Home Court: How One Portland Bar Became a Movement 

Every TV in the restaurant was on. Not one was showing the women’s game. 

Jenny Nguyen and her friends had come to a Portland sports bar to watch the NCAA women’s basketball championship. When they asked, the bartender turned on a small monitor with no sound. The biggest game in women’s college basketball, playing in a corner of the room like an afterthought. The group spent the rest of that night talking about the bar that should exist. Nguyen decided to create it. 

At age 19, Nguyen had a promising future as an athlete. Basketball was her passion and had become part of her identity. She started playing at five and was instantly hooked. In high school she made varsity and showed enough promise to win a scholarship to a community college in the Pacific Northwest. Her parents, Vietnamese immigrants to the U.S., wanted her to be a doctor. Her heart was set on playing ball. 

Two weeks before her first freshman game, Nguyen tore the anterior cruciate ligament in her knee. In an instant, her dreams of being an athlete were put on hold. She fell into depression and grew homesick for her mom’s cooking, so she called home to get some recipes. The dorm had a communal kitchen and she started cooking for friends to take her mind off things. 

“My entire identity as a competitive basketball player was completely shattered,” Nguyen tells Beyondish. “Honestly, I felt completely lost. I turned to cooking because it gave me the same sense of home and comfort I used to find on the basketball court.” 

By her sophomore year she was passionate about cooking and decided to become a chef. Her family was slow to support the idea. Her dad had one piece of advice: get the ‘worst’ job in a restaurant and if she still loved the industry after a year, pursue it. She accepted the challenge, landed a job at a burger joint, and ran the fryer station. She loved the adrenaline rush. After college she moved back to her hometown of Portland, Oregon for culinary school and worked at local restaurants where she eventually became an executive chef. 

When the pandemic hit in 2020, like so many others, Nguyen found herself examining the direction of her life. She remembered that fateful night with her friends. She decided to take the risk and open a sports bar dedicated to women’s sports. 

Jenny Nguyen. Photo: Jade Hewitt, Media for Athletes Unlimited

It was an uphill battle. Nothing like it existed, so there was little support at the outset. Portland, meanwhile, was under intense national scrutiny because of the contentious political climate. But Nguyen felt her hometown was exactly the right place for it. 

“It felt like the rest of the world was looking at our city through a highly critical lens and writing it off,” she says. “But being born and raised here, I knew that wasn’t the case. Portland has always been a city of innovators, creatives, and deeply passionate community builders who aren’t afraid to try something new and support it.” 

She wrote up a business plan, and her culinary background grounded it. She already knew back-of-house operations, the tight margins and the long hours. But every financial institution she approached for a loan balked at the idea of opening a restaurant during COVID and turned her down. Plus, they said that nothing like it had been done before, which made it risky. 

Nguyen persisted. Within months she had found the right location in Northeast Portland. With a friend, she put together a Kickstarter campaign to raise money from the community. After a few articles created a buzz around her mission, she hit her $49,000 goal in nine days. 

The need to create a space for visibility kept her going. “I knew firsthand how exhausting it was to feel invisible as a sports fan, and I knew that if I gave up, that gap would remain,” Nguyen reflects. “The passion of the community and the belief that we deserved our own space pushed me past every obstacle and kept me moving forward when things got tough.” 

The Sports Bra opened in April 2022, and the menu came with nods to her background and to her family, which was now is in full support. 

Mom’s Baby Back Ribs pay tribute to her mother’s recipe: Vietnamese clay-pot-style pork caramelized in coconut milk and served over cabbage stew. It is the comfort food Nguyen taught herself in a dorm kitchen when her knee was wrecked and her future had gone quiet. The wings, chicken or cauliflower, come with a choice of preparation, including one based on a secret family recipe, aptly named Aunt Tina’s Vietna-Glaze.

Loaded fries at The Sports Bra.

 Nothing about The Sports Bra is incidental. Nguyen wanted elevated pub grub with vegan, gluten-free and dairy-free options. It was designed as a family-friendly room where anyone would feel safe walking in. That care extends past the door, too. The beer and spirits come primarily from women-owned businesses. At least one percent of proceeds go to organizations promoting access and inclusivity, according to Cherry Bombe, which named Nguyen its first Visionary Award recipient in its 2026 Power List. 

The response was overwhelming. The Sports Bra brought in more than a million dollars in its first eight months. The reception was validation: people wanted places built to celebrate women’s sports. As an athlete, Nguyen knew how little mainstream support it received.

“When young girls visit spaces where the only sports they see on TV are played by men, how are they going to have any reason to believe that there is a place for them in sports? I often think about myself as a 7-year-old Jenny when it comes to these things,” she says. “If I had a space where I could see women playing the sport I loved on TV, it would have just fueled my passion even more than I could have ever imagined. If kids walk into The Bra and see a future for themselves on that screen, then everything I have put into making this place a reality will have been worth it.” 

The movement is growing. Five U.S. cities have been announced for the first franchises: St. Louis, Boston, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, and Portland, Maine. The company says it aims to open 40 locations by 2030. Its community investment campaign, Own a Piece of The Bra, invited the public to buy in and has raised more than $1.2 million. A second and larger Portland location is underway, one that will double as a corporate headquarters and a training center for franchisees. 

Nguyen didn’t get the future she planned at 19, so she built a different one. Four years after her restaurant opened, the recognition has arrived and the investors are lining up. The bar has become a movement. Her story is a great example that sometimes the detour is the destination.