Lessons from a craft beer startup
Monday Night Brewing is still officially less than a year old. But in dog years, we’re like 5 years old. And the past 9 months have definitely felt like dog years. We’ve been overwhelmed by the reception to our beers and have been able to meaningfully outperform our initial projections. Like any startup, we’ve had some bumps in the road, and every new day brings another brand new, scary thing to learn.
We haven’t had the time or energy to blog as thoughtfully about our business as we did in the 5 years prior to our launch, but since I accidentally showed up an hour early to a breakfast meeting this morning, I figured I had some time. So what kind of lessons have we learned?
- Roll with it. I really hate cliches, so I won’t tell you that the only thing to expect is the unexpected (or did I just do exactly that?). But with Type A personalities running the show, you’ll find that one of the harder things to do is be flexible. Have a Plan A, B, and C. Have a Scenario A, B, and C. And know that none of those plans or scenarios will pan out.
- Put it all in perspective. Pouring your heart, soul, and capital into any one entity can give you a skewed perspective on life. It can make that one thing seem more important than anything else. But it’s not. Always remember what’s most important in your life – your family, your friends, your faith. Those things will keep you sane, but only if you devote time to them and appreciate them. I got married last year, and Jeff and Joel both had children (well, their wives did, if we want to get technical about it). Some days it can be difficult to remember to give those parts of our lives the attention they deserve. We find ourselves asking for forgiveness often.
- Get mediocre at everything, quickly. Whatever it is you have never done before in your life and have no interest in doing, that’s probably what you’ll need to learn in order to keep your business running. Accounting, sales, inventory management. These are all things I’ve had to take on. These are also things that I would rather not do for the rest of my life. And while I’ll never be a crack accountant or a star salesman, it’s better to be mediocre than incompetent. Or at least that’s the little theory I have…
- Don’t grow for growth’s sake. Don’t get me wrong, growth is great. Our economy could do some more growing. But it can be easy to run after that “Growth” carrot being dangled in front of you. Be intentional about why you are growing, what the end goal is, and if you can support that growth without alienating your current customers and distributors. One great book that has been influential to us as we think about the kind of business we want to run is Small Giants. Check it out. One of the examples is even a brewery.
- Obsess over the beer. We don’t regret spending 5 years on recipe formulation, or only have 2 beers in the market after almost a year. There are thousands of beer options these days, and hundreds of GOOD beer options. At the end of the day, our product is all we have. With something like beer, there’s no rush in being first to market, so take your time and get it right. Consumers these days know what they’re drinking.
- Be a nice person. Be friendly with the “competition,” whether that’s other craft beer folks, beer reps, or distributors. At the end of the day, we’re all in this together. Beer has so much potential as a beverage, and we’ll only get there if it’s all hands on deck.
Vehicle wrap: Round 2
Alright folks, we heard you. “Make the logo bigger.” It’s every brand’s dream to have feedback from their consumers saying “Make the logo bigger,” so we’re not complaining. Since we’re still in startup mode, this vehicle wrap is a relatively large investment for us, so we want to make sure to get it right. We’re also going to retool the back panel to make our logo more prominent, and put our website on the roof. But the big thing we need to figure out is the side of the vehicle. Here is the original, plus 3 alternates. We’d love your vote on your favorite, as well as any additional feedback you’ve got.
Sidenote: Option 3 was developed with the driver of our vehicle in mind, Gordon. He’s a fan of wizards, and like any craft beer loving man’s man, thought a pink unicorn might add a little “badass” to the car. True, there’s no Monday Night branding on the car per se, but maybe it’s worth it to give Gordon the chariot of his dreams.
Loading ...Insightful and/or irreverent feedback requested on our vehicle wrap design
We have the opportunity to wrap a 2006 Chevy HHR with our logo. “Opportunity” is perhaps an optimistic word, given that the HHR has been discontinued. Chevy claims that it’s because people weren’t buying them. Hopefully they’ll still buy beer that’s advertised ON them.
Still, we aren’t the kind of guys that look a gift horse in the headlights. So we’ve whipped up a design for our new chariot. We need to go to the printer soon, but we can still make some tweaks, so please let us know what you think!
P.S. Should we put anything on the roof? Do helicopter pilots and truck drivers deserve our love?
Tiny-handed bartenders need wait only a little longer for our small tap handles
We just received prototypes for our new smaller tap handles, made especially for bartenders with tiny hands. At 6.5″ tall, even the tiniest of hands should be able to wrap around this minuscule necktie.
We’re happy with the way we were able to texture these little guys. Obviously you have to be careful about the amount of information you try to cram on a smaller tap handle, but we think we struck a pretty good balance. Let us know if you feel differently.
Also let all your tiny-handed bartender friends know that relief is on the way soon.
Signs of a great business meeting
Empty beer bottles on a front porch are always welcome images after a successful business meeting. We met on Joel’s front porch last night to discuss the state of affairs after 2 months of “being official.”
While Joel kept trying to steer our conversation towards the latest Twilight gossip, we were able to fit in some good talks on strategy and what 2012 will look like. It’s been a whirlwind so far so it’s nice to be able to catch our breath a little bit.
By the way, you might notice the zebra-striped pillow case in the picture. That’s Joel’s.
Reflections from the other side: 4 Mondays in
We’ve been selling beer for 4 full Mondays. And after almost 5 years of careful planning, it’s been a crazy 4 Mondays. We haven’t yet had a chance to catch our breath, but I’m going to take a few minutes to outline some initial reflections in bullet-point format. Why bullet-point? So that it goes down easy, just like a Monday Night. BOOM.
- You guys drink too much. We are selling way more beer than we thought we would. That’s not to say we’re selling a TON of beer, but perhaps our initial projections were a little modest. Jeff’s hours spent slaving away in Excel are basically all for nothing.
- Beer is fun. Craft beer is a fun industry. The people are great. And if they’re not great, they’re at least interesting. So while we spend a lot of time on things like accounting, logistics, and talking to your mom, at the end of the day, we make and sell beer. You really can’t argue with that.
- Relationships are key. This is pretty basic, but even more apparent to us after a few weeks of sales. Without the strong relationships the three of us have formed, and the great relationships we have with our distributors and are forming with our retailers, none of this would be possible. The beer has to be great, but it can’t get to your pint glass without many, many people communicating along the way.
Full kegs of beer are a beautiful thing
Yesterday we kegged the first production batch of Monday Night ? both the Eye Patch Ale and the Drafty Kilt Scotch Ale. The sight brought tears to my eye. Partly because it was so beautiful to see them all lined up and ready to go, like kindergartners on their first day of school, but mostly because kegging is hard work. My back still hurts…
Look at those guys. Like puppies with their eyes still swollen shut, just searching for their mother’s teat. Okay, I’m going to lay off of that analogy before it gets too graphic. Here’s what the finished product looked like (only with way more kegs):
We’ll be announcing more rollout locations and some super special events early next week, so stay tuned!