Chicago's First License, Every Year

Just ahead, the restaurant that still holds Chicago's very first liquor license got its start not by serving alcohol at all, but by brewing beer with almost none in it.

Herman Berghoff opened this restaurant in eighteen ninety eight, after running a popular beer stand at Chicago's eighteen ninety three World's Fair convinced him the city wanted a permanent place to eat and drink. When Prohibition shut down legal alcohol sales across the entire country, Berghoff kept the business alive by brewing what was known as near beer, kept deliberately under half a percent alcohol, along with his own line of soda pop, while expanding the food menu to carry the restaurant through all fourteen dry years.

When Prohibition finally ended, the city rewarded that persistence. Herman Berghoff was granted Chicago's first post Prohibition liquor license, a symbolic honor marking the official return of legal drinking to the city. That original license still hangs behind the bar today, framed and preserved exactly as the city handed it over. The tradition did not stop with Herman either. Every year since, the city has made a point of issuing The Berghoff that same honor again, ensuring the restaurant always receives Chicago's first liquor license of the new year, before any other bar or tavern in the city gets theirs.

So the restaurant that survived fourteen years of Prohibition by selling something barely alcoholic at all now carries, every single year, the very first legal pour the city grants. Few places anywhere can claim quite that particular streak, renewed again each time the city hands out its licenses for the year ahead.