“Teamwork makes the dream work.” The popular hockey slogan still reigns true for retired goalie, Mike McKenna. After playing goaltender for 23 professional hockey teams, including nine NHL teams, Mike is reaching for a new dream.
He, along with fellow hockey player and Mia Rose Holdings founder Tom Kaiman and entrepreneur/restauranteur Jim Cook, is opening the St. Louis area’s first Macadoodles in Dardenne Prairie.
Since its founding in 1997 in Pineville, Missouri, the beer, wine and spirit retailer has grown to include 10 Missouri stores (Dardenne Prairie will make 11), along with stores in Springdale, Arkansas; West Siloam Oklahoma; and Omaha, Nebraska.
Macadoodles offers 2,700-plus different labels of wine from all over the world, with a wine tasting bar from open to close, seven days a week, as well as a huge selection of liquor, and some 400 different beers.
So where did the name come from? Mike says one of the founders was called “Mac.” The other was always doodling. So, Mac and Doodle became Macadoodles. The two came from Bentonville, Arkansas, “which at the time was a 'dry county,'” Mike says. “They had the foresight to open a liquor store just across the border in Missouri.”
Mike says he might miss his hockey days, but he looks forward to parlaying the same principals of hockey to the game of retail. “I miss stopping the pucks more than anything,” he says. “But a lot of things about the game transfer well. Like competitiveness. I wish I had a leader board that I could put up against every liquor store in Missouri.”
“And if you do anything at a level that I did, to be one of 60 people in the world playing goalie in the NHL, you have to be incredibly process-driven,” Mike says. “You have to be able to adapt to situations instantly.”