Moose's Tooth Pub and Pizzeria - and its sister establishment, the Bear Tooth Theatre Pub - is something of an Anchorage landmark, with more than 35 different pizzas, handcrafted ales and a customer base that seems to grow with each passing season.

Blame it on the food, but the place was packed even at 3 p.m. on a recent Thursday.

So how do they do it? Matt Jones, who co-owns the restaurants and brewery with business partner, Rod Hancock, said their success has been something of a fluke.

The pair met at the University of Washington in the mid-1980s. After graduation, they moved to Portland, Ore. Jones had lived in Alaska from the age of 15 until he left for college, and Hancock “had always wanted to see Alaska, if not move there,” Jones said. By the early 1990s, both were at junctures in their careers and were plotting their next move.

“We'd watched the brewpub scene really sort of blossom in the Pacific Northwest, so the idea started to solidify that we'd move up (to Alaska) and open some kind of brewery or brewpub,” Jones said. “But Alaska, especially at that time, was a completely different ballgame.”

The pair arrived in Anchorage in 1995 and immediately started trying to get a grasp on the regulations, outline a business plan and figure out how to fund the project. It wasn't easy, Jones admitted: “We had little to no capital, so we started out on a shoestring.”

They found an affordable space in an old power plant down near Ship Creek and shipped some dairy equipment they could use to brew beer up from Oregon. To fund the project, both Jones and Hancock worked odd jobs by day and focused on brewing by night.

“I can't tell you how many bottles we went through trying to come up with recipes that worked,” Jones said.

Even before they obtained a brewery lease, the pair knew they wanted to open an establishment that served both beer and food, but neither of them had any culinary experience. Hancock took it upon himself to create the perfect pizza.

“There was a lot of experimentation going on before we perfected the recipe,” Jones said.

Jones said their biggest challenge in those early days was coming up with enough capital to open a restaurant. They sold shares of the company to their friends and family, “which was difficult to do because it was completely unproven at that point,” Jones said. They also crammed three people into an 850-square-foot apartment “and lived hand-to-mouth just trying to survive.”

Moose's Tooth opened at its current location at 3300 Old Seward Highway in June 1996. The partners had been warned the location wasn't a good one, but Jones said it actually turned out “to be centrally located enough not to rely too heavily on one demographic. In our business plan we decided we didn't want to just cater to the brewpub beer-drinking crowd. We wanted to get families, couples, young people - and for our purposes, the location worked great.”

After the doors opened, the pair was tasked with hiring staff, transporting the product from the brewery to the restaurant and figuring out demand. Their advertising was done basically through word of mouth, Jones said.

“In that first year we were always surprising ourselves. The realization that this might actually work was always in hindsight,” Jones said. “It was all relative to how nervous we were owning a small business.”

In an attempt to capitalize on the success of the Moose's Tooth, the pair opened the Bear Tooth Theatre Pub in April 2001. Coming up with the menu, which features a mix of pizza, Mexican and American Southwest-inspired dishes, was a collaborative effort, Jones said. The theater shows second-run movies and features live musical acts.

“The music scene here was pretty abysmal when we opened,” Jones said. “There was no happy medium between the mosh pit scene and acoustic sit-down scene. We needed something between the Sullivan (Arena) and the Performing Arts Center.”

Staying ahead of the curve - whether it's beer, music or food - has been a key to their success, Jones said.

“When we opened, the brewpub concept had people scratching their heads,” he said. “Now it's still a challenge to keep it fresh and keep the customers enthused. We've seen businesses falter and fail because they've lost their freshness over time.”

The pair also credits their staff for the success, as several have been with the company since it opened.

“We knew when we opened that high employee turnover should be avoided like the plague,” Jones said. “We have health benefits, a decent meal program and 401(k). We also have a profit-sharing program in place. It's an incentive that brings out the best in our employees - they know if they work hard, it literally pays dividends.”

Jones said he and Hancock have toyed with the idea of opening another establishment, but they're concerned about spreading themselves too thin.

“The group of people we work with is the best part of this job,” Jones said. “I think a lot of us wouldn't want to work in another environment. We dictate the terms, so it suits us well.”