While many around the country are shrinking their maps and digging deeper roots—or just focusing on their taprooms—there are still local breweries out there with regional aspirations. One such is a 13-year-old North Carolina company that has blossomed outward from the arty neighborhood that is its namesake.
NoDa opened in 2011 on Charlotte’s North Davidson Street, cofounded by Suzie and Todd Ford and brewer Chad Henderson. With NoDa’s enduring local popularity and national reputation for quality—winning a Great American Beer Festival medal in its first year, a World Beer Cup gold in its third, and more medals since—local writers sometimes refer to NoDa as the “crown jewel” of their beer scene.
Along the way, the brewery opened two more locations—its North End production brewery and taproom in 2015, and its taproom in Concourse A of the Charlotte Douglas International Airport in 2018. (NoDa shut its original taproom in 2016, only to reopen it a few years later … before the pandemic closed it again. Thus, the brewery got to celebrate a grand re-reopening of its first taproom—dubbed the OG—in August 2022.)