Tag Archives: 33 Acres Brewing

37 Days Out …. Tasting Room Details

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With the changes to tied-house and the ability to have a tasting room and retail area within the brewery, there has been a paradigm shift in the way breweries in BC construct their operations. For a long time, many spaces just took a little retail area, cobbled together a small bar and sold their beer.  However, led by Main Street Brewing, Brassneck and 33 Acres, there is a new breed of tasting rooms that have fundamentally altered the model we are all following.

We have benefited from starting our brewery at a time when these tasting room areas are now allowed in Vancouver by-laws, and as such, we have focused a lot of resources and energy on building and designing this space.  We hope to make it everything we would want in a tasting room.  We have learned a few lessons along the way and it seems right to pass them along.  I have written posts in the past that relate to the tasting room, but this has the best nuggets of information in one place.

Some random thoughts on designing and building your tasting room:

  • Keep the cooler close to the bar, so your beer doesn’t have to travel a long distance to get to the tap.  Pretty self explanatory here.
  • Balance the area between tasting room and retail area.  We have a little retail area on both halves of the tasting room, which means our space seems a little bigger than it is in reality.  This might be a good thing some days and a bad thing on others.
  • Make sure your retail area and tasting room is a reflection of yourself.  Iain and I had a tough time with this, as we see things through pretty different lenses.  I am more modern and Iain is more traditional.  Our space, like our brand and everything else we do, is a amalgamation of both our opinions and preferences.
  • Plan out the flow of people.  Nothing worse than having a space that is hard to move around in when you are busy.  Think about bathroom locations, and also the layout of the retail area, and how it interacts with the bar.
  • Location, separation and number of tap handles for pouring the beer is super important.  We have gone with 2 sets, that Iain can tell you all the specifics on.  Essentially we had Bamford bar service install the lines and taps, and we followed much of their guidance on this.
  • Plan to spend a bunch of money in the tasting room.  The best way to save cash in this area is to do a lot of the work yourself and also to keep it simple.  We will end saving a lot of money, as we found salvaged wood from a few different places, and used materials from our job site in the construction of different parts of the tasting room.
  • Take your time planning the bar.  We went through this over and over on how to layout the bar.  Go see what others are doing, think about all the things you will need in a bar, and also how your space will function, down the to the last detail.  I am talking cash drawer, POS, line-ups, etc. etc.
  • Get a metal fabricator for stainless that is CSA approved.  We used a metal fabricator that is not, which is fine, except when it comes to putting in your sink, which you will need to find a metal fabricator to do that is CSA approved.

I am sure I could find a lot of other things that may or may not be worthy of putting onto this list, but this seems pretty good for now.  I am pretty tired, so need to get some sleep.  We are looking at a crew of about 3 guys 8-10 weeks to finish our tasting room.  That is a lot of work, time and energy they have expended, which also means it is expensive, so try to get everything right you can the first time.

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38 Days Out … Boiler Installation and Inspection

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Don’t drop the ball on this!  There are a lot of details and a lot that has to go right.  Most importantly, don’t overlook the cost on this.  When you look to purchase a boiler, expect a good chunk of change.  I believe our boiler cost about $13,500 which is only part of the cost.  Installation of the boiler can be almost double the cost of the boiler.  A few best practices that may or may not help you:

  • Get the right size boiler for your operations:  Anything too small or too big will give you headaches, additional cost, take up too much room, not have enough/too much power, etc.  This takes some planning, projecting and ultimately guessing at the end of the day.  We ended up getting a bigger space, so we figured we needed a bit bigger of a boiler to handle future production (we hope!).
  • Put it close to where you need the water:  At first I didn’t understand why Iain wanted to put our boiler so close to the brewhouse, as it was in an awkward spot.  Having seen all the pipes and connections a boiler has, and the incredibly thick gauge of pipe connected to it, put the boiler as close to the brewhouse as you can.  The further away you put it, the dollars and cents will quickly add up.
  • Pre-Inspections are important:  We had a company come in and do a pre inspection to make sure we were putting it the correct distances away from other objects, it was positioned right, and we would be able to get our eventual inspection passed.  This was money well spent as they gave us some good advice that helped us down the road.  On their advice, we ended up rotating the boiler 180 degrees and thank god we had them tell us this, as otherwise, we would have failed our inspection and re-connect all the pipping at a huge time and financial cost
  • Inspection required before you fire it up:  Before you can’t start using your boiler, and that means start cleaning and sanitizing your equipment, until you pass your inspection.  Period. So make sure your boiler is ordered, delivered and installed well ahead of time.  If not, you will be leaving no margin of error

So that is my little advice on a boiler.  Our mechanical contractor Nathan Pulice was incredible throughout this process, but especially for us during the boiler install.  I would highly recommend for anyone who needs any mechanical, plumbing, HVAC, etc to contact him … especially if you are starting a brewery in Vancouver as he has superior knowledge about everything.  Nathan can be called reached at (778) 227 8219 or visit his website here http://www.meridianplumbing.ca.

Tomorrow I will talk about finishing of the front of house.  There is a lot of navigation required for this, and a few best practices to share.

39 days out …. The beginning of the home stretch

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Its about time we can say this:  We are now in the home stretch!  Man-o-man that feels good, as this process has really dragged on  …  What I have come to realize is there are many challenges to opening a larger than average brewery, and while it will work out for us in the long term, it has made both Iain and I much more grey!  We also understand that bigger breweries are usually the domains of big companies and investment groups, as cash gets sucked up pretty quickly on a million and one things.

So we are about 39 days from opening, and the list of things to do is immense, not the least of which is blogging to help everyone prepare for this step in their process.  Trust me, you will be tired, tired or being tired, broke, tired of being broke, looking at a to do list about 100 things long, anxious about the beer you will make and if everyone will like your brand, hopeful that you get good reviews, and most importantly enjoying the most amazing ride of your life.  Both Iain and I find that we don’t celebrate our little victories enough, and it is something I would suggest you do at every stage of the process.  There are many milestones in the road to starting a brewery, and take each one in stride.

From here on out, I am going to try and write a blog post every day, so I can highlight some of the details in the home stretch and what that means to you.  There are a lot of details to come together in the very end, and hopefully by sharing these bits of information, you can prepare for the end of the job, which is the most important part of things.  Getting sloppy here can give you bad beer, poor marketing, less than ideal staff, and a host of other issues you never thought possible.  But have no fear, there is no rocket science involved in things … just hard work and strategic decision making.

 

An Uncomfortable Decision

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Throughout the process of starting any business, you learn quickly to deal with unforeseen circumstances on a regular basis.  Things like missed deliveries, unexpected costs, delays by a government body, missing parts, etc.  Recently we had one of the biggest curveballs sent our way, from the most unlikely of places.  Our Structural Engineer who has been working with us a lot lately, just had a heart attack.

For starters, we wish him all the best in his return to health.  Having worked as a pharmaceutical salesperson, I have learned the effect ill health can have on a persons physical and mental well being.  It can effect different people in a number of ways.  So we wish our engineer all the best in getting back to health after such a traumatic experience.

Let me give you a little context to the situation.  A structural engineer is pretty important on most any building process, as there are lots of decisions to be made around making sure big components are sound.  Things like; making sure our floors are structurally sound, the grain hopper is fastened to the building properly, connecting the new curbs to the old concrete slab properly, and making sure the walls and ceilings are properly built so they can handle a heavy load …. you get the idea.  So having someone that understands your project, and someone that works within your timeline is key.

More importantly, when you are at the point our brewery build-out is right now, a structural engineer and their work is critical in moving things ahead.  For instance, there is a list of about 10 things that our engineer is working on, and without his guidance and advice, we can’t make any progress.

Let me now recap a few of our issues with our engineer and you will see why we need to make such an uncomfortable decision.  We picked our structural engineer about 6 months ago, and like a lot of decisions we make, it was based on personality, a referral and price.  He was not from a company or firm, rather just a guy who works on his own … he is the only employee.  Early in the process of things, he gave us some advice, and it seemed very good and we looked forward to working with him on things.

Fast forward to the day we took possession:  February 1st, 2014.  All of a sudden we needed our engineer to start producing some drawings and work for us, but our emails and calls went unanswered.  We reconnected with our architect over this, and they handled things, allaying our concerns and repointing everyone in the right direction (they are good at this).  As our general contractor kept sinking his teeth into the building of our brewery, he had more and more questions for the structural engineer.

He put these questions to the engineer on a regular basis for the next month, until about the beginning of April, when we really started to worry about not getting drawings and answers on what exactly he was supposed to be doing with certain parts of the brewery.  This time we contacted the engineer directly to tell him our concerns.  He gave us a few small little answers, but nothing concrete.  Fast forward to the last week of April, and it was now critical to get answers.  We needed to know about drain construction, floors, connecting old cement with new, etc., and we still didn’t get or have any answers.

A meeting was planned at the end of April to discuss what we needed, and how urgently we needed it, and it went amazingly well.  The engineer agreed that he was late in getting stuff to us, and promised we would have this information for last Friday.  We felt really good about things and moved forward with a positive attitude.

You can probably see where this is going.  Last Friday came and went, and we received nothing. We were pretty disappointed to say the least.  The bottom line is that we need these drawings for work that is getting done right now, and without them, we are opening ourselves up to major problems.  The biggest of these is a delayed opening, which means we will loose even more money in our first year.

Well the news got even worse on Monday morning, as we learned that this engineer had a heart attack and was in the hospital.  And since he is from a company of 1, there was no way to get anything he has done.  So what would you do?  Do you show compassion and wait for him to get out of the hospital, and let him finish the project …. or do we move in a different direction, avoiding any further delays.  We ground our teeth on this one, but as of yesterday we have moved on with a new structural engineer.

In one way its good, as we get a fresh start with someone who hopefully be a little more proactive on getting things done.  Moreover, in our initial consultation he gave us a lot of really good information and advice, something we didn’t get from our last engineer.  In the another way, moving on with someone else is bad.  We have lost all the work that he completed, there is definitely going to be some bad blood over the bill and invoice for work he has done, but not delivered to us on, and we feel bad kicking him when he is down.

At the end of the day, we need to move this process forward now.  So waiting for our engineer to heal and get better, while the right thing to do, is not something we are doing.  We do wish our contractor all the best, and we hope to recovers and gets back on his feet ASAP.  This is just one of the harsh decisions you have to make when starting a business, one that kind of makes you uncomfortable.

 

General Contractors and Sub-contractors

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One of the most important decisions you can make is around construction of your brewery.  Do you want to have a general contractor guide the process, or do you feel like you have enough time and energy to take the lead on piecing together the build-out?  Depending on your skills, the amount of time you have, your preference for this kind of thing and most importantly your budget, your decision may already be made for you.

We decided to work with a general contractor, Graham Disher of Disher Contracting.  The process for looking to team with a contractor was relatively painless, as at the end of the day, we decided to work with someone that was willing to work with our constraints.  In other words, we are able to offer some ownership shares in lieu of having to raise the money and then pay it as a fee.  In fact, because craft beer is growing so much right now, you could take this approach with many of the different trades that come through your space, and you would be able to do well for yourself in foregoing fees.

At any rate, Graham was also a good choice for more than just his willingness to work with us.  He had the time to dedicate towards our project, he has good experience that will serve us well in various aspects of the buildout, he was trustworthy (and he has continued to show us that), and what he doesn’t know, he goes about learning in a quick and positive manner.  When you add all these things up, we felt good about teaming with Graham Disher, and we would not hesitate to recommend him for your brewery (once he is finished ours of course).  Get in touch with me if you want to be connected, as he is one of those contractors who is too busy to worry about a website and all that.  In other words, he is hard to find online.

Back to the process of looking for a general contractor.  We met with 4 different GC’s after tossing around the names of about 12 or 15 that were passed our way or in our “rolodex”.  The 4 we met with all had experience, but were all at different stages of their business life cycle.  One company had been around for about 30 years, another just a couple years.  When you meet with these companies you take a list of questions, usually around the process of working with them, budgeting, who is on job, costs, estimates for work, their ideas for your job, experience in this field, etc.  When you start asking questions you will clearly see that there is a big difference in how each of these guys run their business.  Everything from their presentation, to how they budget, when they invoice, what jobs they sub-out, and so on.

What we came to was a list of pro’s and con’s for each contractor, which you then weigh against all the other factors.  Big ones for us include:  What is their mark-up, when could they start, who is going to be site supervisor, how much time are they going to dedicate, how many other jobs do they have, what is their crew like, what is their vision for the project,  what is their timeframe, what are the biggest challenges and how will they overcome, how are they with change … you get the drift.

As for subcontractors, this is really a 2 step process.  The first is to meet with various sub trades that are going to be important to your job.  Likely you will meet with electrical and mechanical  trades people.  You will also do this with the help of your general contractor.   The first objective of meeting with them is to understand what changes you can make to your plans to save money, while at the same time meeting with them to understand who is going to be the best fit for your project.  We met with 4 or 5 electrical and 4 or 5 mechanical contractors.  That allowed us to get some feedback and gauge who was going to work within our constraints the best.  Usually you are basing discussions off a set of drawings that aren’t yet complete.

Hopefully soon after this you will get some IFC drawings for the build-out, and then you can distribute to the 2 or 3 sub-trades that you think would be the best fit.  Once you get the estimates back, you can play them however you like, to try and get a better deal and position the job in the best position for your interests.  For us, number one was not money believe it or not … it was time.  Who could get started and complete the job (in other words, who could dedicate the most manpower to this job) in a fair period of time.  Second was money for us.  Of course all the companies we met with had the proper experience and were keen to be a part of this … that was just standard.

We picked our Electrical Contractor – Clear Energy Solutions.  They have solution in their name for a reason.  They offered us great advice on what to change and what could be streamlined to save money and time.  I would highly recommend these guys to  be at least a part of the bidding process.

We picked our Mechanical Contractor – Nathan from Meridian.  They are a great outfit that has experience in residential and commercial work, they were willing to work with our timeline and they were excellent on price.  I would also recommend these guys to anyone else for all their mechanical needs.

If you want more information on any of this stuff, let me know and I would be happy to add to the information I have put out there.  Bottom line, there are lots of great companies and lots of bad companies and general contractors to work with, just make sure you take your time to make the right choice.  Saving a little money won’t seem worth it if you have to spend extra time on a project.

Floorplan Update and Best Practices

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Some of you may have come across a story written by Greg Clow of Canadian Beer News.  If you live in Canada and you are serious about beer, you should be checking his website on a regular basis.  Click here to link with our story and Canadian Beer News.  His article focused on Strange Fellows operations and what our full floor plan will look like when complete.

I have included both the layout we have moved forward with as well as the side profile of the space, so you can get a sense of the way our operations will look.  Not unlike anything else we put out there, things will change somewhat as we move ahead; however, 90% of what is on paper here will be represented in our build-out at the space.  Once you commit to submitting building, electrical and mechanical permits, you are also committing to what you have on paper.  So in other words, the size of a window in our tasting room that overlooks the brew house may get bigger, but we have committed the location for the bathrooms, the trade waster interceptor and the trenches.

Brewhouse Layout March 2014

Brewhouse Profile March 2014

We have allocated a total of $12,500 for permits throughout this process.  I have blogged about them a little bit under The Process of Starting a Craft Brewery, subcategory X:  Government Stuff.  There are lots of permits you need and getting them all in a timely manner is important.  To be honest, the process of preparing for permits and approval is one of the keys to getting this process right.  In short, for your business to move forward you need to submit for your permits in a timely manner, with information that is well thought out, thorough and correct.  Changes or missed steps here will cost you down the road.  Read more about permits at the page linked above (and I will add more details in the next week).

Anyhow, coming full circle here, our floor plan was a real labour of love.  Like any decisions you make with a partner, there is give and take.  However, when you add in an architect, mechanical and electrical engineers, a general contractor and your finances, you get a mish-mash of opinion and information.  You can never make a decision without effecting every other decision you have made in the past, and every other decision you will make in the future.

Some of the keys when creating a floor plan are as follows:

  • Keep everything as central as possible.  The longer runs you have for any electrical or mechanical, the more cash you will bleed.  For us, moving our main electrical panel 10 feet saved us $3,000.  So you can see that small changes can make a big difference.
  • Plan for the future, but prioritize getting to day 1.  It is important to think a couple of steps ahead here, at least that is what I have heard from other breweries, but don’t lose sight that you need to get to day 1.
  • Look to save money at every step.  Ok, maybe you are better at this than I am, but we are in full cash saving mode, and we feel like we have been for a long time.  Any chance we can save money on something, we are doing it.
  • Tasting room and Retail area.  A huge part of all these breweries starting up in Vancouver is the ability to sell your products from your business.  It takes what was once an impossible task, and makes it so much more realistic of an opportunity.  So make sure you design a space that works for your brewery.  For us we wanted something intimate, open to the brewery, and simple.
  • Work with sub trades early in the process.  You don’t have to pick who you are working with, but bouncing plans off them will give you real world answers to questions you have.  It was also help you find savings and efficiencies in your space.
  • Another dilemma on decisions.  You can have things done quickly, you can have things done for your budget, and you can have things done inline with your dreams, but at best you will get 2 of these things, but most of the time you will only get 1 of these things.  What will you pick?
  • Call the room where you mill your grains a “grain cracking room”.  Trust me on this one, it will save you a bunch of headaches at the City
  • Depending on if you are focusing on production or focusing on tasting room/retail sales, your layout may be different.  For us, we are a production brewery first, so the layout and design of the space tried to take this into account as much as possible.  Process workflow, material in and material out, future expansion are all important to us, and are reflected in our space.
  • Keep your cooler close to the tasting room.  Iain has so much experience with this kind of thing, that he is adamant that these 2 things need to be connected.  He talks about the shorter the run of lines, and being able to connect our taps to tanks instead of kegs will save us heaps of time.

What really gets us excited about our space is the connection between the tasting room and the brewery.  When you are sitting in our tasting room, you will quite literally be 10 feet away from the brewhouse.  Want to watch Iain add hops to a brew, just sit back enjoy your beer and watch from your perch.  You will also be able to have a first hand view of the barrel storage area, which we think is a really cool thing.  We also think the art gallery will add a nice connection to the local community, and we hope the growler and retail area will have good process flow so as to not back-up too much.

As I have always said, Iain is really good with this kind of thing, so if you have questions about how to lay your brewery out, feel free to contact us.  At the end of the day, follow your instincts on the way things should be.  Whether you have experience with this kind of thing or not, make sure you follow what you would want as a consumer.  You will deal with enough people along the way that aren’t into craft beer (like contractors, architects, etc) that their opinion will help to balance yours out.  Stay positive and you will find the way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A Crushing Day for Us ….

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Well, the last 36 hours has been full of angst on behalf of both Iain and myself.  We finally received a detailed budget from our general contractor, and to put it bluntly, we are going to be way over budget on building our brewery.  It is an extremely bitter pill to swallow, especially after the increases we have made throughout this process to our budget.  At the end of the day, we are building a much larger brewery than we anticipated, and with a larger brewery comes bigger costs.

When I look back at my old copies of the business plan, I have to chuckle to myself as I once thought the retrofit of a warehouse, not including equipment, was going to cost about $400,000.  I look at that number and can’t help but think how naive I was.  That is both a good thing and a bad thing.  If I knew how much this endeavour was really going to cost I might have passed on following this particular dream.  I thought the $400,000 was enough to put up some walls, trenches, upgrade power, and put all the equipment in.  Boy was I wrong.  This was about 2012 when I was really starting to get into planning this brewery

Fast forward to late 2012, and after much encouragement from other brewery owners that I met with, we increased this amount to about $550,000.  In my mind, this was an increased of about 30% over my initial budget, and I thought this would be plenty.  But as you learn more about what is required to retrofit a warehouse, the number keeps getting chipped away.  All of a sudden, the additional money that came with a bigger budget seemed to have disappeared.

Fast forward again to early 2013, and it was time to increase the retrofit budget again.  It just seemed impossible that with tasting rooms and their pending approval, along with the realization of additional costs with most spaces, that we could retrofit a space for any less than about $650,000.  At the time, this seemed like a good number, and even included a sprinkler upgrade and water line upgrade.  We figure we would be free and clear, so we charged ahead with this number in our mind.

It was at this time we started to inquire with investors about financing our brewery.  We based many assumptions on this cost, including how much we needed to raise from angel investors.  $650,000 seemed like our golden ticket to get everything we wanted.  So we charged on and hoped that we could what we wanted for this amount.

Then in the summer of 2013 we found what would eventually become our warehouse.  It was bigger than we really needed, but it gave us an excellent location, and most importantly a great landlord that wanted a brewery in his building.  We had our architect in, a couple contractors, some sub trades, engineers, etc and they all pointed to a retrofit cost of about $725,000, depending on a lot of things, such as electrical upgrade and flooring.  I have written about these items in the past, and they were huge uncertainties with out space.  So we moved forward with a newly increased budget of about $725,000 for a retrofit.

So fast forward to this week.  We met with our architect and general contractor to discuss the quotes they have received from sub trades (like mechanical contractor, electrical contractor, concrete slab specialist, etc) and also the budget from our general contractor on all the little things that make up our brewery.  All of this information, along with our wishes and desires, was put into a spreadsheet and at the very bottom of a huge excel file, there sat what was the anticipated retrofit cost of our brewhouse.  The total estimated cost for our retrofit was (drum roll) …. $925,000. 

It is hard to put into words what was going through my mind when this was presented.  It was like someone kicked me in the stomach …. and then kicked me again.  It was awkward for our architect and our contractor, as they could see that what I had believed and what I had assumed was wrong.  I must have looked like a deer in headlights.  Even now, I am fully consumed by frustration and anger that I just can’t seem to shake.  How is it possible that I ever thought $400,000 was enough?  It just seems plain old absurd!

We are so deep into this process, so far down the road, that there is no option but to find solutions.  For starters, it is very likely that the tasting room will have picnic tables and used chairs, be lacking any real artwork and design aesthetic, and have very little “extras” that other tasting rooms might have.  We have also had to dial back a few optional pieces of equipment that we hoped to have for the brewery.  Essentially, there will be a cascade of changes that are mostly out of our control, in addition to some extra cash that we need to raise from investors.

If I could pass some information onto others, I would make note of the following costs you might be looking at:

  • Electrical Upgrade – $75,000 and up
  • Mechanical – $125,000 and up
  • Tasting Room – $50,000 and up
  • Labour costs – $100,000
  • Development and Building Permits – $10,000
  • Concrete – $25,000 and up
  • Boiler and Installation – $35,000
  • Contingency – Easy 10% of your budget
  • Architect Fees – $25,00 and up
  • Engineer Fees – $20,000 and up
  • Management Fee (from General Contractor) – Cost plus 10%
  • Epoxy Flooring – $15,000 and up

Of course there is a long list of other small items, and they have all creeped up in cost, as we have a 9,000 square foot space.

In another few months, I will be sure to post all of our business plan online, so you can see for yourself what all the details in starting a brewery are.  For now, just know that what you think things will cost, will likely double from your initial estimates.  Just hope and pray that you have way more money than you need, or at least a network of people who would be able to offer some financial support to your business.

I hope to have some answers to our dilemma early next week, and I will pass along any notes I have on how to find savings in a budget that doesn’t seem to have a lot of wiggle room.

 

The End of One Dream …

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How do you thank someone for the ultimate sacrifice?  OK, we aren’t talking giving up a kidney, or sacrificing their own life in the line of fire, but my amazing wife has provided me with the means to start this brewery.  Thats right, starting this brewery is taking sacrifices from more than just myself and my business partner.

Let me give you a little context.  There is nothing my wife has wanted more over the past 5 years than to build a home.  A place to have memories, raise our family and get away from the daily grind that is our life.  We both envisioned the process as an arduous one, but at the end of it, you would have a home that you helped bring together.  It was her dream, and we worked hard to make it happen.  We bought a piece of land about 3 years ago with the dream of building our home …

Let me take a further step back.  About 10 years ago, I started talking to friends and family about the dream of opening a brewery.  Thats right, this has been a 10 year process for me.  In a way I have become the definition of patience (and for anyone that knows me, this in itself is a little hard to believe, but thats another story).  For the first 4 years, it was a lot of business planning, sampling, and more planning.  The dream seemed very far away  About 6 years ago, I started to get more serious and decided to get my real estate licence, allowing me the time to get out of my full time job, and focus a little more time on my brewery, as being a Realtor allows for a healthy dose of flexibility.  I ended up parting ways with my job in 2011, and have been focusing on real estate and starting a brewery for the past 3 years.  As time has moved on, I have kept getting more and more serious.

So back to 3 years ago, when my wife and I purchased a property for developing.  We purchased knowing that my brewery dream may or may not come together (it has been 7 years that I was talking about it with no progress after all), so we just went with it, and hoped things would work out.  As you can imagine, we followed down both paths simultaneously and didn’t try to overthink much of anything.  My wife hoped that things would work out with her dream of building a house, while I hoped that things would work out with my dream of starting a craft brewery.

You can imagine where this headed.  About 6 months ago we subdivided our property and were finally in a position to think about building our dream home on one lot and selling the other.  This was a moment that we waited for about 20 months to happen, so it was a great moment for our family.  It was about the same time that things with our landlord got very serious for the brewery space.  We made an offer on our commercial space for the brewery, and we were finally in a negotiation with a landlord.  You see, we had tried unsuccessfully for 12 months to lease spaces, and never got to the point of actually being in negotiations.  The process with this landlord was going so well that we applied for a development permit (what you need to get to be allowed to produce beer … a key step to say the least) with the City of Vancouver before we had a lease in place.

Not knowing how all this would go, we continued forward with the dream of building on our property.  We continued to meet with an architect, and we moved forward house plans to the point where we were ready to build.  We just needed to sell one of the lots and we were ready to start building on the other lot.  Selling anything in the last 4 months of 2013 was difficult, especially a property like ours.

Fast forward to very early January 2014.  We finally found a dance partner for one of our properties.  This meant we could sell a property and begin building on the other.  However, it was also in January that we knew we were going to sign our lease.  So it meant my 2 worlds were colliding and we had no certainty with which to make a decision.  Essentially, do we move forward with selling only one property and hope that we can find a way to finance building a house on the other property, all the while, financing a significant part of the brewery.  If you have been following my blog, you know that I always think Cash is King, so it would be so tough to do both.

At the end of the day, after a lot of tears, arguing, and selfishness to be completely honest, my wife and I agreed to follow the dream of starting a brewery.  The time and financial burden of building a home, in addition to the time and financial burden of starting a brewery proved too much for us to handle.  So we decided to sell both halves of our property instead of just one half, allowing our family to focus on my dream, and bringing to the end another dream.

Think about it from the standpoint of my wife.  Every time I talk about the brewery, I stay up late or get out of bed early, every time we write a cheque to pay for something, every time some asks how things are coming along, and every time I come home to our rental house, my dream is at the expense of satisfaction in her life.  People ask me about the brewery and I get excited, and when people ask Deanne about building a house, she just sees my dream, at the expense of hers.  When people ask what has been the hardest thing about starting a brewery, it is this.

So, to come full circle, I hope one day to be a brewery owner and build my wife a house of her dreams.  It might be a few years before his happens, but I do plan on returning the favour to her for the sacrifices she has made for me.  I can’t think of a more selfless person, and for this I am forever indebted to her.

My amazing wife has given up her dream of building a home on our property, allowing me to start a craft brewery. Her sacrifice is the ultimate and one that will allow me to stat a craft brewery.

My amazing wife has given up her dream of building a home on our property, allowing me to start a craft brewery. Her sacrifice is the ultimate and one that will allow me to stat a craft brewery.

Tasting Room Feedback Please

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We are in the middle of planning the exact layout and functionality of our tasting room for the brewery.  There are a lot of variables that go into the fit and finish of the space, not the least of which is the experience of all our supporters/patrons.  A close second would be the amount of money we have left over at the end of this process to finish the space.  As such, and likely because you have more experience than anyone visiting tasting rooms in Vancouver and beyond, we want your feedback and help so that we build a functional, interesting and immersive space the first time around.

So given this, please pass along your feedback.  You can send it directly to me at startingacraftbrewery@gmail.com or you can post a comment below.  I want to know everything!  The good, the bad and the ugly on anything and everything.  If you need some help with what we are looking for, here are some items we are looking to get feedback around (don’t feel limited by my list, you can push any information you think is relevant our way):

  • How much separation between tasting room and brewery: Brick wall, no wall, or glass window, etc.
  • What kind of seating do you want:  Bench, smaller tables, long communal tables, bar seating, lots of standing room areas, etc
  • Do you want TV’s?
  • What do you want to see on the walls?  Artwork, Descriptions of the brewery equipment?
  • What works and doesn’t work in a growler fill area?
  • Would separate bars for Growler and Tasting Room sales be a good thing?
  • What are best practices for growler fill areas?
  • What is the average price of growler fills and pints in the tasting room out there?
  • What kind of food would you want to see on a menu given there would be a very limited kitchen?
  • Would you want pre-filled growlers so you could just switch your empty out for a new one, making your stay very quick?
  • What would your expectations be around brewery tours?
  • Do you care about the details/finishing of the space?  Concrete floors OK, if we are broke are picnic tables OK, etc?  In other words does a tasting finished like P49 matter versus one finished like 33 Acres?
  • Anything else come to mind?  I want to hear it.

So that is it.  In the future, we are likely going to hold another focus group on a bunch of stuff around our space, and what we learn from your feedback now will help set the stage for that.  Thanks for our help and feedback, it means more to me than you can imagine.

Making an Offer and Finding the Right Brewing Space

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Well its official, we have made an offer on a space in East Vancouver.  This will be our 5th property that we have made an offer on, and I hope that its 5th time lucky.  My friends who know me well, and have been kept abreast of the past 3 or 4 years of this process, are the ones who encouraged me to start this blog, as there always seemed to be so many ups and so many downs throughout the process.  None more than finding a space to call home!

In my opinion, the biggest and most important decision a brewery can make is the space you lease.  Sure other decisions are important:  Like, the name of your brewery, the beers you make, the employees you hire, the way you disperse your cash, and the image you present to the marketplace.  But what I have learned is the space you are going to be married to, for better and for worse, is the most important decision you can make.

For starters, finding a good space for brewing is difficult as the list of requirements is long, making an ideal space unique.  You benefit from having high ceilings (18 feet is ideal), a good water supply, good floors for taking the load of full fermenters, about 400 amp/3 phase power, and solid overhead loading doors.  If the list were limited to just these items, the search would be difficult in itself.

But lets not forget some of the other key items in a warehouse that are important in starting a brewery.  In Vancouver, M2 Zoning is the only commercial zone where brewing is an outright use.  All the other zones (for instance I1 and I2) are conditional use, which means you need to apply for a Development permit from the City of Vancouver.  This costs about $5,000 and takes anywhere from 8 to 16 weeks.  I heard Brassneck took 16 weeks, and I have heard rumours that Bomber brewing got their DP in 8 weeks.  Most importantly, you can’t apply for a development permit until you have a signed lease on a space.  That means you have to take a giant leap of faith you will get a development permit.  Why you ask?  Well inEast Vancouver good quality commercial real estate is so hot, and you likely won’t deal with a landlord who will let you have getting a development permit as a subject of the offer.

The list doesn’t end there …. Another key component is the size.  Small breweries need at least 2,000 square feet, and the size can go all the way up from there, depending on how ambitious the brewery is for sales.  I think a space of about 6,000 square feet seems good for starters, but it comes down to how much beer do you think you will sell?  Will you follow the path of Storm Brewing, and have sales that are modest, and keep the operation small?  Or do you plan on having higher sales, like Parallel 49 Brewing, thus requiring more space for production?  Like everything, there is a direct correlation between the size of the space you lease, and the risk an owner takes.

With the new Tied-House rules in the City of Vancouver, another huge aspect is the Tasting Room and Retail Area within the brewery.  It is hard to explain to people how oppressive the bureaucracy is when starting a brewery, and the ability to have a tasting room on site is huge bonus. It not only allows for a tangible connection with consumers to gauge their opinion and interact with, but it also helps to add a few dollars in sales to the bottom line of a brewery.  As such, the location of your warehouse, along with the design, aesthetic and interactivity with the brewery is huge.

The last big point that comes to mind is scalability of the space.  It costs about $500,000 to retrofit a space for brewing.  In other words, this whack of cash goes to upgrading power, floors, water, pipping, cooler/cold room, installation of brewhouse, offices, tasting room, grain handling, etc, etc, etc.  You essentially never get this money back, as its an investment you make in the landlords building.  Hence, its important that you find a space that works now, but also for 5 and 10 years down the road, as you need to avoid having to move spaces because you have outgrown your current facility.  This is of course a good problem to have, but at the same time, its important to be mindful of this fact.

There are obviously other factors like the quality of the landlord, the neighbourhood you locate in, the look and feel of the space, and the lease rate you pay.  All of these items go into making a space for brewing difficult.  However, if patience and an ability to pounce on the right space when it comes available are kept at the front of everything, it is possible …. just ask 33 Acres and Brassneck who both did very well with their spaces.

I hope today is the first day in securing the right space for my brewery.