The Founder of Portland’s Brewvana Bus Tour Has Sold Her Majority Stake to a National Brewery Tour Company

The founder of Brewvana, the Portland-based business that made it a whole lot easier to pub crawl thanks to its fleet of shuttles, has sold a majority stake of the company to a national brand called City Brew Tours.

Ashley Rose Salvitti, who started chauffeuring people from brewery to brewery herself in a single bus in 2010, said she made the move to devote more time to her family.

"I've been a 100 percent owner for nine years, and it's time to let someone else handle the business operations," she said in a press release. "I will still be a minority owner and plan to continue to lead tours––that's the fun part and the reason I started the company originally. I love introducing guests to our local craft creators."

Salvitti moved to Portland in 2007 after graduating from college in North Carolina. She quickly immersed herself in the local beer scene by snagging a job at Laurelwood and then Hopworks, where she continued to work after launching Brewvana in order to fuel the upstart and make ends meet. Now there are a handful of busses and multiple tours that explore more than just breweries, including those that introduce riders to Portland's coffee, spirits, cider and donuts.

City Brew Tours started in Burlington, Vt. in 2008 and now has operations in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and Baltimore. Current Brewvana employees will stay on under the new ownershipThe ownership transition will be effective Nov. 1.

Related: The Visitors.