Tag Archives: Vancouver

First Focus Group Results …. coming soon!

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On Tuesday of this week, we had a focus group with the purpose of getting feedback on naming our brewery.  It was the first time I’ve planned and implemented a focus group, so it was many things rolled into one, not the least of which was a great learning experience.

Like anything in life, preparation is the key.  It was something that I prepared myself for, and even knowing that there was a lot of work for something like this, I was blown away by how much work it actually took.  I did keep a total of the amount of time I spent organizing this focus group, and up until the minute things started, it was 48 hours of work.  Where the hell did 48 hours go you ask?  Let me tell you:  Organizing participants, preparing questions, meeting with the moderator, securing the space, getting the food and beverages, printing copies of questions and non-disclosures, etc, etc, etc.

The focus group itself went well in my mind.  There are always questions you would change, formatting alterations you would make, and slight differences you would make if you did it again.  For the second focus group that we are having this Sunday, I will likely only change one question.

A huge component of the focus group is your moderator.  Luckily I had the help of a real craft beer enthusiast and very personable, yet professional individual.  I can honestly say, that next to the preparation involved, the moderator can make or break the implementation.  Rebecca was so unbiased, and also so personable, and was able to take the outline I gave her, and worked with it in her own way.

The feedback was somewhat expected and completely unexpected all at the same time.  While I would love to go into the details, I will wait for our second focus group to complete before commenting on them.  What I can say, is that the results will help us pick the name that is right for our brewery.  What we do know is the name we pick will represent what we are doing, what words are meaningful and what name fits with the local market.

I will update everyone more after we have our second focus group on Sunday and get closer to having our list of names narrowed down to 2-4 finalists.

Nothing to do but Everything to do

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Some days I feel like there is nothing that needs to be done in particular.  Whether its marketing, the business plan, finances, cash flow, collecting money, etc., there never seems to be a timeline on getting some of these things done.  But when you take a moment and look from 50,000 feet at what you have to accomplish before you sell your first beer and HOLY CRAP, there is a lot to do.

All of this means that starting a business, and in particular this brewery, results in having a lot on your mind.  I’m not talking about when you are in the shower, or making dinner …. I mean in the middle of the night, or when you should be engrossed by something else like a CFL game, or the company of a great friend.  It is so easy to let thoughts of your business, and the work that is undone, creep into your mind and send you on the path of mental anguish.

Tonight is a great example of that.  I would like nothing better than to sit down and turn my mind off the task at hand, but there are a few things on my mind:  I have a Brand Guide that needs attention, emails to investors to follow-up on progress, work with an architect on the space we are trying to lease, a meeting on Monday with our Accountant to prepare for, documents that our Lawyer needs returned, emails that need to be answered, a business plan that needs to be updated before it is PDF’d, decisions on equipment that need to be made, more requests sent to suppliers and manufacturers for additional quotes, contractors that need to be interviewed for work required, and most importantly this blog which needs to be attended to (I will get a check on that after this).

All of this makes me realize that Entrepreneurs are both made and born.  You have to like the  chaos that comes from this process …. the constant juggling and prioritizing of tasks, working in the trenches, while at the same time, working like a VP, and the constant struggle between what you really want to do, and what the market wants you to do.  You also have to be able to turn it off, and it is something that requires constant reminders of this.

So with the end of this blog, I am going to make a to do list for tomorrow, and turn-off my mind.  I am reminded what one of my good friends and mentors tells me …. starting and running a business is a marathon in that requires a balance of running harder to stay ahead of things and laying back to regain some strength.  Tonight might be some time to regain some strength.

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.

Everything rests on the floors … Literally!

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When you start out with the dream of opening a brewery, there are a bunch of things that you dream about.  For instance; where you are going to brew your beer, what your brand will look like, how good it will to be your own boss, and most importantly what kind of beer you are going to brew.  Further down the list, you think about other details like cans vs bottles, unitanks vs fermenting & conditioning tanks, or what kind of delivery truck you are going to have.  Then there is a bunch of items that you generally don’t give much thought to:  When to have your fiscal year-end, do you want your coasters to be printed on one side or both, and who your accountant is going to be.

Even further below this is flooring, one of the things you tend to not think about at any stage of starting a brewery, other than when you are looking at warehouses to lease.  Well you probably guessed it, we are at that time and place now.  We have submitted an offer on a space to lease, and we are currently negotiating back and forth with the landlord.  We are hopeful that things are going to move ahead, so we have really started to focus on the details about this space.  Important considerations when you think about having a lease for 10 years.

You see, a floor in a warehouse is nothing like a floor in a house …. which is the only real reference point I have for this kind of thing.  A floor in a house is usually flat, and if it isn’t, you make it flat, put in the flooring and underlay of your choice and voila!  A floor in a warehouse is a much different beast.  Most importantly, the floor in a warehouse needs to take a load.  The floors usually have a PSI rating, and that determines how much of a load you can put on the floor.  In other words, a higher PSI rating for a floor is a good thing in the world of brewing, as you are putting several metric tonnes of tanks and other equipment onto it.

Well the floors in the warehouse that we want to lease aren’t the greatest.  They have settled in several areas, and they don’t have a high enough of a PSI rating.  This means we are going to have to fix this problem if we lease the space, and that costs a lot of ‘jack’.  The most important question we have to ask is why have the floors settled?  There are 3 possible reasons for this:  1) The preparation for the floor was done poorly in the first place.  2) There was organic material left in the ground (like old trees and roots), and they have wasted away to nothing causing the floor to settle  3) There is some problem that is slowly washing away the substrate leaving a nothing where there was once material.

Well this is the point that we are at now.  Do we move forward with the space, knowing that the bill for the floors could be somewhere from $50,000 to $200,000 (and by the way we only have $75,000 in our budget), or do we say everything else seems really good about this space, but the floors are too much of a question mark, so we walk away.  This is the question that we are faced with this week.  It is both an emotional decision for me (I love the space and want to get this brewery off the ground) and also a business decision (I have to do what is right for my investors).

I am hopeful that we have the wisdom and support from engineers and other professionals to make the right decision.  As you can tell, the road to starting a brewery is full of pot holes and hazards.  But if you can successfully navigate those things, then the reward is greater than most anything else in the world.

Raising Money …. Almost there

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This part of starting a brewery involves no glamour, lots of rejection, and takes a thick skin. Most importantly, looking for investors takes patience.  Sometimes, the last thing I want to do is is take time away from the Brand Guide, Business Plan or other more ‘fun’ projects (OK I’ll say it, liquid research) to focus on this.  There seems to be a lot of people interested to know more, but to have ongoing discussions with them, means reducing the number of people who actually want to make an investment.

You see sharing your business plan, and your thoughts on everything from Marketing to Financials is like exposing your inner-most thoughts on business and branding.  Inevitably, we all have different viewpoints on these items, so there are things about my business plan that some people jive with, and other parts that turn people off our business.  Likely, if you are reading this blog you are a fan of craft beer; so explaining the market, how it’s growing and what the future holds is easy …. like selling candy to a kid.

However, about 75% of investors that read my plan don’t know a lot about craft beer.  For instance, they think Granville Island or Sierra Nevada is craft, have never heard of many of the smaller craft brewers, and don’t seek out establishments that cater to craft beer.  Some investors have even approached the business plan from a pure business standpoint.  They ask, “Why wouldn’t you brew more beer, sell it cheaper, market the crap out of it, and have higher sales?”  As you can imagine, this is not what I have in mind for my brewery! #FollowMyDreams

Most of all, you are asking mostly friends and family to invest their money in your dream.  This simple fact means that people start out skeptical in the first place.  We all know someone who is offering some multi-level marketing investment, or someone else who is selling diet pills or a weight loss plan.  Personally, I find this annoying, especially when its very in-your-face.  Also, people work hard for their money, and there is nothing worse that pissing your money away on a bad investment.  All of these things stick in my mind when I ask people to part with their hard earned money.

The net sum has been very positive.  I feel lucky to be based in Vancouver with this dream, as craft beer is bigger here than most any other place in Canada.  From a Canadian perspective, craft beer in BC is very sophisticated and has set the standard for many years now.  The Canadian Brewing Awards is littered with BC breweries winning gold medals over the past 5 years.  I just have to keep reminding myself that this opportunity is not for everyone.  I have also learned to take the feedback that people give me as not a personal attack, but ways to make our business and prospects for success better.  Ok, sometimes people are just jerks, but thankfully they are in the minority here.  Most people just can’t afford to drop $25,000 on something like this …. living in Vancouver is expensive.

As of today, we have raised over $1 million dollars towards starting this dream.  When I really step back and think about that number, it is a LOT of cash.  Depending on the space we lease, and the retrofit cost involved in making the space suitable for brewing, we will likely need another $200,000 to be fully financed.  I hope that we can find this money within the next few months, as the thought of being so close to connecting with all the investors we need is both motivating and exciting.

I am always open to comments, support and help from anyone and everyone in making my dream of a craft brewery become a reality.  If you happen to have any advice, thoughts on anything about the industry, or any other insights on anything to do with starting a business, please feel free to pass them along.

Thanks for reading this post ….

How Important is the Name???

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One item that I have grappled with for some time is the name of my brewery.  There seems to be three different avenues people take in naming a brewery, which appear to be popular.

The first is to name the brewery after the owner.  Think R and B Brewing, Phillips Brewing, Hoyne Brewing, and even Molson.

The second is to name the brewery after an area or landmark.  Think Coal Harbour Brewing, Deep Cove Brewers and Distillers, Granville Island, and Stanley Park Brewing.

The third is to name the brewery after nothing in particular.  Think Storm Brewing, 33 Acres Brewing, Bomber Brewing, and Dead Frog Brewing.

There seems to be no rhyme or reason why names are chosen, and some end up being good and others end up being a little less than interesting.  My belief is at the end of the day, a name is not that important.   In my opinion, If you make shit beer, but have a great name, your chances for success are not going to be great.  On the other hand, if you have a shit name, but make great beer, I think you are going to succeed.

I would love to know what people think are good names in the marketplace?  I have my opinions, and for the most part, I think having a variety of names in the marketplace is a good thing.

Im Starting a Craft Brewery

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Call me crazy, call me nuts, call me anything you want (my wife and family have already thrown all those verbal grenades at me). I am hell bent on starting a craft brewery based in Vancouver, BC.

Why you ask? It might be because I was raised by a father who would teach me his secret home brew recipes that my grandfather had brought to Canada in the 1950’s, after being entirely dissatisfied with the quality and range of beer available in Canada. Or it could be that I was surrounded by friends and family who were actively entrepreneurs and spoke about the great things that happen when you push your own boundaries. But I think the biggest reason may be the most simple. Life is short. These 3 words mean so much. Think about it for a second … we all know friends and family that have passed away too early, or a grandfather who sees their perspective of life change as they are older. The truth is, I wasn’t entirely happy with my life about 5 years ago, and this moment has been five years in the making. More to come on that in subsequent posts.

I hope this blog becomes a useful too for people who are thinking the same thing as me, people who are interested in craft beer and for people that are fascinated with seeing others take the biggest gamble of their life in pursuit of a passion.

So there it is. I am going to commit to uploading regularly with video, information and somewhat humorous posts about this process. I have been working towards this dream for 5 years, and I hope that I am closer now that I have ever been in the past.