The Start A Brewery Podcast

Does purchasing an existing brewery actually make functional sense? It could include all sorts of equipment and infrastructure that you don’t want or need – and it may not be in good shape. Our guests for Episode 027 help you to untangle these and other related Equipment & Infrastructure challenges by sharing their stories, experience, and resources. Join Jon Carpenter with Openso Consulting and Owen Woods of ABS Commercial with your hosts for an hour of thoughtful insight…which includes reassurance that our craft beer community still supports and helps each other.

 
GUESTS

Jon Carpenter, Brewmaster/ Craft Beverage Consultant,  Openso Consulting

Prior to founding Opensō, Jon Carpenter has been involved in every aspect of an operational brewery, including engineering & design, new product development & operations, staffing/training, and construction/ installation/ startup of equipment, systems, brands, and facilities.

Owen Woods, Brewery Design & Sales Consultant, ABS Commercial

Owen has a Bachelor of Science degree in Food Science and Technology with a concentration in Fermentation Science and a minor in Chemistry from Oregon State University. He began his professional brewing career in 2011 as a production brewer with Deschutes Brewery in Bend, OR. From there, he moved to the Deschutes Portland Public House and Brewery as the assistant research and development brewer. His next two stops involved working with smaller, family owned breweries prior to moving to New Orleans to work at Faubourg Brewery. As a Sales Consultant for ABS Commercial, he applies his knowledge of brewery equipment to help new and existing breweries with their unique equipment needs.

About StartABrewery

StartABrewery is a collaboration amongst a fun group of craft beer industry veterans who are often invited to speak at beer business / brewing education programs. Each has offered to share their knowledge and experience to support the craft beer community as a whole by helping fledgling breweries in planning. Conceived and coordinated by Candace L. Moon, The Craft Beer Attorney, and Laura Lodge of Customized Craft Beer Programs, StartABrewery is provided as an educational resource for those dreaming of opening a brewery, those who are taking steps to make their dream a reality, and those who are opening their brewery doors and living it.
 

The following music was used for this media project:
Music: Positive Fat Bass Intro Loop by WinnieTheMoog
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/6093-positive-fat-bass-intro-loop
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Finance is always a critical component of business discussions, and this is no exception. We talked about the numbers in episodes 19, 20 & 23, and we do so again here with Purchasing an Existing Brewery. Our guests address determining the value of an existing brewery, what kind of financial due diligence they would recommend, how an existing business can shift the focus of the SBA and lending institutions, and more. Coming from three different spaces in the craft beer industry, Derek Wasak of Plato Brewing & Consulting, Kary Shumway of Beer Business Finance, and Scott Birkner of Dogwood State Bank share their thoughts and experience around navigating the financial aspects of purchasing an existing brewery in today’s market.

Derek Wasak, Founder & Managing Director, Plato Brewing & Consulting

With over 15 years of brewing industry experience, Derek Wasak can help you start up, expand and succeed. He has worked at and with breweries, brewpubs, and start ups of all sixes from 3 – 120bbl brew houses and cellars from 2-100+ Fermenters.

With a specialization in start ups, equipment selection, facility design, and advising breweries of 5000 barrels or less, Derek has the knowledge, skills, and experience to help your brewery in planning.

Derek has spent the last 11 years as head brewer and director of operations at smaller breweries where he has designed and built out entire brewing facilities, beer portfolios, managed operations, and distribution on a day to day basis. In 2020, he made the decision to step away from brewery operations to start Plato Brewing, utilize that experience to pursue consulting full time, and help breweries plan their businesses. Derek is passionate about what he does and enjoys helping others realize their dream of opening a brewery.

Kary Shumway, Founder, Craft Brewery Financial Training & Beer Business Finance

Kary is a CPA, former CFO for a beer distributor, and current CFO for Wormtown Brewery in Worcester, MA. He has worked in the beer industry for more than 20 years as a certified public accountant, and extends his experience to help others through his small businesses.

Scott Birkner, Vice President & Business Lending Specialist, Dogwood State Bank

Scott began his finance career immediately following college, where he worked for Unity Bank and held several progressive positions, from a loan underwriter to a Regional Sales Manager, and then commercial lender. Following this, he became a SBA Business Development Officer, where his portfolio projects ranged from $500,000 - $15,000,000. Scott comes to Dogwood State Bank with over 20 years of SBA Lending, having served as a Senior Business Development Officer for HVC Bank, United Western Bank, Fifth Third Bank, Bank of North Carolina (now Pinnacle), Yadkin Bank (now First National Bank), and United Community Bank. Scott specializes in financing business acquisitions, start-ups, expansions, refinances, partner buyouts and commercial real estate on a nationwide platform. He is passionate about forming relationships with his clients and anticipating their needs throughout the duration of the loan process. Scott is a member of the CVBBA (Carolinas Virginia Business Brokers Association) Brewers Association, America Craft Distillers Association, American Distilling Institute and many State Guilds. He is a frequent speaker, panelist and moderator at business broker events, commercial real estate events, lending conferences, seminars and SBA industry training.

About StartABrewery

StartABrewery is a collaboration amongst a fun group of craft beer industry veterans who are often invited to speak at beer business / brewing education programs. Each has offered to share their knowledge and experience to support the craft beer community as a whole by helping fledgling breweries in planning. Conceived and coordinated by Candace L. Moon, The Craft Beer Attorney, and Laura Lodge of Customized Craft Beer Programs, StartABrewery is provided as an educational resource for those dreaming of opening a brewery, those who are taking steps to make their dream a reality, and those who are opening their brewery doors and living it.
 

The following music was used for this media project:
Music: Positive Fat Bass Intro Loop by WinnieTheMoog
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/6093-positive-fat-bass-intro-loop
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Welcome back to Season II of the Start A Brewery podcast! We begin with a requested topic: Purchasing an Existing Brewery. This covers several episodes, starting with a strategic overview of legal issues and general strategies for this approach. Candace, Brook Bristow, and Jeff O’Brien offer the perfect storm of stories, best practices, situations to avoid, plus stuff that attorneys wrangle often….but the potential purchaser is usually navigating for the first time. Dive in to set yourself a solid foundation for this new podcast season!

Guests

Jeff O’Brien, Chestnut Cambronne, PA

Jeff O’Brien is a partner with Chestnut Cambronne and serves as outside general counsel to a wide variety of small and closely held businesses as well as real estate investors and developers. He has significant experience working with craft breweries, distilleries, and a variety of other liquor and hospitality focused businesses on an array of issues including entity formation, financing, real estate matters, intellectual property protection, operational issues, securities law, and distribution contracts. Jeff also advises clients in the industrial hemp and cannabis industries and is a member of the Minnesota Industrial Hemp Association’s Board of Directors.

Jeff’s practice is regional and national in scope. In addition to Minnesota, Mr. O’Brien is admitted to practice in the States of Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin, and before the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota, the District of South Dakota and the Northern and Southern Districts of Iowa. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the State Bar of Wisconsin’s Non-Resident Lawyers Division (NRLD), and he regularly assists businesses across the United States on matters pertaining to Federal securities law, with an emphasis on exempt offerings under Regulation D and Regulation CF.

A frequent lecturer and writer, Jeff has presented and written articles on a variety of business and real estate topics. He has a blog site, Jeffrey O’Brien Today, and a craft beverage law website which contains his articles, podcasts and other resources pertinent to craft beverage law.

Jeff has been listed as a Minnesota Super Lawyer eight times, including 2023. Previously he had been named a “Rising Star” by Minnesota Super Lawyers every year from 2008-12, a designation reserved for only 2.5% of all attorneys in Minnesota. He was named as one of the “40 Under Forty” in 2014 by the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal and a Minnesota Monthly Top Lawyer for 2023.

Jeff regularly appears as the “Lawyer Extraordinaire” on Jon Justice in the Morning (NewsTalk 1130 AM) and The BS Show podcast with Bob Sansevere.

Brook Bristow, Bristow Beverage Law

Founder and Managing Attorney Brook Bristow has practiced law since 2007 in both transactional and litigation roles. Representing hundreds of clients from start-ups to national brands, Brook counsels members of the food and beverage industry. He regularly advises on federal and state regulatory compliance, licensing, contracts, intellectual property, and federal label and formula approvals, among other topics.

He has some street cred, having served as co-founder of Greenville Craft Beer Week, president of the Craft Beer Attorney Coalition, president of the Upstate Brewtopians homebrew club, and as the inaugural Executive Director of the South Carolina Brewers Guild. He is also Cicerone Program Certified Beer Server. Brook holds a B.A. in Advertising from the University of South Carolina, and a J.D. from Mercer University, where he served on the Mercer Law Review. He is licensed in the state of South Carolina. He enjoys Central Coast Zinfandel, Aged Rum, and can brew a passable IPA.

About StartABrewery

StartABrewery is a collaboration amongst a fun group of craft beer industry veterans who are often invited to speak at beer business / brewing education programs. Each has offered to share their knowledge and experience to support the craft beer community as a whole by helping fledgling breweries in planning.
 

Conceived and coordinated by Candace L. Moon, The Craft Beer Attorney, and Laura Lodge of Customized Craft Beer Programs, StartABrewery is provided as an educational resource for those dreaming of opening a brewery, those who are taking steps to make their dream a reality, and those who are opening their brewery doors and living it.
 

The following music was used for this media project:
Music: Positive Fat Bass Intro Loop by WinnieTheMoog
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/6093-positive-fat-bass-intro-loop
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

What did you think of Start A Brewery Podcast Season I? In reflecting on the very first (23) episodes, Candace L. Moon & Laura Lodge, hosts of the podcast & Founders of Start A Brewery, ask that very question! They encourage listeners to share both their likes & their constructive suggestions for Season II. Episode 024 is a fun visit to different episodes in Season I, with shout outs, testimonials, storytelling, industry insight, and a look behind the scenes with these two never-ever podcasters who know an awful lot about beer.

Candace L. Moon is a San Diego-based attorney who has spent the last eleven years dedicating her law practice to the craft beer industry. She has worked with more than 450 craft breweries and craft breweries-in-planning nationwide, handling many different legal areas including alcoholic beverage law, contract review and trademark law. Candace is the co-author of Brew Law 101 – A Legal Guide to Opening a Brewery (CA version).

​The co-founder of the Big Beers, Belgians & Barleywines Festival, Laura Lodge has been engaged in the craft beer industry since 1997. She’s the Owner of Customized Craft Beer Programs, designing events, resort retail programs, and educational programs based on craft beer, and is also the author of Distribution Insight for the Craft Brewer.

​As veterans of the craft beer industry, both Moon and Lodge have taken on education roles within the industry over time, including formal higher education. Candace teaches brewing business courses classes at San Diego State University & UC San Diego, while Laura has been a regular guest at Metro State University Beer Industry Program classes in Denver, speaking about events and distribution.

​Likewise, both have been tapped to educate as featured speakers in their areas of expertise at numerous industry conferences, occasionally presenting together. Such conferences include the Craft Brewers Conference, the Craft Beverage Expo, the California Craft Brewers Conferences, the New England Brew Summit, the Rocky Mountain Brewing Symposium, the Mid America Beverage Exposition & Conference, the Craft Beer Professionals Conferences, NanoCon, and the Pink Boots 10th Anniversary Conference among others.

​Start A Brewery pulls together in a more formal way the networking connections and educational material that Moon & Lodge both have grown and championed for years in the beer industry.

The Craft Beer Attorney has long had an established Preferred Provider Network, built to offer all clients a full complement of knowledgeable, competent professionals for their start up and growing breweries. In addition, Candace has built informally & then more specifically a network of attorneys nationwide that are knowledgeable about craft beer and can refer each other when inquiries come in that are outside of their licensed jurisdiction or they simply don’t have the bandwidth to handle additional clients.

​Customized Craft Beer Programs has always emphasized education, whether it be facilitating education by industry leaders or Laura teaching herself. When developing craft beer programs at destination resorts, education took on the form of developing food and beer pairings with the staff, encouraging Cicerone Beer Server Certification, and offering opportunities for resort guests to taste and learn from staff and brewery personnel. Recruiting savvy professionals as educators to present at the Big Beers Festival, at the Rocky Mountain Brewers Symposium, for specialty Brewmasters Weekends at resorts, and for other events has long been a focus.

​Over the past five years, both Lodge and Moon have pooled industry connections to facilitate and participate, respectively, with the creation of the Craft Beer & Brewing New Brewery Accelerator Workshop. In addition, an informal group of industry professionals has gathered together at CBC and GABF for the past few years to be social with the additional outreach of inviting brewers with questions to come by for complimentary advice and referrals from the group. Nicknamed “The Resource Group”, this core group of friends provided insight, support, and the first educational contributions for the Start A Brewery website.

About StartABrewery

StartABrewery is a collaboration amongst a fun group of craft beer industry veterans who are often invited to speak at beer business / brewing education programs. Each has offered to share their knowledge and experience to support the craft beer community as a whole by helping fledgling breweries in planning.
 

Conceived and coordinated by Candace L. Moon, The Craft Beer Attorney, and Laura Lodge of Customized Craft Beer Programs, StartABrewery is provided as an educational resource for those dreaming of opening a brewery, those who are taking steps to make their dream a reality, and those who are opening their brewery doors and living it.
 

The following music was used for this media project:
Music: Positive Fat Bass Intro Loop by WinnieTheMoog
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/6093-positive-fat-bass-intro-loop
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

If there was ever an insider’s look at brewery financing, this is it. Rick Wehner of Brewery Finance and Scott Birkner of Dogwood State Bank hail from lending organizations that are very different in their approaches. Their opinion about business plans, however, has a lot of common ground. For a good hard look at credit, partnerships, different kinds of financing, working with businesses in trouble, and a whole bunch of valuable commentary – take a listen.

Rick Wehner, Founder, Brewery Finance

Rick started his leasing career shortly after college when he went to work for his father’s equipment leasing company, learning the leasing business from the ground up, starting in the file room and slowly working his way through most of the different departments.

Rick eventually went on to start his own equipment finance company along with his brother, and he quickly married his passion for craft beer and his experience with equipment finance by forming Brewery Finance. He’ll be the first to tell you that he is more of a “beer guy that works in finance,” than a “finance guy that works with breweries.”

Scott Birkner, SBA Lending Specialist, Dogwood State Bank

Scott Birkner began his finance career immediately following college, where he worked for Unity Bank and held several progressive positions, from a loan underwriter to a Regional Sales Manager, and then commercial lender. Following this, he became a SBA Business Development Officer, where his portfolio projects ranged from $500,000 - $15,000,000.

Scott comes to Dogwood State Bank with over 20 years of SBA Lending, having served as a Senior Business Development Officer for HVC Bank, United Western Bank, Fifth Third Bank, Bank of North Carolina (now Pinnacle), Yadkin Bank (now First National Bank), and United Community Bank. Scott specializes in financing business acquisitions, start-ups, expansions, refinances, partner buyouts and commercial real estate on a nationwide platform. He is passionate about forming relationships with his clients and anticipating their needs throughout the duration of the loan process.

Scott is a member of the CVBBA (Carolinas Virginia Business Brokers Association) Brewers Association, America Craft Distillers Association, American Distilling Institute and many State Guilds. He is a frequent speaker, panelist and moderator at business broker events, commercial real estate events, lending conferences, seminars and SBA industry training.

About StartABrewery

StartABrewery is a collaboration amongst a fun group of craft beer industry veterans who are often invited to speak at beer business / brewing education programs. Each has offered to share their knowledge and experience to support the craft beer community as a whole by helping fledgling breweries in planning.
 

Conceived and coordinated by Candace L. Moon, The Craft Beer Attorney, and Laura Lodge of Customized Craft Beer Programs, StartABrewery is provided as an educational resource for those dreaming of opening a brewery, those who are taking steps to make their dream a reality, and those who are opening their brewery doors and living it.
 

The following music was used for this media project:
Music: Positive Fat Bass Intro Loop by WinnieTheMoog
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/6093-positive-fat-bass-intro-loop
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

What does it mean “to leverage your brand”? And how would you do that? Our guests in Start A Brewery Podcast Episode 022 have answers, and do an wonderful job of connecting the discussions in Episode 006: Understanding Your Market & Creating Your Brand Identity and Episode 021: Creating Your Marketing Plan as well. Covering a wide range of topics – from brand strength to brand refresh, social media influencers, and consistency (the episode theme), Taylor Seidler of SeaThirst Creative and Jenny Mann of DIY Social Media for Breweries and Jenny Mann Photography bring examples, stories, and some really actionable insights to the table.

Taylor Seidler, Creative Director, SeaThirst Creative

Now living in Western North Carolina, Taylor started her award-winning design life as an editorial designer at a Boston alt-weekly, moving on to be creative director for a beer magazine & website. Now she’s focused on branding, marketing, and finding the best spots for a hike or canoe trip. 

Jenny Mann, Founder of DIY Social Media for Breweries and Jenny Mann Photography

 For over 11 years, Jenny has been a huge advocate for craft beer, while working for some of the top breweries and craft beer bars in the San Diego beer community. Her experience includes homebrewing, beertending, developing brewery tours and draft maintenance programs, education, management, sales and marketing. She is a Certified Cicerone and has photographed over half the breweries in San Diego. After seeing the need for beer-specific social media in the craft-beer industry, especially over the last two years, she built a business and online community designed specifically to navigate and guide small-to-medium-sized breweries and brewpubs through the wacky and everchanging world of algorithms and social media to help them get their messages and products out to the masses. Jenny travels all over the country coaching and speaking in front of local brewer guild memberships, helping brewing companies create thoughtful, informative, timely posts to keep fans and followers in the know.

About StartABrewery

StartABrewery is a collaboration amongst a fun group of craft beer industry veterans who are often invited to speak at beer business / brewing education programs. Each has offered to share their knowledge and experience to support the craft beer community as a whole by helping fledgling breweries in planning.
 

Conceived and coordinated by Candace L. Moon, The Craft Beer Attorney, and Laura Lodge of Customized Craft Beer Programs, StartABrewery is provided as an educational resource for those dreaming of opening a brewery, those who are taking steps to make their dream a reality, and those who are opening their brewery doors and living it.
 

The following music was used for this media project:
Music: Positive Fat Bass Intro Loop by WinnieTheMoog
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/6093-positive-fat-bass-intro-loop
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Marketing plan? Who needs one? Well…you do. From understanding what exactly a marketing plan is & what it’s for to marketing budgets & target customers, our guests in Episode 021 bring it all to the table. SWOT analysis, road maps, local vs. outside market approaches, marketing budgets, and more….it’s here. It’s not just for the business plan or for the lenders; this is where you make the game plan for your business.

Many thanks to RadCraft for sponsoring Episode 021 and to All About Beer for partnering with us in this podcast endeavor!

 
Guests: 

Ann Obenchain, Vice President, Marketing & Communications, Brewers Association

Ann Obenchain is the Vice President of Marketing & Communications for the Brewers Association. Ann develops and leads the strategic direction of the association's marketing and communications activities, and serves as spokesperson with the media for events, including the Great American Beer Festival, Craft Brewers Conference & BrewExpo America, World Beer Cup, and Homebrew Con.

Julie Rhodes, Owner & Strategic Business Consultant, Not Your Hobby Marketing Solutions

With over 2 decades of experience on the business side - supplier sales, digital marketing, and distribution management - of the craft beverage industry, I provide strategic sales and marketing advice to small to medium-sized beverage alcohol brands through webinars, whitepapers, digital courses, one on one consulting, and group coaching programs.

Bill Wetmore, Sales & Marketing Director/Head of Beer Strategery, Fat Heads Brewery

 A highly skilled professional with nearly 20 years of beer leadership experience (marketing, sales, and general management), across dozens of national import and craft brands, Bill is a strategic thinker who combines excellent communication, problem-solving, and motivational skills, with a firm focus on long-term business development, team empowerment, budget achievement and bottom-line results.

About StartABrewery

StartABrewery is a collaboration amongst a fun group of craft beer industry veterans who are often invited to speak at beer business / brewing education programs. Each has offered to share their knowledge and experience to support the craft beer community as a whole by helping fledgling breweries in planning.
 

Conceived and coordinated by Candace L. Moon, The Craft Beer Attorney, and Laura Lodge of Customized Craft Beer Programs, StartABrewery is provided as an educational resource for those dreaming of opening a brewery, those who are taking steps to make their dream a reality, and those who are opening their brewery doors and living it.
 

The following music was used for this media project:
Music: Positive Fat Bass Intro Loop by WinnieTheMoog
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/6093-positive-fat-bass-intro-loop
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

From business projections to everyday financials! Dovetailing nicely with our previous episode, Getting Into the Numbers, Part II recaps a bit of the groundwork prep you’ll need to start generating numbers for your business plan and then hits seasonal projections… before heading into a thorough discussion of best practices and strategies to help new and existing breweries stay in touch with their financials. It comes as no surprise that communication is the #1 culprit in a lot of distressed situations, and our guests get into some ways to tackle that challenge as well. A deep dive with both strategy and actionable elements throughout.

Audra Gaiziunas, Brewed For Her Ledger

Audra is the owner of Brewed For Her Ledger, LLC. Prior to owning her own company, she served as Dogfish Head Craft Brewery’s Controller 2009-2010 and Mother Earth Brewing’s Chief Financial Officer 2011-2014. She has been working exclusively in craft beer for 11+ years and joined the Brewers Association’s Finance Committee in January 2020.

A graduate from the prestigious Kenan-Flagler OneMBA program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Audra possesses over a decade and a half of experience in senior leadership roles in craft brewing, manufacturing, services, non-profits and startups. She earned her undergraduate degree in accounting and business management (double major) from Loras College (Dubuque, IA) in 1997. Her passions include home brewing, mobile marketing, crafting stories from numbers, and paying it forward.

Kary Shumway, Beer Business Finance and Craft Brewery Financial Training

Kary is a CPA, former CFO for a beer distributor and current CFO and Partner of Wormtown Brewery in Worcester, MA. He has spent the last 20 years using finance to help improve financial results in our businesses. Now, he’s helping other breweries, wholesalers and cideries to do the same.

His financial training programs have been developed on a new learning platform in order to deliver the best experience. The programs are designed specifically for non-financial people who have the responsibility of either managing or contributing to the success of business.  

About StartABrewery

StartABrewery is a collaboration amongst a fun group of craft beer industry veterans who are often invited to speak at beer business / brewing education programs. Each has offered to share their knowledge and experience to support the craft beer community as a whole by helping fledgling breweries in planning.
 

Conceived and coordinated by Candace L. Moon, The Craft Beer Attorney, and Laura Lodge of Customized Craft Beer Programs, StartABrewery is provided as an educational resource for those dreaming of opening a brewery, those who are taking steps to make their dream a reality, and those who are opening their brewery doors and living it.
 

The following music was used for this media project:
Music: Positive Fat Bass Intro Loop by WinnieTheMoog
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/6093-positive-fat-bass-intro-loop
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Proforma, Sales, and Cash Projections, oh my! Episode 019 literally “Gets Into the Numbers”, with a ton of guidance about approaches to the tasks, available templates, and other resources to help you with the financial side of your business plan. Our guests discuss the strategy around conservative plans & projections and what lenders/investors are looking for…and break it down into terms that our hosts can understand. Audra Gaiziunas and Kary Shumway both are chock full of experience, offer different perspectives around how to work into the numbers, and provided such a wealth of information that we are recording again  for Getting Into the Numbers Part II.

Audra Gaiziunas, Brewed For Her Ledger

Audra is the owner of Brewed For Her Ledger, LLC. Prior to owning her own company, she served as Dogfish Head Craft Brewery’s Controller 2009-2010 and Mother Earth Brewing’s Chief Financial Officer 2011-2014. She has been working exclusively in craft beer for 11+ years and joined the Brewers Association’s Finance Committee in January 2020.

A graduate from the prestigious Kenan-Flagler OneMBA program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Audra possesses over a decade and a half of experience in senior leadership roles in craft brewing, manufacturing, services, non-profits and startups. She earned her undergraduate degree in accounting and business management (double major) from Loras College (Dubuque, IA) in 1997. Her passions include home brewing, mobile marketing, crafting stories from numbers, and paying it forward.

Kary Shumway, Beer Business Finance and Craft Brewery Financial Training

Kary is a CPA, former CFO for a beer distributor and current CFO and Partner of Wormtown Brewery in Worcester, MA. He has spent the last 20 years using finance to help improve financial results in our businesses. Now, he’s helping other breweries, wholesalers and cideries to do the same. His financial training programs have been developed on a new learning platform in order to deliver the best experience. The programs are designed specifically for non-financial people who have the responsibility of either managing or contributing to the success of business.  

About StartABrewery

StartABrewery is a collaboration amongst a fun group of craft beer industry veterans who are often invited to speak at beer business / brewing education programs. Each has offered to share their knowledge and experience to support the craft beer community as a whole by helping fledgling breweries in planning.
 

Conceived and coordinated by Candace L. Moon, The Craft Beer Attorney, and Laura Lodge of Customized Craft Beer Programs, StartABrewery is provided as an educational resource for those dreaming of opening a brewery, those who are taking steps to make their dream a reality, and those who are opening their brewery doors and living it.
 

The following music was used for this media project:
Music: Positive Fat Bass Intro Loop by WinnieTheMoog
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/6093-positive-fat-bass-intro-loop
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

What does it mean to set goals and create projections for your business plan?  How do you pull those numbers out of the sky? And running your brewery, regardless of any other variable, requires setting goals to optimize your business success. Mark Boelman of Triple Bottom Line Brewery Consulting starts off Episode 018 with practical goal setting advice, and Tim Myers of Strange Craft Beer Co and Matt Del Vecchio of Duck Foot Brewing follow by sharing their personal experience. In addition to initial goals, Tim and Matt share how they work with their team now to set goals and communicate for day to day operations.

Many thanks to Harvest Hosts for sponsoring Episode 018 and to All About Beer for partnering in the creation of this podcast!

Guests:

Mark Boelman, Principal, Triple Bottom Line Brewery Consulting

Mark is an industry veteran with an MBA in accounting and finance who led the business side of Left Hand Brewing Co for many years. He founded the Craft Beer Accounting Group, a network of 100+ regional brewery CFOs, Owners, and Controllers, is a National BJCP judge, and an avid (award-winning) homebrewer.

Tim Myers, Founder/Head Brewer, Strange Craft Beer Company

Tim Myers is a father, husband, and brewer, in that order. He started Strange Craft Beer Company in May 2010, brewing one barrel at a time in Denver’s first taproom brewery. In the past 11 years, Tim has helped over a dozen breweries open, taught brewing classes at Metro State University, and served on the board of the Colorado Brewers Guild.

Matt Delvecchio, Founder/ Head Quack, Duck Foot Brewing Company

In 2012, Matt Delvecchio, at the time a financial planner living in New York, was diagnosed with Celaic Disease, a gluten-intolerant disease. Instead of letting this get him down in the dumps, he researched ways to make beer with virtually no gluten, and thus, duckfoot was born upon Matt’s arrival in Encinitas, CA. Matt enjoys spending time with his wife, and two children, and working on ways to give more gluten free beer to the people!

About StartABrewery

StartABrewery is a collaboration amongst a fun group of craft beer industry veterans who are often invited to speak at beer business / brewing education programs. Each has offered to share their knowledge and experience to support the craft beer community as a whole by helping fledgling breweries in planning.
 

Conceived and coordinated by Candace L. Moon, The Craft Beer Attorney, and Laura Lodge of Customized Craft Beer Programs, StartABrewery is provided as an educational resource for those dreaming of opening a brewery, those who are taking steps to make their dream a reality, and those who are opening their brewery doors and living it.
 

The following music was used for this media project:
Music: Positive Fat Bass Intro Loop by WinnieTheMoog
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/6093-positive-fat-bass-intro-loop
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license