robert from Founders at the Beer Festival in Dallas last weekend. They were so friendly and let us taste all their wares. My husband loves their All Day IPA - We always have a case in the fridge. Dont want to get anyone in trouble - but we have a cool new decoration for our bar! Thanks Wes!!!

Ive been here x2 so far the first time we got a sandwich and a salad both were fantastic and our server did a great job helping us decide what we wanted.Unfortunately the limited time raspberry shortcake may have been the most disappointing dessert Ive ever had at a restaurant. If you are going to serve something simple it has to be good and the biscuit.... the main ingredient was not good. I can easily make a better one using bisquick. Honestly I wouldve rather just gotten a cup of their cream some raspberries and the sauce. Pretty sad.

Founders Brewing Co is a very cool space with a fun upbeat atmosphere, great food and fantastic brews!When we arrived we were promptly greeted, but due to the amount of tables already filled inside, we were only offered a seat outdoor. We had hoped to be inside as it was chilly, but were pleasantly surprised by the warmth of the overhead infrared heaters. It made it comfortable and we were able to enjoy the outdoors which was actually great.The beverage selection was perfect and the food options were better than expected. The quality of the food we ordered was pretty amazing for a brewery and exceeded expectations.There are outdoor fire pits, multi level seating and a pretty impressive layout. The only thing that kept this from 5 stars was the service, which was pretty slow, but they were busy. I know there are staffing challenges everywhere these days and it is was really no worse than anywhere else these days.We did not know until after we were seated that there is a parking lot where they validate when you show your receipt. Parking on the street was very limited in the surrounding are the day we went, so this is good to know.

I don’t typically drink beer, but when I do, I want it to be good, and this was! Our server, Blake, was fantastic too! He asked what I liked, and then made recommendations. Not just for the beer; for the food too. The food and drink selection is great and there’s plenty of indoor and outdoor seating. I highly recommend this place. Plus, it’s a pretty historic place!

Great beer and the food was surprisingly good! Most breweries have a pretty standard selection and I was pleasantly surprised by the options that Founders had. The gift shop had some pretty fun goodies too!

I absolutely love Founders beers and it was a highlight of my trip going here in person. There is plenty of space inside, outside and they have 2 bar areas as well. Getting flights is definitely the best way to try their beers, as the options are plentiful!I highly recommend asking for the flight of their sours if you are trying to stay on the sweet and yummy side. Those wanting to grow hair on their chest, go for the barrel aged stuff. It’s basically straight up whiskey.Although everyone comes here for the beer, it would be a crime to not mention their exquisite pizza, this is honestly one of the best pizzas I have ever had in my entire life. I think they should consider branching out and getting into the pizzeria industry as well.There’s also a small little gift store where you can buy your favorite beer to take with you or maybe get your self a T-shirt.

This is an absolute must visit brewery for anyone who appreciates a good beer. They have a seemingly endless list of different beers. No matter what style of beer you like, youll find something to enjoy. The food menu is a bit small, and they lacked a dedicated kids menu, but ordering a few of their tasty appetizers made everyone happy. The place is massive, but I definitely recommend grabbing a seat on their patio if the weather is good. They also have a decent size store to grab all the swag you want. Service was super friendly, and our easier even brought us free samples without us even asking! Parking is free for a few hours with validation at the lot across the street, though spots can be limited when its busy.

We had an awesome experience here! We needed to wait a while outside before we could even get into the beer garden but they let us get drinks while we waited. We also checked in on the Yelp app to get a spot in line for a table inside to eat. They have a great assortment of beers on tap. We would recommend the Barrel Aged Quad Pro Quo, the All Day Vacay, and the Blushing Monk. The beer cheese dip and the guacamole were excellent but the best food item we tried was the Glutton sandwich. So good. Come prepared to wait but we would highly recommend this place!

Its ok. Visited during winter. Maybe would have been a better experience in summer months. Was expecting more of a dining experience. Definitely felt processed. Beer was great food and service avg.

My gf and I came here on a trip to west Michigan. After trying a few different breweries in the area Founder’s didn’t disappoint like the rest that day. Some unique beers on tap and a really relaxed environment made for a great experience.

This place has unbelievable beers and it is a must try for anyone who loves beer. Very cool atmosphere and the food is above average but you come here for the beer. They had 39 options when I was there and I had two flights of different styles and everyone was so well done. The brewers here are experts. Good thing I don’t live in Grand Rapids or I would be broke trying all their creations.