Lake Oswego-based Stickmen Brewing plans to open its third and fourth locations in the Portland area in the next year.

The third will open in Happy Valley possibly in mid-January; then the fourth will welcome customers in Cedar Mill hopefully in April, said Tim Schoenheit, Stickmen’s principal owner.

Neither location will incorporate a brewery, but both will be based on the model that has proved popular in Tualatin, Stickmen’s second location, Schoenheit said. In Tualatin, the company added a 30-barrel production brewery, beer hall and wood-fired pizza pub in 2016.

The future locations, both about 2,500 square feet, will also operate as traditional coffee bars, opening at 6 a.m. Lauren Satterfield, Stickmen’s director of sales and marketing, said the coffee bar offerings would be more Italian style than American, serving pastries and frittatas.

Opening two locations at once — and three in five years — might seem ambitious, but Schoenheit appears to enjoy having a lot on his plate. He and his partners opened Stickmen Brewing, a brewpub with a big tap list and even bigger patio overlooking Oswego Lake’s Lakewood Bay, in 2012.

Schoenheit, who said his title includes beer-recipe creator, continued the bigger is better approach with a tap list that’s as eclectic as they come, offering hop-forward pales and IPAs alongside other pub styles, sours, Belgian styles, German-style and other lagers, barrel-aged beers, farmhouses and lambics. That practice continues to this day, with Lake Oswego offering 22 taps and Tualatin — and eventually Cedar Mill and Happy Valley — offering 24, with 60% being new recipes at any given time.

The patio, which is packed from summer to summer, has always been Stickmen’s bread and butter. But winters, which delivered a cold, wet patio, were different, Schoenheit said, and he struggled to get people in the door.

“The first few years, there were times I was like, Why? Why did I do this? No one was coming in,” Schoenheit said.

“But summers here have always been crazy, and winters have always been tough,” he added. “We would cram a bunch of people in here in summer, but service was mediocre and food waits were long.”

Then the pandemic hit, and it changed some things.

“COVID, for us, had a big silver lining,” Schoenheit said. “Last winter was actually better.”

Seating restrictions meant fewer customers. But it also meant faster turnover of tables and less payroll. And cabin fever brought people to the patio wrapped in sleeping bags, Satterfield said. They pared down the Lake Oswego menu from pub food to barbecue smoked on the patio — an option that’s conducive to takeout. The menu remains lean but flexible, depending on what’s available.

“It seems like the past year has been all about, oh OK, this happened now, and we’ve got to deal with that,” Satterfield said. “So that’s just how it is now.”

And in May, Stickmen added its own canning line. That has allowed it to do more self-packaging for distribution that reaches as far as Seattle, the San Francisco Bay Area, Central Oregon and the Oregon Coast.

The streamlined food menu has continued in Tualatin, which has done booming business since it opened and continues to grow, Schoenheit said. It’s inspired the confidence to expand.

“We initially decided to expand because the model we have in Tualatin — wood fired pizza in a simple counter service concept — was working so well and delivering great profitability. We were also looking at finding ways that were in our control to better utilize our production capacity,” said Schoenheit, who estimates each new location will go through 500 barrels a year.

Schoenheit attributes Stickmen’s growth to each location’s distinct qualities.

“Lake Oswego has always been about the patio. It is starting to change with our switch to barbecue, but the patio will always be the driving factor,” he said. “Tualatin works for all the reasons we want it to — great beer selection, amazing pizza, attentive staff, and a family friendly environment.

“I’m optimistic about our opportunities,” Schoenheit said. “We’re growing up as a company.”