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.

High praise from a true Scotsman

We like it when people go out of their way to tell us how awesome we are. Dave O. sent us this email on Friday:

Guys, I bought a growler of Drafty Kilt at The Best of Brews on Thursday evening and I am going to have to get back tomorrow and get another. That is a great beer, and as a Scotsman who has only been over here for a few years, I feel particularly qualified to judge a scotch ale! And as a Scotsman who has worn a kilt many times, a drafty kilt is not normally a great experience. Keep up the good work guys, that’s an awesome ale.

Thanks Dave. You have quite the way with words.

Reflections after our first beer festival season

We survived our first beer festival season as “brewers” instead of “drinkers.” Though, truth be told, we were also drinkers. It was a fun, busy time with multiple events every week. In some ways, November feels like the calm after the storm. A cold, dark calm, but a calm, nonetheless. This cold, dark weather has got us reflecting some on our first beer festival season:

• We need a tent. August and October are hot months. And with my receding hair line, sunburned scalp isn’t a good look.
• The beginning of beer festivals are more fun than the end. At the end, there are usually a few beers that have run out (many times ours), and there’s much more stumbling and yelling. I’m not sure why.
• “Give me whatever beer is lightest” is the worst phrase in the world. While our Eye Patch Ale is technically the “lightest” beer we brew, it isn’t light compared to what most people consider light. Sure, it’s a pretty easy drinking IPA, but it’s no Coors Light. And we’ll never make a Coors Light.
• Joel shows up late for things. We already knew this. But now we know it even more so.
• We love beer festivals. It’s really fun interacting with folks, talking about our beers, and being outside. Oh, and drinking beer.

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.

Metal beer signs and the coming apocalypse

Metal beer signs. They are in bars everywhere. One would assume that they are actually a decent marketing tactic, given their prevalence. However, I have a hard time rationalizing the ROI myself. Have I ever bought a beer because I saw a sign up? I don’t think so. Have you?

The only thing I can figure is that it’s a good relationship building tactic for a brewery (or distributor) and the bar or restaurant receiving the free sign. And it obviously can’t harm your brand. Unless your metal sign is covered in STDs. Or explodes metal shards into someone’s face. Or causes the apocalypse. In these rare cases, a metal sign might hard your brand.

Regardless, there’s a pretty good possibility that we will need metal beer signs at some point. And with that in mind, we thought we’d start thinking about them. We’d like to start pretty basic before adding the razzle dazzle (lasers, smoke machines, 3D motorized pirates). So here’s a rectangular mockup of what a metal sign might look like.

This is a first pass, so we’d love any and all comments from you, our faithful reader. Thoughts?

Favorite beer slogan or branding element?

So I’m sitting here drinking a Dogfish Head Palo Santo Marron (quite good, by the way). I’m reading the description. The last few sentences go:

At 10,000 gallons each, these are the largest wooden brewing vessels built in America since before Prohibition. It’s all very exciting. We have wood. Now you do too.

Quite subtle, Dogfish Head. They really snuck that sexual reference in there. While this wordplay isn’t quite Monday Night’s style, it did get me thinking about little branding elements or slogans other microbreweries employ. Craft breweries generally have more free reign than most companies with this type of thing. Though Terrapin did mysteriously rename their Wake-N-Bake the Coffee Oatmeal Imperial Stout for no apparent reason.

Do you have any favorite phrases from craft beer branding?

Reflections on 2010

Four years ago, armed with only a turkey fryer and a few plastic buckets, we set out on a journey to launch a brewery in 2010. At the time, we knew very little about the brewing industry, so our timeline was meant to be far enough into the future to give us a chance to learn it, but not too far away as to make it easy on us.

With one day left in 2010, it is clear that we won’t quite make our goal. However, we are still aiming for an early 2011 launch and the pieces are slowly falling into place. One thing we underestimated when setting a timeline was how anal Jeff was. It has taken us the better part of 4 years to perfect 2 recipes. That is a lot of perfecting. Our Eye Patch Ale alone has gone through 20+ iterations, most of them with relatively minor changes, to get it just right. And we’re confident with our final recipes.

You may have noticed a slowdown in brewing operations lately. That is due in part with our confidence in final recipes, but also coincides with us ramping up other aspects of the business. Such as licensing. And banking. You know, the sexy stuff.

While we aren’t going to make our original 2010 launch goal, we are excited with how far we have come with year, and think the extra waiting is going to pay off. Thanks so much for taking this journey with us, whether you’ve attended on a Monday or simply read our blog from time to time. We really do appreciate it, and can’t wait for you to take the next step of our journey with us as well.

Stay tuned, exciting stuff is happening!