Tag Archives: craft beer BC

Finish of the Tasting Room

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So I received some amazing feedback from readers on what is important in a tasting room layout, and key attributes of the space.  It has proved very helpful in helping to construct a space that meets the desires or craft beer enthusiasts and also those who will be visiting our space.  However, the progress we have made has naturally led to another huge question:  What do you want in the finishing of the space?

Does an ultra modern space like 33 Acres go over well, or would you prefer a look and feel like Brassneck.  Are there other tasting rooms outside of Vancouver and BC that stick out for you?  Tell me what you would like to see?

  • Minimalistic/Stark
  • Traditional
  • Modern
  • Ornate
  • Made to feel like a bar
  • Left to feel like a warehouse
  • Repurposed materials

More than talking about our space, I would love to know what other restaurants, bars, and spaces in Vancouver you like.  Of course our space will have a personality of its own, but we are keen to know what direction you think we should go with the finish.  As always, thanks for the thought and the feedback.

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.

The Biggest day in this Process – Lease Signing Day

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It looks like the day might finally be upon us.  This is the day that seems like it should be the first step in the process, but realistically is more like the 500,000th of 1,000,000 steps in starting a brewery.  I have thought about this day for years.  It’s like I need to pinch myself to make sure this isn’t a dream.  We have signed subject removal for leasing our space.  After a 12 month courtship, and months of negotiating, feeling elated, feeling depressed, and most importantly uncertainty, we have done it.

I know what you are thinking:  Whats the big deal?  You found a place to brew your beer.  Thousands of other breweries across North America have found a suitable place to brew their beer, what makes your accomplishment any different?  When I think about it that way, it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal.  But when you consider that we live in Vancouver, where land and warehouses are at a premium, it feels like a huge accomplishment.

I would say the key learnings from this process would be as follows:

  1. Don’t even consider buying a space, unless you are rich.  And that begs the question, if you are rich, why are you starting a brewery?
  2. Dilemna:  You can only have a one of the following:  A good landlord, a good location, a good space.  Which will you choose?
  3. Get ready for a personal guarantee.  Unless you have a brewery already, and if so why the heck are you reading this blog, get ready to lay whatever personal wealth you have on the line with your landlord.
  4. Expect to spend a lot of money fixing this space up.  Our bill is going to be huge, because we have a larger space, but even for small spaces, expect to spend $300,000 minimum.
  5. Use a good commercial realtor, who works exclusively in an area.  Don’t use a friend or family member who doesn’t know a lot about what they are doing.  We used Matt Smith from Colliers, and were very happy with our choice
  6. If you are ordering new equipment, don’t order any until you get your space secured.  I’ve heard too many horror stories to go down that road.
  7. Expect the unexpected.  There will be a fundamental problem with your space that you didn’t anticipate, so budget some contingency for your build out.
  8. Engage with architects, engineers and other professionals from the get-go.  They will help you understand what is needed and what is to come.
  9. Don’t lock yourself into a size of brewery, type of brewery or anything else until you find your space.  We totally changed our strategy based on the space we found.  Committing to a space is important to do before you commit to a type of brewery you are creating.
  10. Last and most importantly, PRAY.  Thats right, because when you find a space that seems really good, I can guarantee that there will be someone else who also finds the space really good, brewery or otherwise.  There is a lack of good space, and expect landlords hold all the power to pick who they work with.

So now, the process of starting a brewery truly begins.  It is hard to believe that from the time I started to write a business plan to this point in my life has been 5 years.  So patience, if not a inherent characteristic you have, will definitely be something that you develop.  If you don’t, I would say that your journey into the world of starting a brewery might be a short one.

Today will be my last shave, and I can start officially telling people that we have a space to brew our beer.  Many thanks to all those people who helped encourage and support us in getting to this point.  Without all that you have given to this process, I am afraid I wouldn’t have been able to do it.

Sneak Peak at our Plans!

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OK, I can’t release all the plans for our space, but I sure can give you a “teaser” of what things may look like.  More will come when we actually sign a lease …. which should be the topic of my next blog.  “Lack of signing a lease stress.”  Anyhow, hopefully those who know the rules around brewery lounges in Vancouver will appreciate the connection we are going to have.  The brewhouse is literally within arms length of the tasting room!

Sneak peak brewery

Thanks for the Support

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Not much to say here, but thanks for the support and words of encouragement I have received from everyone who visits my blog.  I want everyone to know that I am touched by the kind words you have passed along, and the nice things you have to say about what I am doing.  It motivates me at times like this (12:45am Wednesday morning) to write my blog and take the time to connect with others.

When I started out in this process, I found there was a lot of information online, but a lack of details on what to do and how to get it done.  There were a few other blogs, but nothing itemizing the process of inception to brewery opening.  So it was my idea to add to the information out there in small way.  To see the positive feedback and read the messages that people are sending me has truly blown me away.

So thank you to everyone that visits this blog. I hope I can continue writing posts and inspiring others, as I was inspired by others who started on the path to realizing their dreams before getting ‘off the couch’ myself.  There is a quote that I love, and it goes like this.  “A dream doesn’t come reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.”  Colin Powell (I think).  This is more true than you can ever realize.  I would probably add to this a little luck and a lot of sleepless nights.

As always, if you have any questions, or if there is anything you would ever like me to discuss, please contact me and I will blog about it when I can find the time.

Finally, answers to our Electrical Nightmare ….

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I have begun to realize that not everyone who is helping to get this brewery off the ground is willing to work until 2am, or makes this job the sole focus on their day.  In other words, answers that I expect within a couple weeks, sometimes take the better part of a month.  Sometimes these answers are not needed, so the time to get a response is not important.  But it seems like we need most of these answers in a timely fashion, and they set in motion a cascade of changes elsewhere, and each successive change is just as important as the last.

One of these huge considerations is the electrical issues for our space.  I have blogged about it, and it seems like we have been close to an answer for the past few weeks.  This is likely the biggest and most important answer we have been waiting for throughout this process, as our decision to lease the space rests on the advice and information we gather.  A bill of under $100,000 and we are golden to carry on.  Anything over this and we have a tough decision to make, and anything well over this means our dream is going to be dead in the water.  Additionally, we have already extended our contract to lease our space with the landlord past what we agreed to.  We were supposed to give our landlord an answer if we wanted the space by the end of November and we asked for a month extension, given the electrical issues and the lack of an answer around our Development Permit.

So here we are at this point.  We have 2 weeks to decide if we want the space, as the landlord requires an answer by the first week of January.  We have received our development permit from the City of Vancouver, so we are able to brew beer in this space.  We need to submit our building permit drawings to the City of Vancouver, and we need to find a solution to the lack of electrical power our space has.

Well as of yesterday, we found a solution to our electrical problem.  It looks like we are going to cut the power to the whole building, and re-run new power that will be sufficient for everyone, including our brewery.  This means that instead of getting a bill for well over $100,000, we should now come in around $60,000-$80,000 on this fix.  We are still a little upset by the amount we have to spend, but it beats the alternative, which is a pad mounted transformer, and the cost of which is about $250,000.

This means that all we have to do is hammer out the final details of our lease with the landlord, and we are going to lease this space.  I can’t actually believe this is about to happen!  Its almost like I have to pinch myself.  I know there are a few key points to be ironed out with the landlord, like tenant versus landlord improvements, personal guarantee (not unlike a kick to family jewels) length, but most of the important items have already been agreed upon.  In fact, our landlord has been very helpful and accommodating in working with our needs and challenges.  While his patience has started to wear thin, we hope that he still wants to complete a deal with us, and dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s.

I don’t want to get ahead of things, so I will leave our latest bit of good news at that.  I have learned from my mentors and peers that a deal is not done until you get a key to the front door, so I will not presume anything.  What I do know is this:  The lows we felt about things after our floor issues popped up, and then our electrical issues came to the front, have all been offset by the development permit we received, and then the answers around the electrical.

With any luck, we will have a firm deal in early January, submit our building permit application in 8 days, and start working on our brewery sometime in early March.  Should all this come together as we hope, we should be open for business sometime in August 2014.  Thats right, in about 8 months our brewery will be producing beer and slinging it to eager locals before you know it.

Given the amount of work to do, and the mountain we need to climb in order to get everything ready, I am going to take this Christmas break to relax and enjoy some time with my family.  The way things are shaping up, I may not see to much of them from February to August of next year.  Happy holidays to everyone that reads this blog and I hope you have a fantastic end to 2013.

Electrical Follow-up … Even more “Shocking”

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When you sit at home thinking of what it would be like to open a craft brewery, you don’t think about stuff like this.

If you read my last post on the electrical issues with our space, you would know that our electrical bill went from an anticipated $30,000 for a simple upgrade the transformer on the power pole, to almost $120,000 for a pad mounted transformer.  It turns out we can’t put a pad mounted transformer in the parking lot, as our landlord needs to keep these spaces for tenants in our building and other buildings he owns in the area.  In fact, he has already received a variance from the City of Vancouver for the number of parking spaces he must to have, and anything that takes away from this number is not permitted.

This results in messing this situation up even more, just when I didn’t think it was possible for this process to go off the rails any further.  Now instead of a $120,000 bill, which believe it or not we think was actually doable, we are now looking at a substation.  Holy crap, I think building an actual Submarine station would cost less than this thing.  Initial estimates for a sub station in our building are about $250,000.

Unless we can find a economical solution to this problem, there is no question about it, we are done with this space.  When you consider that we spent about 8 months on this space, hundreds of hours of time and effort laying out the space, getting quotes, planning equipment, designing tasting room, etc. it seems almost surreal that this is happening.  It doesn’t end there.  Financially, we spent over $30,000 in fees, permits, lawyers, engineers, accountants, architects and other misc items.  When you add all this together, it’s really painful to have reached this conclusion after so much.  But at the end of the day, it is better to walk away without $30,000 than it is to walk away with a business that failed to get off the ground.

We have our last ditch effort to find a solution on Wednesday of this week.  I hope that the people we have relied on so much throughout this process are able to come up with a creative idea that works for everyone involved.  One thing is for sure, I won’t be getting much sleep tonight.

When to quit my paying job for one that costs me money?

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One thing that I tended to overlook was the transition from working at my current job, to working at both jobs and then making the jump to the brewery full time.  It is a delicate balance, and one that had its ebbs and flows, so it can be a hard thing to judge when the right time is to make the move.

My journey started about 5 years ago, when I just couldn’t shake the dream of wanting to start a craft brewery.  I have always been an entrepreneur and at various times in my life, I have tried starting businesses, intermingled with jobs working for corporations, other entrepreneurs and multi-nationals.  There was the Crepe restaurant that I tried starting during University with my good friend, an advertising company we tried starting after University, and a destination based travel company I tried starting in the late 90’s.  All didn’t get off the ground, and looking back on those experiences, I am glad, as they would have likely prevented me from following this passion.

It was about 5 years ago that I needed a work/life plan to start a brewery.  I knew that there is a whack of work involved in starting a brewery, a lot of cash needed, and often that work revolved around times that were inconvenient to having a 9-5 job.  Most importantly, I knew that you couldn’t stop doing everything in favour starting a craft brewery, as the road to opening your doors is several years long, and that means no salary for a long time.  So I wrote my real estate exam, and became a realtor.  It was a tough few years, one that made me question what I was doing to my family and my life that seemed so normal and easy up until that point.

You see our life was comfortable.  Both my wife and I worked for large companies, which meant we brought home regular income, and had for the most part 9-5 jobs M-F.  Well when you get into real estate it is often the opposite of that.  Evenings and weekends, and work is excessively seasonal in the Spring and in the Fall.  This can be a real challenge when you have kids and friends who work in other M-F 9-5 jobs.  But it was my dream to start a craft brewery, and as such I thought the best way to have flexibility to start a brewery was to be a realtor, as the hours were flexible, there were some great skills I would learn, and it would provide me a little cash to pay for some of the expenses along the way.

Having walked this path for the past 5 years, there have been many highs and lows.  At the end of the day, there is no perfect job to have when you are looking to start a brewery, and depending on your situation, there are likely a variety of options that are best for you.  I have found the flexibility with my schedule and complimentary hours a positive in working real estate, and the lack of regular income and seasonality in work required with real estate the biggest challenges.

So all of this leads me to question when I should quit my real estate career in favour of working for the brewery full time.  The sooner I move to the beer business full time, the better my business will be prepared and planned.  The flip side is the longer our family will have to go on one income, and the greater the stress on my wife and kids.  I really don’t think there is an answer to this question, but I do feel like I am getting close to that point.  The 60 hour work weeks used to be enough to fit everything in, but now they are insufficient.  The space we are looking at leasing is requiring a lot of work and attention to detail, not to mention money.

I can see all of this leading to a point where I will be exhausted, broke, and likely as happy as a kid in a candy store.  I hope that I have the wisdom to make the right decision on when to break away from real estate, and focus on the brewery.  It doesn’t feel quite right yet, but I expect by the end of the year, when we have our space leased and operations set for a grand opening in 2014 sometime, the right time will emerge.