Episode 14
Stain Glass Collateral & Brewery Operations
What do you do when the bank needs more collateral? Buy antique stain glass, of course. Gary Arndt, Allison McCoy, and Bobby Fleshman continue brewing business talk. They delve into various facets of their brewery business, including the story behind their iconic stained glass, expansion plans, pumping beer challenges, potentially offering spirits thanks to new WI laws, changing policy from no-tip to tipping, and contract brewing.
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CREDITS
Hosts:
Music by Sarah Lynn Huss
Recorded & Produced by David Kalsow
Brought to you by McFleshman's Brewing Co
Transcript
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Respecting the Beer.
Speaker:Once again, my name is Gary Arndt, and I am with Allison McCoy and Bobby Fleshman of McFleshman's Brewing Company.
Speaker:And the last time we were here, we were talking about the business, and we're going to continue that discussion.
Speaker:And I want to focus on, what you mentioned is the higher margin part of the business and the part that most people are probably most familiar with, which is your pub house, which is the physical location that you have here.
Speaker:We were talking last time you bought the building Alison, you mentioned something before we started to record.
Speaker:You have a, a decorative piece of stained glass behind your bar here that has become kind of iconic and emblematic of the facility.
Speaker:What is the story behind that?
Speaker:The story behind the back bar, that's a great question.
Speaker:okay, so we one of the fun things about walking into the tap room if you've never been, you walk in and you see this gorgeous stained glass that's probably, I don't know, 10 feet long by 5 or 6 feet tall.
Speaker:How big is it?
Speaker:Yeah, it's probably more than that.
Speaker:Bigger than that?
Speaker:And that's just the
Speaker:glass.
Speaker:And then it's encased in this cabinetry.
Speaker:And so everyone's like, Oh, has this always been here?
Speaker:Did you build around this?
Speaker:And the answer's no.
Speaker:We were in the process of getting financing.
Speaker:So that's the big, big loan that's going to pay for it all.
Speaker:and we didn't have quite enough collateral.
Speaker:Like physical collateral that, that wouldn't depreciate very much.
Speaker:We had a building, which is great, and, and banks love when you have buildings, because, you know, you put that this collateral on your loan.
Speaker:And so we needed to spend a certain amount of money pretty quickly, so we can get the paperwork rolling, so we had, like, actual collateral.
Speaker:goods.
Speaker:And so to spend a lot of money over a weekend that something wouldn't, that wouldn't appreciate for some, I don't even know how we thought of it.
Speaker:We're like, we knew we needed, we needed a back,
Speaker:We needed a bar of some sort.
Speaker:And there, there's a pub or a bar down the street called Jim's place that has this gorgeous like 1890s Brunswick back bar is so pretty.
Speaker:And so I got the name of what it was, Brunswick, start to Google.
Speaker:I find this antique dealer in Cincinnati and turns out you can.
Speaker:Not just antique dealer, like back bar antique dealer,
Speaker:Wooden Nickel Antiques is the name of the, of the place.
Speaker:And they are, they specialize in back bars.
Speaker:And so we drove down, had a whole bunch of coffee on the way, came up with all the beer names on the way down and then spent a lot of money to finish off the collateral that we needed to get our loan.
Speaker:And then all of a sudden we have a back bar.
Speaker:I'm not sure we were
Speaker:serious about buying it, but we did fall in love with it.
Speaker:We did.
Speaker:Oh, well, once you see it, you can't unsee it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:We actually needed a vacation.
Speaker:It was an excuse.
Speaker:That's true.
Speaker:And in all good vacations, you spend a lot of money.
Speaker:But no, and so it was kind of a, I also bought this,
Speaker:Oh, the baby bar.
Speaker:Yeah, I came with it.
Speaker:There's a 1920s front and back bar in our upstairs prohibition room.
Speaker:That was a 1917 back bar.
Speaker:Anyway, but I think the, To Gary's point about it's iconic.
Speaker:Like, and we didn't know what we were building, but once we had that as the cornerstone, we could just kind of let the pub build around it in a way.
Speaker:And you've used that image, like, on some of your beer containers, haven't you?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Irish Stout is
Speaker:It's, it's the most important beer we make.
Speaker:You walk into, mix something, you expect an Irish stout.
Speaker:So we have that on Nitro almost all the time.
Speaker:I get berated when I don't.
Speaker:And it's on its label.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That is an homage to Guinness.
Speaker:If you go anywhere in Ireland and you order a pint, they just assume that you're ordering a Guinness.
Speaker:So if you walk into our bar and you just say, I'd like a pint.
Speaker:The, the beer tenders.
Speaker:No, that's an immediate.
Speaker:You want a public house plant?
Speaker:Not on Wednesdays.
Speaker:Not on Wednesdays.
Speaker:That's true.
Speaker:What's happening on Wednesday?
Speaker:Oh, never mind.
Speaker:Joel's around.
Speaker:Yeah, Joel, people listening, Joel Hermansen, the guy who was talking about history, works here on Wednesdays.
Speaker:He will serve you a 547, which is the,
Speaker:Whether you like it or not,
Speaker:Don't pause when you approach the counter
Speaker:Like a pint of public health point
Speaker:I might as well ask you the, the, the bar you have up here, the baby bar comes in.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I think it's kind of great.
Speaker:It's an art deco bar, but it's also kind of small, very small.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And if you expand the pub and you do more up here, which I assume is, is one of your plans.
Speaker:So this is, we're in the second floor of the building.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:What's how, what are you going to do with this?
Speaker:To expand that all the way to, so it's, it's covering the middle section of the room.
Speaker:We'll, we'll actually double or triple its width.
Speaker:And build in all the plumbing and add everything.
Speaker:We got plans for that as that as that phase rolls in,
Speaker:But we will celebrate the differences and not just destroy it at all.
Speaker:Yeah, as I look at Bobby, that's a demand, not a request.
Speaker:Yeah, well, and that let's jump way ahead.
Speaker:It's all part of a bigger expansion that I'm planning for the next 5 years on premise.
Speaker:We're going to install an elevator that lets everybody access this level.
Speaker:That is true.
Speaker:That is one of the unfortunate things about living her, having an old building is the upstairs is only accessible via staircase currently.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And so we are not
Speaker:Works well if you're not offering things upstairs, you can't do down Yeah.
Speaker:Do you get the same
Speaker:But it's very unfortunate for our patrons who can't use staircases.
Speaker:Yeah, so we're going to do that and we're also going to install a rooftop beer garden.
Speaker:Here's the hot take.
Speaker:And that's the five year plan.
Speaker:There's, I got all these moving parts that are going to get us there, but it's part of that.
Speaker:How difficult is it to expand?
Speaker:I mean, you have what, what would you say?
Speaker:18 taps?
Speaker:How many tabs do you have on the first floor?
Speaker:24.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:24.
Speaker:Cause I know you just added some.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:We're going to put eight more outside this week.
Speaker:So that's happening.
Speaker:How many are you going to have up here?
Speaker:Yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker:What are the logistics and physical issues involved in terms of pumping beer around a building?
Speaker:Henry's law.
Speaker:There we go.
Speaker:Back to science.
Speaker:You get pressure drops every 22 inches, I think is one PSI.
Speaker:All these things you've got to consider with Henry's Law and outgassing and your beer is going to heat up in the lines and you're going to get losses when you clean.
Speaker:There's a lot of stuff you've got to think about.
Speaker:That's actually where, so for Mile of Music, the big downtown Mile of Music festival that Appleton does, there's hundreds of thousands of people that come.
Speaker:But we opened up the Prohibition Room and we had a line out the door of people trying to get beer, but it was so foamy.
Speaker:And that's when Bobby and I realized that we had a problem.
Speaker:Pump that had broken and so during
Speaker:Trickling the refrigerant too slowly right lines were warm So I had Henry's law deciding it would just be a glass of foam all night
Speaker:People are asking like we're Bobby Nelson and we had like wedges ourselves in between the rafters to try and fix this pump Well, these are big shows are going on
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:It's like that's where we spend our mile of music
Speaker:It's easier to build your bar directly behind your taps like we did downstairs Yeah, if you can do that, that's by far the best way to do it Don't show off and just say that you can run a 200 foot line.
Speaker:I've seen that happen.
Speaker:That's just showing off.
Speaker:It's unnecessary.
Speaker:It just is.
Speaker:No, it makes for foamy beer.
Speaker:And then there's a lot of product that you lose.
Speaker:It's too many, too many hurdles there.
Speaker:So if you put a, something on the rooftop, will you be running lines up there?
Speaker:No, I think we'll have, we'll have same here.
Speaker:Probably.
Speaker:We'll ultimately just have a limited offering, maybe eight different beers, and we'll have the ability to put it right behind the bar.
Speaker:We should just build a teleporter.
Speaker:Yeah, that said Gary who knows maybe it'll be look totally different But at this point I think we'll have and we're also gonna have a bar
Speaker:Or maybe like a little drone thing where you put your beer on the drone and it flies up.
Speaker:Oh no, I we're planning a hop deck over the top of our beer garden now have a bar as well and an elevator access So there's you can see why this is a five year plan We'll be able to double our capacity in terms of seating.
Speaker:Now, does Appleton have the, the people, the foot traffic, maybe we're part of that chicken and egg story.
Speaker:One shift gears a little bit.
Speaker:You make beer.
Speaker:This is a place that sells beer for the most part, exclusively sells beer.
Speaker:You have a very small and may I say.
Speaker:Uninspired selection of wine for people that want it.
Speaker:You know, working on that.
Speaker:I can't drop names.
Speaker:Yeah, we've got a, we've got a plan.
Speaker:I think I know what you're going to do.
Speaker:And I, I, I applaud it, but there was a recent change to the laws in the state of Wisconsin that are going to allow you to start selling spirits.
Speaker:What are the plans for that?
Speaker:And how does that fit into the business?
Speaker:Because I assume it's just another product offering, you know, you're going to be able to offer here
Speaker:and it's fraught with pitfalls.
Speaker:We, we know that there's, there's a lot of opportunity there, but we don't want to advertise that we are the next latest, greatest.
Speaker:We are not a full bar.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:We are a brewing company.
Speaker:And so I think too, I'm just going to take over cause you talk too slow.
Speaker:So I think that we will be celebrating our brand, which is.
Speaker:It's German lagers and British ales.
Speaker:And in that along with British ales in particular, well, not necessarily British ales, but Irish ales, a lot of folks want some Irish whiskey to go along with that.
Speaker:And so leaning into Irish whiskeys, some scotches, a few bourbons and maybe a gin.
Speaker:To tip the hat to the English side, I think that's where we're gonna stop.
Speaker:And, but we're gonna have a lot of ways to mix these.
Speaker:We're working on that.
Speaker:No, we are not.
Speaker:No, no, no, no, no.
Speaker:Not behind the bar.
Speaker:Like ginger beer and stuff you can blend with your, your gins and stuff.
Speaker:Plans are coming.
Speaker:Yeah, I can't give away everything.
Speaker:Nothing's solidified, but we're working on
Speaker:Bobby sitting far enough away from me that I can't kick him directly.
Speaker:But I can tell all of you that I want to pretty badly right now.
Speaker:I mean, I, I think it's understood.
Speaker:We're not talking about Tom Cruise and cocktail here.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:This isn't going to be something where it's a big show.
Speaker:Make sure that message gets out.
Speaker:You know, I want to get a kamikaze and a sex on the beach and a shot for everybody.
Speaker:And the other thing is like, we don't have eyes.
Speaker:Like, we have no space to have ice.
Speaker:You can do on the rocks.
Speaker:This is an interesting thing.
Speaker:And I think it also talks about the pub.
Speaker:For the longest time dogs were welcome in McFlushman's and it was actually kind of, I think, part of the charm of the place.
Speaker:I'd come here all the time.
Speaker:People would bring their dogs, you had dog treats available, you had water, for the dogs.
Speaker:It was kind of part of, of what it was.
Speaker:Still true outside, but indoors.
Speaker:True outside your beer garden.
Speaker:All of a sudden you couldn't, not from anything decision you made.
Speaker:It was the, the city that enforced, even though the mayor and most of the city council had been coming here for a very long time they decided that you couldn't have dogs here, but
Speaker:Contact your alders and your representatives if you want this to change.
Speaker:But that was the, wasn't that the reason why you couldn't have ice?
Speaker:Like, you don't, you literally don't have an ice machine, I'm sure.
Speaker:It was, it was the reason.
Speaker:But that said, we didn't have any plans for ice anyway.
Speaker:Yeah, we never had plans for ice.
Speaker:So I think it was a, one of our patrons is a, health inspector for various other, like, restaurants and industries.
Speaker:outside of Appleton and told us that information.
Speaker:So that was, because we didn't have one, it never came up.
Speaker:But then they just said, Oh yeah, like that would be harder to get dogs inside if you had a nice machine.
Speaker:And we're like, Oh, well, conveniently we don't.
Speaker:But now that you can't.
Speaker:Now that we can't.
Speaker:Yeah, now that we can't, and so I, it's just, the other thing too is like, this goes back to what we were talking about, about our building is just really small when you start putting all the equipment that you need, it takes a lot of space to have a full bar, to have the ice machines, and that's one of the reasons we don't have sodas behind the bar.
Speaker:There's so many things we just don't have space for.
Speaker:And like I said, we just added eight more lines of beer.
Speaker:What?
Speaker:And then there are the two dumbasses that decided to buy the most beautiful back bar that we can't actually use any of the space that makes the back bar and so that makes it challenging and sort of like, but I'll never give it up.
Speaker:It's the best thing about this place.
Speaker:But it makes it hard to like expand behind the bar.
Speaker:So when when are you looking at expanding into spirits?
Speaker:What time is it now?
Speaker:Are we open yet?
Speaker:So the the goal is a slow rollout as we give our staff training On because our beer tenders are trained in beer we have one staff member who's worked in the service industry for very, very long time and done quite a bit of other bar work.
Speaker:And I think she's the only one that has really training on, on spirits and such.
Speaker:And similarly to the wine, I, we have people wine.
Speaker:The scenes are going to help us curate a better, a good spirits list with what we got.
Speaker:Yeah, so, so that's really the number one hold up for us right now is making sure that they know what they're doing so they can then present and give a good experience to patrons.
Speaker:And it buys us time to tell people on social media that we are this sort of place that has this sort of spirit.
Speaker:We don't want people thinking walking and get any and everything.
Speaker:That's not going to be good for the staff or for this customer.
Speaker:Yeah, so we're hoping within the next few weeks, and by the middle of summer to be fully rolled out.
Speaker:So where are you going to get your spirits from?
Speaker:This is obviously a place, well, no, not which region, but you make everything here, right?
Speaker:Oh yeah.
Speaker:So are you going to work with?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You know, small distillers or are you going
Speaker:to get?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And yes, yes.
Speaker:And yes, I will probably do a mixture combination because we do have what we call the pub family.
Speaker:We we have our pub club, but then there's this also pub family in Appleton.
Speaker:They're an Irish centric group of people that will come for your Jameson's and so forth, but you're right.
Speaker:We're, we're going to focus on local as well.
Speaker:And they go through the same sort of channels that we do to sell our beer out at large.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And we'll be able to go through those wholesalers, get local.
Speaker:And we haven't really talked about this, but I, I can imagine just like we, we never have one beard that's always on.
Speaker:I mean, we have some flagships that 90 percent of the time they're on, but I'm imagining we will have a rotating selection just to keep things.
Speaker:I'm sure that the customer will start to tell us what they want.
Speaker:That's true.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And I, that goes back to I guess it was the question about, You know, how do we decide, do we listen to the customers more?
Speaker:Do we just do what we want?
Speaker:That sort of thing.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:One of the phrases we use is we feed our fat pig.
Speaker:So rather than like trying to put money into the runt pig, even though the LeBron pig is lovely and we love them, give them pets it's the fat pig that's going to bring us, you know, the most.
Speaker:And so we want to make sure that the fat pig is fed.
Speaker:That sounds horrible.
Speaker:On the beer side.
Speaker:We're as much as I love it.
Speaker:I think he's coming up the stairs now.
Speaker:We're slaves to making 547.
Speaker:Here it's a fat pig and I think our chief salesperson is walking by momentarily.
Speaker:I know we've talked in the past that you had, you've not pulled the trigger on it.
Speaker:You've toyed with the idea of actually getting into distilling.
Speaker:Is that something that you might consider adding to the business?
Speaker:Nope, he does not.
Speaker:No, no, no.
Speaker:I am not going to pay for that.
Speaker:There's a lot of different avenues to get, to getting to that point.
Speaker:Opening with whiskey.
Speaker:It won't be possible unless we start planting five years ago.
Speaker:It's like planting a tree.
Speaker:You got to put that in barrels all this time.
Speaker:So I'm already sort of working behind the scenes, collaborating with a few people to, to get a brand of McFleshman's before we have to go down that path entirely by ourselves and taking some of the lessons I've learned by building the entire brewery by myself, by ourselves and trying to avoid that same.
Speaker:Other than physical infrastructure, are there legal requirements that you would need to, or hurdles that you need to jump through to?
Speaker:yeah, we get a distiller's license.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, so we have two different licenses through the TTB, which is the Tax and Trade Bureau for Tobacco, Alcohol, and Firearms.
Speaker:And they regulate what we can and can't do.
Speaker:And this is one of the reasons, so when COVID hit If you were, if you already had a distiller's license, they could quickly adapt within TTB that you had the equipment then to make sanitizer.
Speaker:We were not under that license, so we couldn't use our equipment to make sanitizer.
Speaker:Unless we went through the TTP and got that through, but we currently, that is a federal level, but we currently have a federal level winery license and that's how we can make cider and seltzer and then we have a brewer's notice, which is how we can make beer and we do not have, and I'll add to that, we do not have a winery license.
Speaker:Contract brewers, brewers notice that we can't brew beer for other people.
Speaker:No, we, we can't.
Speaker:Or no, we can't.
Speaker:Because we're a microbrewery.
Speaker:That's right.
Speaker:I got it backwards.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:And I will say part of this whole, it's called chapter 125.
Speaker:It's the, the beer laws.
Speaker:Oh, we're getting deep now.
Speaker:But, but they basically just kind of rewrote that with this legislation.
Speaker:And.
Speaker:Most breweries now can do contract brewing after that.
Speaker:It wasn't fair.
Speaker:Oh, was that included too?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It wasn't fair.
Speaker:It was this one and not that one.
Speaker:It made no sense.
Speaker:So they got rid of a lot of that nonsense.
Speaker:I can't believe I'm not up on my TTP law.
Speaker:Well, we were talking before we started this recording about CPAs.
Speaker:And I think the same is true with keeping up with legalities that you just move so quickly.
Speaker:Cause I was just wondering, I can understand why you'd be hesitant to get into a whole different business like distilling, but there are certain aspects.
Speaker:Of distilling that are very closely aligned with what you're doing.
Speaker:Like you can distill a beer Yep.
Speaker:And get a whiskey.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:You can, I know we've talked about this, I can use that
Speaker:barrel to age a beer.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And then technically if you freeze something like an icebox Yep.
Speaker:You describe hypothe, that hypothe as technically distilling.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:So there are, there's distilling you can do that's not really distilling.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:Or at least it's closer related to what you're doing.
Speaker:Anyhow.
Speaker:Great point.
Speaker:Great point.
Speaker:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:And I would say that making.
Speaker:making spirits, something akin to an american whiskey or scotch is on brand.
Speaker:So, that's where you take that bourbon barrel, second turn, and make a whiskey.
Speaker:The only problem is we don't have five to ten years to age it.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:This
Speaker:is why I start now doing sort of some contract versions.
Speaker:We'll see the light of day in the next couple of years.
Speaker:Although there is probably some fun science we could do with like increasing the rate of aging.
Speaker:Oh, yeah.
Speaker:Now you were kicking me under the table.
Speaker:Oh, okay.
Speaker:I mean, never mind.
Speaker:That's fine.
Speaker:Oh, look, a glass of beer.
Speaker:There are some really state of the art technologies coming out, allowing you to circumvent some of these longer aging processes.
Speaker:And it's really fun science y bits.
Speaker:And before someone says, Oh, it sounded like they were going to microwave a steak, instead of slow it, slow cook it.
Speaker:No, it's not.
Speaker:It's maybe a better way, because what's happening is you're doing, you're getting all the same flavor compounds you would in all that aging, and You're not having to have that liquid suffer the oxidation of all those years of sitting and waiting.
Speaker:So TBD, this is new technology and we can talk about that when I learn more about it.
Speaker:But yeah, I think that we're, we're entering a new, new era of spirit making, I will say that wood is still part of the equation.
Speaker:I'd like to say that we don't have to cut any more oak trees down, but there's still at this point part of that story.
Speaker:And that is a limited resource.
Speaker:We use 200 year old oak trees.
Speaker:Thanks.
Speaker:And you can only take those down, do your math, right?
Speaker:So we have to figure that out as an industry.
Speaker:You had mentioned in a previous episode, the potential of expanding the pub house, of maybe opening up another facility.
Speaker:Obviously, you're probably not at that point yet, but it's something you've thought about.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:What goes into that decision?
Speaker:Both in terms of what taking the lessons that you learned here, how would, what would you, what changes would you make in a new facility?
Speaker:And what's where would you put something like that?
Speaker:Well, right off the bat, I think it would need to be within an hour and a half of here.
Speaker:So you can do your math.
Speaker:That's going to be at Madison, Milwaukee, Sheboygan door counties.
Speaker:There was some talk about Fond du Lac for a while.
Speaker:Fond du Lac was one.
Speaker:They don't have a brewery there.
Speaker:but we would have a head start.
Speaker:Not just in terms of the hard knocks, lessons, but also we've got a lineup of beers and we have a cachet as a brand.
Speaker:We could just move in and fill 20 lines overnight.
Speaker:We already have the liquid and we already know the recipes and we already have a following.
Speaker:So that gives you a huge head start.
Speaker:The other thing is that there's no need to build another brewery at a second location.
Speaker:Just build another tap room.
Speaker:It's really a low cost game.
Speaker:The problem, relatively, the problem is you got to have the people.
Speaker:You got to have a GM there.
Speaker:You got to have staff there and they got to be able to follow and maintain the brand.
Speaker:Because I, I don't want to have to lose sleep over two locations or three or four.
Speaker:I want to have the people.
Speaker:I've seen it happen on its own a couple of times before.
Speaker:We kind of see ourselves going through this fluctuation of Bobby and I get so excessively busy with this additional work that comes in the, in the expanding and it could go anywhere from expanding the number of invoices for people who are buying our beer that we have to file.
Speaker:to expanding how often we have to then go drive or there's all these extra jobs that start to come on to at least our shoulders that then we try and quickly delegate to our staff but we're running out of staff to do that so we're actually in the hiring process to try and get another full time employee, to kind of help alleviate that and it's like
Speaker:They do the thankless work.
Speaker:There's a bunch of thankless stuff.
Speaker:So much thankless work that has nothing to do with brewing the beer, it's, it's everything to do with just facilitating getting it to these places.
Speaker:You know, always talking about the Sam Adams commercial, they were all Standing with giant beards and coveralls in front of copper vessels, dumping hops in the kettle and people think that's what owning a brewery is.
Speaker:And there's like polka music and that happens for all of 30 seconds a week.
Speaker:I have taken up the cops.
Speaker:The cattle is about 30 seconds or
Speaker:Almost every employee.
Speaker:I think I have a picture of them cleaning a toilet because that's what owning and running a brewery is.
Speaker:I have a list of people to hire when you open a brewery and it has nothing to do with, I have plumber.
Speaker:I have a welder, I have an electrician, and then I added bookkeeper.
Speaker:My God, is that important?
Speaker:Because everybody wants to keep moving forward and someone's got to be responsible for it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Any one of those people can learn how to brew beer.
Speaker:Oh, yeah.
Speaker:Any one of them.
Speaker:But those trades are also important.
Speaker:And, and immensely important.
Speaker:I don't mean to go down that rabbit hole, but opening other locations, you have to, you have to have the right,
Speaker:You have to have the right people.
Speaker:Have the right people, and I think we're getting there.
Speaker:And how difficult has it been in hiring people for, for what you have right now?
Speaker:Well.
Speaker:Actually, let me take a step back.
Speaker:How many people do you employ?
Speaker:I think it's, you might know better.
Speaker:It's like 15.
Speaker:If you count all of our,
Speaker:I was going to say 14, but maybe 15, I think we're at 15.
Speaker:It's seasonal too, because we have a lot of staff who they know, they don't, especially teachers.
Speaker:They'll they know that they're going to work over the summer more.
Speaker:And then over the winter, they're like, Nope, I'm in Florida.
Speaker:Cool.
Speaker:See you soon.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:We're 50 percent up in the summer.
Speaker:So yeah.
Speaker:But then we have two brewing staff.
Speaker:Two brewers, I guess three if you count you.
Speaker:And there's a brewer's assistant, and then our taproom manager, and then the beer tender staff.
Speaker:So about 14 people.
Speaker:And, and we were, we were parsing out like, what's this all about?
Speaker:What are, why are we doing this?
Speaker:We were writing this down on napkins this morning before this.
Speaker:And job creation, right?
Speaker:And it sounds cliche, but we're in this to create jobs and jobs.
Speaker:People want, they're invested in, people leave higher paying jobs to work in the, everyone takes a pay cut to work here
Speaker:And not just here, not just us, but in the brewing industry,
Speaker:I would say probably hospitality in general, there's.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:A lot of, I mean, it can go up and down, but we want to create a employee owned company and give people say in our future and yeah, that's what we, that's why we do this.
Speaker:Let's talk about another change you guys made recently.
Speaker:You were one of the things in addition to having dogs here, I would say would be the fact that you didn't accept tips, that you just had one price for the beer.
Speaker:Sales tax tips included.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And you made a change recently.
Speaker:It took us longer to decide that to do that.
Speaker:Much longer.
Speaker:What was the, what was the rationale for it and how has it worked out?
Speaker:Well, wait, what was the rationale for what answer?
Speaker:Maybe why we decided to not accept.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I mean, that's
Speaker:So what, what did we, so we started at not accepting tips, because we wanted to follow a European model.
Speaker:We wanted to take a stand against the really poor wages that, servers get when it's tip based.
Speaker:And so we're like, okay, we're going to start you at the time.
Speaker:This was in 2017, 18, 2018.
Speaker:I know when we opened finally, we started it with soft openings in '17, $15 an hour.
Speaker:For our, serving staff.
Speaker:And the nice thing is you come in 3 p.
Speaker:m.
Speaker:on a Tuesday.
Speaker:You know, Gary, sometimes I think you might be the only one in the tap room if you happen to be here, right?
Speaker:Like, there's, there, there might not be anyone there.
Speaker:As opposed to Saturday night, there's a line out the door.
Speaker:And so, we really didn't want to create a competition between those two and we wanted to keep it as a
Speaker:Neither of us come from the hospitality world.
Speaker:I mean, I did one stint as a server in the summer and got fired pretty quickly after that.
Speaker:At the time our servers really liked it and we actually had one of our servers who has a lot of experience in the industry said that she actually liked it really, like so much more because it was a lot less stressful to not have to be so focused on tips.
Speaker:But then you move us past pandemic, inflation is skyrocketing.
Speaker:We either increase our prices or we listen to our patrons and we're like, well, you know, what do you think about, us going to a tip model?
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:And the patrons, and in particular our core patrons, we have this group of folks who they're our pub clubbers, but then even within our pub club group, there's this kind of central group that we value.
Speaker:I mean, they're like our, our consultants almost.
Speaker:And we value their opinions so much.
Speaker:And they were like, Oh my gosh, please let us tip these people.
Speaker:This is like Norm and Cliff at Cheers.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:That is who they are.
Speaker:They live here.
Speaker:Is every bit the correct analogy?
Speaker:And it's funny how much that group has now really inspired the directions that Bobby and I take the company, because we really are listening.
Speaker:This decision to switch though, was a long,
Speaker:Yeah, and we have a, we have a bar manager now who comes from quite a bit of experience in managing.
Speaker:He's managed very large franchise, bars and he's managed his own restaurants before.
Speaker:And he was like, look, like this, we got to make this change.
Speaker:It's going to be better for everybody.
Speaker:We made a press release.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Did a couple stories on it and the signage up
Speaker:And I think it was a good attempt at making change with the company using the company as a, as an agency for change, but it, it didn't work with the kind of the, the culmination of the inflation and the, just the shifting, topography post COVID.
Speaker:I don't think we could have maintained it.
Speaker:And something I'll go on record as saying is no one should ever feel obligated to tip.
Speaker:We have a minimum salary that they make.
Speaker:That's true.
Speaker:There's a spreadsheet.
Speaker:Oh my gosh.
Speaker:It's all built in.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But you know, we, we just, we can't compete keeping our staff when, you know, some place down the street with no experience required is going to start, you know, people at 18 to 20 an hour.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And if you're, and if you're a pub clubber, this isn't really an, for becoming one.
Speaker:But if you happen to be in a pub club, you can, you can spend 6 a pint and not tip the best beer in Wisconsin.
Speaker:So we have this reputation of, of being expensive, but really when you look at what you get and for what you really do pay, it's not as expensive as it sounds.
Speaker:And I think a lot of.
Speaker:A lot of other brewers are having to come up to our price anyway, because of the rising costs of everything.
Speaker:So that's kind of where things are.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:we'll end things on this episode.
Speaker:We still have more to talk about in the world of business.
Speaker:So I want to thank everyone for listening to another episode of respecting the Beer.
Speaker:Make sure to subscribe to the show and check out the Facebook group and Patreon page to receive updates about future episodes.
