Name: The Journey: From Planning to a Successful Launch and Beyond
Uploaded: 2026-09-22T16:07:08.172Z
Duration: 49 min 16 s
Description: The Journey: From Planning to a Successful Launch and Beyond

Transcript for "The Journey: From Planning to a Successful Launch and Beyond": Good morning, everyone. It's, time to start day two of our brewery workshop, a new brewery accelerator. Before we get started and I introduce our illustrious guest here, I'm sure most of you all know as well. Just want to announce the result of yesterday's lightning pitches. Neil, you've actually judged lightning pitches at our workshops, you know, before. Always a fun time to see the ideas that folks have. And, what a cool thing yesterday to see how many people already had property lined up or purchased even for their, for their breweries. Three, pitchers yesterday all had property already purchased. You know, and I think that that model of owning your location is an incredibly important one. It's something I'm sure Neil will touch on later in his presentation because that was a significant thing for them. Anyway, our winner of the lightning pitches last night was Lindsay from Silvertip Brewing. Congratulations, Lindsay. We've got a craft beer and brewing advertising package that will help you get things off the ground when you kick it off. And, yeah, pretty exciting stuff. Congratulations. And, anyway, so today, we are going to kick off with, I think, one of, the most important and useful sessions of this entire thing for my friend, Neil Fisher. Welcome, Neil. Thanks, Jamie. And, you know, Neil, you have a very significant presentation here that walks everyone through your process of planning to to launch and then, you know, how those things have developed. And, just a reminder to everyone, one of the awesome things about this is that we've it it is interactive. You can throw questions up in the q and a on the sidebar there. Neil will keep an eye on it and try to answer those as much as he can as long as it fits in with the flow of the things here. And, yeah, since we have a limited amount of time I will also should say, Neil's joining us from a hotel in Yakima where he's going to be doing a hop selection later this morning, and I appreciate you getting up early to join us all here and share, this with everybody. So having said that, off. There you go, Neil. Thanks, Jamie. Happy to be here and, excited to share a little bit more about my journey specifically with WellWork and how that, may be helpful for others. So we'll just get things kicked off here with, kind of the journey from planning to a successful launch and beyond. This is really kind of a characterization of of how I I did this for WellWork. So keep in mind, a lot of this is from 2014 and shortly after that. So, you know, obviously, things like rates and the overall environment of of the industry has changed quite a bit. But, hopefully, this is helpful to give you kind of an idea of, you know, someone who came from a perspective of home brewer wanting to launch a brewery and how exactly we did that and, things we learned and things that we would probably do differently. So, here's a very brief, you know or not brief, but, you know, concise overview of our timeline. So won't go into too much detail, but, basically, I started Homebrewing in 2009 and didn't really take, you know, opening a business seriously until around 2014. So for me, that journey was more you know, I I always joke that if if your friends say you know, all your friends that you're drinking your beer for free say you should open a brewery, that's probably not the right audience to consider when you're determining whether or not it's a viable business. Fortunately, I had those same friends that were willing to also, you know, contribute in different ways to to help get this thing off the ground. And so by January 2014, I kinda made, you know, an informal, not necessarily bet, but kind of a promise. Like, okay. Well, I'll take this more seriously, you know, opening a brewery if we have some success with competitions. Not just kind of the small local ones, but maybe some regional ones. And sure enough, January 2014 at the the big beers competition up in Vail at the time, we ended up taking a few medals that, started that year and then, you know, a few more a few months later. So by really February, I think that was where February 2014, so just a month removed from those wins, decided to start in earnest. So March was really the the starting point of where this entire process that I'll go through began. So that was the business plan. And to kinda give you the final endpoint of that, it was February 2015 when we opened. So, really less than a year from kind of earnest inception into opening. That timeline is not gonna be applicable to everyone. It's also, you know, not necessarily the best way to do it. It's just the way we did it. And in in between that, I'll talk a little bit about where leasing occurred, which was kind of midway through all that, and equipment purchases and deposits. So that's our history. You can kinda see some things there. Our, expansions around there, our biggest expansion to date was back in '23 when we commissioned our 30 barrel brew house. As Jamie alluded to, one of the biggest moments in our businesses history that led to our growth was the purchase of our property in 2018. We went from leasing it when we opened and to, we had an opportunity to purchase the entire parcel, which was essentially the full city block. And that has given us a huge opportunity to continue to grow at our own pace and kinda control our destiny, which I think in 2026 is perhaps one of the most important pieces to consider as you're you're considering opening a brewery. So very first step before you even start writing the business plan, at least earnestly, If you know you're moving forward, I would suggest starting kind of concurrently with learning about writing a business plan with entity formation. Not all of this needs to be exhaustively, you know, thought out, but starting the entity itself gives you a lot of advantages. One, you can essentially create an LLC or or different business entity with just, you know, very simple documents with your secretary of state, in in your respective state. That is an easy way to create an entity and give you some separation between kind of your personal expenses and things that you're spending and and potentially even start, you know, reaping some tax benefits if you're in an earnest planning stage. So that's one piece of that. And then the other piece is that, you know, as as you start to navigate all the other things, you you'll find out that whenever you have an LLC or even a partnership or something else that's more formal, you'll get a little bit better responsiveness from either vendors or or other people that you're, you know, engaging, whether it's in planning or even in potentially pitching. So that part is very simple. The more difficult part of the entity formation, which should be almost as much time as your business plan, is, your business agreement. And I can speak from experience that, that piece of it was probably the most critical and one that I've leveraged the most since opening. So whether it's your buy, sell agreement in the cases where, you know, you, your maybe investors, your maybe partners wanna sell. There's a, you know, a clear outline for how that process goes and making sure that, you know, right of refusals are are put in place to protect you. And also in the case of, you know, disagreements or even potentially, partnerships dissolving. How do you transition? How do you work through that? Who makes decisions? All of that will be outlined in your usually an operating agreement if you're a partnership or something similar. You'll have a partnership agreement. So whatever that kind of, you know, those rules of engagement essentially for your business, that needs to be probably the most, I would say, the most thought out even if you don't have all the answers yet. Because the things that I've learned are that the shortcuts I've seen people take and maybe just use a boiler plate from something you found online, those can become really costly, and detrimental to your business as you grow. It's not just about the worst case scenario, which is liquidation and and how do you, you know, separate all the assets out and pay off, you know, debts, but it's also the best case scenario. What happens if you're much more successful in your projections, you know, and and you blow through those those first two to three year projections? How do you put yourself in a position to to potentially either pay off, you know, investors sooner or debt? How do you accelerate some of those? How do you gain more ownership? How do you gain access to capital? There's a lot of things that you can think through. So even that entity formation piece, put as much time into that as you can even if you don't have to have the full exhaustive agreement and all that buttoned up before you proceed. And concurrently, you need to learn how to write your business plan. This is the part that I really struggle with at first until I just started finding resources, whether it's your small business development center nearby. There's a lot of different books out there and resources. There's even, you know, I'm sure something more local to you. Get involved with either your Chamber of Commerce. They may have resources that you can point you to. But there is even local community college or or local universities. There are so many resources out there. The worst thing you can do is just decide, okay. This is too foreign to me and just, you know, I'm just not equipped. I can say very candidly that was exactly who I, you know, I felt a little bit of an imposter syndrome at the at the very beginning. And come to find out that it really just took, you know, finding some resources and just starting to write it. That, you know, finding out what I didn't know and finding the resources to answer those questions was critical. And as you start to learn that, you need to start to identify your target audience for your business plan. You can have multiple, you know, versions of your business plan depending on who you're, you know, who you're pitching, who your target is. I would say this piece, the business plan itself, whether you're fully funded, which is obviously rare, but if you have all the resources you need to open and you really don't need, you know, debt or investors or, you know, anything else that traditionally is used, you know, with the business plan, I'd still think it's a very valuable exercise to write it, not just, to be able to coalesce some of your ideas, but also to give you some benchmarks that you can follow to determine, you know, how successful you were, how accurate you were in some of your estimates, and it helped kinda keep track. And it also helps your team kinda buy in. So in those early stages, you kind of you know, you're putting things to paper that may may or may not be accurate as you get closer to opening, but it gives you a way to kind of chart a path at least to start, whether you need the financing and the debt or not. So that I think this is a valuable and really important step no matter where you are in the funding and kind of planning process. But that that could change the way you read it depending on who that audience is. So the very first step for me was to just put an outline together. The outline can be really you know, you can find a lot of different examples. Make sure it makes sense for you. If you put in a bunch of, you know, sections that really have no meaning to you and you're just trying to check a box, it's gonna come through both in your pitches and in the actual final business plan. When people read through it, they'll they'll realize, one, you're either not really familiar with what you're writing about or two, it's just not relevant. So make it concise, make it accurate, but make it relevant to you and your business and what you're trying to do. There's a lot of different ways to you know, what you wanna start with. I would always recommend, you know, making it the very first two to three pages. Just make it a a summary, whether it's your, you know, the opportunity and you're explaining exactly what you're proposing and what you're asking for and what you're giving in return. You know, that's that's usually the first thing that people are gonna wanna look at. And then after that, you can decide what's most important. A lot of people will put market analysis and and things up to the top just to kind of reiterate why this is a good opportunity. But, you know, candidly, right now in the state of of craft beer, those that market analysis piece may be, you know, something that you that you wanna deemphasize, but maybe it's not as important as some of the other things that you may wanna elevate. And then from there, you're just deciding what you wanna communicate and what you wanna present to people that are potentially interested. So make this your own. Understand who you're, you know, communicating to, and also find where you are strong and what you really have a grasp on and make that your priority. And then maybe find help and resources to kinda bolster the things you're weak in. Product and services is kind of the the easiest way to describe what you're doing. It could be you know, in my case, it was the beers. That was really what we were pitching. If we were to write this business plan for Worldworks today, it would be more than just the beer. I think this is where I would include things like the experience, whether it's your taproom, events. There's basically, what are you doing to generate revenue? And if it's a a more brewpub and and kind of destination, you know, on-site experience, then that's not just the beer. It's potentially food. It's potentially entertainment events, anything that will help drive traffic and revenue. Or if you're planning to distribute, that's where you would not just describe the actual products you're making, but packaging plans and things like that. This will look very different depending on what business you're opening, what brewery, whether it's distributing or taproom only. But it doesn't mean that you have to chart out the first eighteen months of production, put together all the recipes, the names, the branding. None of that is really going to be what people buy into. What they're buying into is you and the way that you describe your process. So, I I haven't and this is an actual excerpt from our business plan, and and most of these beers are not produced anymore, even if at one point we did brew them. So it was really just a practice in saying, hey. In at this time in 2014, this is what I think would be would position us to be successful, you know, launch. And And it was really just four beers and a few specialty products, but, that'll look different today. So the only beer we still produce that I've had in our business plan is our Hefeweizen. And and that's still produced today, which is kind of, you know, fun. It was also our first beer we brewed back before we opened, in December, thirty first of twenty fourteen on New Year's Eve. So special beer, but it's also, you know, compared to everything else we do, it's a small part of that. So that's just to say that what you put here and what you are presenting is not really, you know, what people are gonna they're not gonna hold you to to that. They're going to look for you to describe what you're good at and how you're gonna execute on it and and give them kind of a snapshot of what that is. So make it unique to what you're, you know, anything that you're doing to generate revenue and give people some sort of vision for what's coming next. The most important piece I found in the business plan was the financials. The summary is probably what you're gonna spend the majority of your time on. It's also gonna be the make or break. You can add lots of descriptions, and you can put a lot of time and effort into your products and services sections and and describing these beers and your process and why it's gonna be different than, you know, your competitors or or people in your area, why it's gonna stand out. All that's great. But at the end of the day, the the vast majority of people, including banks, investors, potential partners, anyone that wants to be a part of this business is gonna wanna know just what is it gonna cost and how, you know, how soon will I get my money back, or how soon will you pay off this debt. Everything else is going to just be supportive to that. So this is where I would invest as much time and effort as you possibly can. And again, this doesn't have to you know, there's no there's no real, you know, consequence if you're either a little bit below or a little bit above. Now the reality is if you're you're making plans and making investments based on projections that don't come to fruition, you'll be in a tough spot. So debt service and cash flow will be critical. But if you've done your homework and you've kind of given yourself, you know, a lot of runway with either startup capital, operating costs, or kind of you you you can have those fixed for a bit. You know where you can spend money. You're not putting a ton of investment after opening into capital expenditures, you've already budgeted for that, then you can make sure the best thing I've done is a breakeven analysis. You can include that here as well, which says this is exactly how much revenue we need to generate in the first six to twelve months without having to close the doors. So you kinda build all those budgets. But make sure you have forecasts. I would put at least three years in. Those projections are, like I said, they don't have to be so sound that you, you know, you'll follow them for the first eighteen months and and almost reconcile that as a budget. But they do need to be accurate until, you know, you're the best of your ability. So use other data, use market research where you can find it. Brewers' association is a great resource for a lot of this, at least in terms of generally revenue per barrel and even some taproom data. Make sure you gain access to those by either joining or purchasing some of those resources. There's lots of other things. Craft beer and brewing has a ton of resources as well. Build all these in with forecasts up to three years, your startup costs, understand how much it costs to produce. That's not just your equipment. Obviously, your equipment's gonna be separate. That's gonna be all your assets and capital expenditures, but you need to know how much it costs to produce. So ingredients, production utilities, process costs, and labor. And then from there, you can build a budget, and and that breakeven analysis will kinda give you that minimum monthly revenue needed to keep the lights on, and I would go at least twelve months. That might mean you need, you know, longer, twenty four months just to give people confidence if you don't show that you're gonna be profitable within that time frame. But if you're kinda smart about the way you project those, I think you can convince a lot of people that you'll, you know, you you at least have both the resources and the bandwidth you need to get through that first, let's call it twelve, maybe eighteen months. So you've got your financials in order, and now you've got kind of everything into your business plan that that you feel confident in. There's areas that you continue to tweak over time. So even though ours was, you know, mostly buttoned up by the end of April, we continue to add to it. So for us, February 2014, we start writing the business plan. And by April and even into May, we were pitching investors. So we actively took our business plan and started approaching people that were interested in it and finding, you know, ways to, to raise that that capital we needed. And we're also using that with the the bank as well. The the question I get asked the most is what is, you know, what is the best way to to either source capital or or start a business, from a capital perspective. For me, the the diversity of cash, investors, and debt is really, I think, you know, the ideal scenario. What that split looks like will be different for everybody's, you know, unique cases. But there's obviously pros and cons to each, whether it's, you know, investors or debt. Investors are the ones that really limit your cash flow restrictions in those first few years. You're giving up equity, which is obviously the biggest concern. What you spend years developing and building, you may be giving up for less than you want. But the alternative is that most of those arrangements and investors, if you're selling actual equity, they they won't expect, you know, immediate paybacks or returns, and that you will make sure is built into kinda your operating agreement or your your partnership agreement to make sure that there's no priority for re for repayment or even kind of initial funds invested because that is all what you need for cash flow to keep the business solvent. That's the major benefit to having an equity sale for bringing on investors. The challenge is that the more people you have to work with, the more complicated decision making can be, growth, planning, strategy, all those things. The more people that are involved, the more you know, there's there can be a lot of benefits there. You have a lot more perspectives. Maybe you have some access to capital and and other pieces that you wouldn't have otherwise. But the lack of control of your own business is a real challenge that you may face, and so you have to keep all that in mind. Debt is the is the piece that makes the most sense if you have, you know, reasonable projections and you think you can be, you know, you can manage your cash flow pretty early on in the process, and get to a point of, you know, don't have to be tax profitable right away. You'll have offset, but cash flow positive within, you know, two years, that is not a a bad, you know, way to go. The the different structures are obviously, SBA loans are gonna be the most popular for startups. Seven a loans are still there's a reason that they're most popular for, for business startups. Banks love them because of the underwriting and the, you know, collateral positions they take are much lower risk for them. For for businesses, it can be a little bit of a challenge just to meet a lot of their a little bit more requirements and reporting, some thresholds that have to be met. There's some additional, usually, collateral. Sometimes, you know, everything is gonna require guarantees. I'll talk about that in a second. But, conventional loans are the simplest. But I think in the current environment right now, it's going to be very difficult unless you have a lot of capital behind, like a lot of cash already coming into seeking debt. You're gonna have a harder time convincing banks to to start with a conventional loan versus an SBA, something like a seven a. Those rates are are usually fairly, you know, fairly, competitive compared to some conventional loans too. So work with your local lender and bank even if you know, when you're going through SBA, you're still gonna work with the bank, and they'll be the best resource to help you kinda navigate what's the best place to start, and they'll be able to give you kind of a a breakdown of what to expect on the rate side. I believe Prime as of last week, is around 7%. So it's gonna be that plus usually a a fixed amount. And those do have ceilings based on your total, you know, how much you're borrowing, whether it's 50,000 or below and and those ranges. So they usually don't exceed, I think, around 15% now with with priming there, but that's still significant. I think most of them will average in the 10% range currently. But like I said, work with your your local lender. That's what we found the best success with. I know there's a lot of national lenders that are still, you know, working with businesses in other states. But just as we've grown and continued to take on different debt and acquire different you know, whether it's assets or property, we found that our best, success has been with our our local bank, and they've helped us chart whether it's SBA for growth and expansion or, even things to vehicles. It's been our best relationship, and we continue to kind of invest all of our anything we're doing new debt has been with our local bank. The downside is obviously interest rates are are really high, but cash flow. Cash flow is the biggest critical piece when you're a a startup in any size. The the debt service, you know, there's there's lots of structures like interest only. You can do even SBA. We structured our SBA expansion loan, which to date the biggest debt we took on was interest only for the first twelve months. That helped us to get equipment on order, contractors lined up, basically get everything in motion, but without the work actually having started and and without being able to commission that that 30 barrel. It took us close to a year to get all of those pieces done. But meanwhile, we still had a lot of costs we needed to pay out, whether it's a deposit of, let's call it, 20 five-thirty percent on $600,000 or $700,000 worth of equipment. That adds up very quickly, even though you're not going to be utilizing that equipment for revenue growth for six to eight months. That's how we structured ours where we're just paying the interest in those first twelve months and then it converted to principal interest after that period, which is a huge advantage for cash flow. There's those kinds of mechanisms in place. Just get creative with your your lender, ask for those opportunities. Sometimes, you know, they're not gonna go out of their way all the time to offer those unless they know. And if it's the right lender, I think they will. They'll they'll kinda help you structure it so you can manage that and service that debt without putting your operations at risk. The other factor to consider though is that debt service can curb growth in other places. Just keep all that in mind as you're navigating all your funding mechanisms. I won't spend too much time on facilities. I know there's some great resources yesterday and seminars on both the facility and the equipment side. But this is kinda what for my rule of thumb, this is what helped me navigate the space we needed and how to determine location, utilities, and structure. So quick summary here. There everyone's gonna look a little different. One to 2.5 square feet per barrel of production is still pretty average when you factor in cellar and and brew house equipment, hot side and cold side, packaging, everything else. You can get much more efficient than that as you get bigger, but as especially a brew pub or somewhere, you know, under let's call it under a thousand or under 1,500 barrels annually. It's gonna be hard to to get much more efficient than that. So that's at least a starting point to kinda give you an idea of what space you're looking for. Location is, I think, a critical piece now. I would say that where, you know, where we considered opening in 2014 would look very different than 2026. I think foot traffic and and being proximate to other businesses and places that people frequent is much more critical today than it was, you know, ten, twelve years ago. You got, you know, eating beer tours and the destination breweries, They still exist, and a lot of us are still getting visitors from all over. It's just nothing like it was before. So you really need to prioritize, you know, being in a location where people will find you whether they know about you or not. That's kind of the the the I think the shift now is that you're gonna be a destination, for a few people, very engaged craft beer enthusiasts if you do, you know, really well with kind of the branding and and the products themselves. But the majority of your on-site traffic and revenue is going to come from within thirty-forty miles of your business. Make sure you're in the right location. Structures, obviously, you're putting very heavy pieces of equipment, especially tanks. Once they're full of beer, they need to have support and structures. You need to consider floor drains. I can say this from experience. These parts are much more costly to do later, and and do them, you know, maybe the way they should have been to begin with. So, for us, the planning was more this is the space it is. And after that, our so our our South seller, we're we're having to do a lot of work on. Our North seller, we kinda built from the ground up and and did everything we we needed to, but we can determine exactly what we needed. So keep all those things in mind as you're kinda vetting locations. Same with utilities. What's the water main and water pressure? What's your gas supply and electric look like? We've made upgrades to all three of those, and they are very costly. It doesn't mean we shouldn't have done it, but, you know, if if you're comparing two locations, if one has, you know, an inch and a half water main and and excellent water pressure versus a three quarter, you're probably gonna, you know, save yourself a lot of time and money to go with a place that has the better, you know, utilities and and maybe some upscale possibilities. So I mentioned purchasing the property. That was not an opportunity it was not an option for us when we opened, but we made sure we we were in position to purchase ours when that did come up almost three years later, four years later. That being said, it's gonna be rare. I would always recommend if you have access to a property purchase, that is by far and away, I think, the the one thing I would say if you're opening a brewery date, make that a priority if you can. I know that's not feasible for everyone, but I would spend more time and find more resources in in debt and in capital to make that a reality versus, you know, I would make concessions other places because of how critical that is today and especially in a, you know, if you look at our case in Colorado where lease rates are easily 10 x what they were, let's call it thirteen years ago, fourteen years ago, it's it makes it to where we're seeing a lot of breweries close, not because, because of their, you know, they're not making good product or they, you know, some of the reasons it's really just coming coming down to lease rates and and being priced out of the market. So if you have an opportunity to purchase your property, not only does it give you tons of flexibility and and ability to grow, control your destiny, it's always going to be an equity, play. It's gonna gain value in almost every market right now. Commercial real estate, you know, doesn't necessarily follow the same trends as the housing market. Sometimes it does. But that equity you can even tap into. In our case, we purchased our property in 2018. It's more than doubled since that time. Being able to either refinance or borrow against that value has helped us fund a lot of capital expenditures that, we wouldn't be able to otherwise. And then the other reality is that the the lending side of that is much simpler, more straightforward, and attractive. Banks are much more likely to provide loans and and debt packages for property purchases than operating capital and even equipment today. So make sure you, you know, exhaust every resource you have to find a property if you can purchase it. That being said, a lot of us won't be in that position. So make sure your lease is, you know, very sound in leasehold improvements in particular. There are a few kinda recent examples of, in Colorado and I think other places as well where a lot of the improvements that were spent, whether it's, you know, drains or glycol chillers or other utility changes that have been performed on a leased property had to be paid to be undone in order at the end of even a brewery closure. So, I can think of an example in Greeley where a brewery that had retrofitted a space, outfitted it to serve more for a brewery, none of that was really needed and actually was a hindrance to the tenant after that brewery decided to close and so they you know, had to spend a lot of money to reconvert that space. And, and and that's, I think, kind of, you know, a really difficult situation to be in. Not only you have to navigate closing and and and kind of wrapping up operations. Now you have an additional debt. So you spent the money to improve the space. Now you have to spend even more money to unimprove it, remove those improvements in in those, you know, fixtures. So just make sure you carve out some, you know, very clear terms on leasehold improvements, who's responsible for them, both, you know, at construction and and and installation and who's responsible for them at the end of the lease. If you can do any of this yourself, you'll save a lot. But obviously, a lot of these things, especially on the utility side, you're gonna have to work with, you know, contractors, and and those are not cheap processes. So just be aware of anything that you're putting in that building. You have to know if if you don't have a long term lease or if you, you know, decide to to move on from that space, you're gonna be giving up a lot of that. So that's if you can carve out a a leasehold improvement budget with your your landlord, they usually put tenant improvements as potentially a budget they can add into rent. That's a really great way to kinda minimize your your startup costs while still, you know, being able to service that loan over the course of that lease. The taproom, this is a piece that I think was maybe not secondary, but not nearly as critical when we were opening in 2015, as it is today. I think we we knew we would spend a lot in the production space. We had a lot of CapEx there and kinda shoestring budget for the taproom, and we've continued to pour more and more resources into the taproom. I think today that's even more important. I think food is a strong consideration for almost every location. It doesn't have to be a full kitchen. It can be a lot of, you know, just some sort of, I'd say, substantial meal of some sort. Snacks are fine too. Sandwiches are you know, there's even brewpub lang or not brewpub language, but there's even, you know, liquor license language specifically in Colorado, maybe coming soon that provides, you know, sandwiches and light snacks as kind of a way to, allow for expanded liquor licensing for potentially adding wine or spirits. So keep that in mind as your you know, people are going to want something to eat. Food trucks are hard to schedule in some locations and hard to keep there consistently. If you have great relationships, that's amazing. But if not, consider that that has to almost be a part of it or approximate to your location. Make sure you understand capacities and restrictions, ADA, and then also anything with fire suppression, Anything over a 100 in most, I think, most everywhere will require fire suppression. So if you don't already have that in your building, that'll be a very costly addition. So keep that in mind as you're working through kind of occupancy and things like that. Permits and licensing. So you've, you know, we've gone through kind of the how to identify the properties. You've you've got your business plan buttoned up. Maybe you're already financed or you're working through that. The next stage is you kinda get really close to, let's say, within six months of opening, is to start planning your permanent and licensing. TTV is the most straightforward and the most exhaustive, but not terribly difficult. Can feel daunting and overwhelming, but it is really not very hard to navigate. Lead times are much lower than they used to be. I've seen them as high as seventy five days after the shutdown last year, but that is, I think, settled back to under fifty days. And in a lot of cases, if you had everything and you get assigned an agent and you follow-up with them right away, you can have it more expediently than that. The one thing I learned, and and and this is in now almost twelve years of of interfacing with the TTV, is that they're very helpful, very responsive. Just be courteous and kind. Once you get assigned an agent, you can usually kind of connect with them directly to, hey. Maybe I didn't completely understand this this requirement or this document I was supposed to submit or drawings or or something, and they're usually helpful. So don't submit a a, you know, a 50% completed application, but it doesn't need to be, oh, man. Everything is ready to go. And if they don't approve it right away, that means I did something wrong. It's more just getting that process started and then navigating it. They're very, very easy to work with. Not a scary entity. FDA does require some disclosures, especially for, if you have any sort of food, but all breweries will have some FDA reporting requirements. Just make sure you're aware of those. So that's kind of the federal side. On the state side, it's going to be different everywhere in your local municipalities. Liquor licensing for state to state varies. Just make sure you're aware of those timelines, those lead times, the application fees. Basically, anything that gives you you're gonna need to coordinate with all of those, so make sure you make those connections sooner than later, especially local municipalities. You'll be working with them more than likely before this part with permits or construction. Find out, you know, your liquor licensing authority, find out their contact. You know, they'll have lots of resources online. Make sure you go through all that. And, obviously, sales tax and licensing, those are all things that happen kinda later in the process. Mentioned brew brew house equipment. I know that was pretty well documented yesterday and and kind of better, you know, better resources that are accurate today. This is for our purposes. We I use these numbers. This is basically, you know, if you're 600 barrels a year on a seven barrel brew house, you're doing less than two batches a week. That is that means you can get to close to 2,000 barrels with, you know, just brewing six bat batches a week. That is usually much more than enough for any kinda mostly taproom focused, brew pub or or brewery. Once you get into production for distribution and packaging, those numbers change pretty quick. So that seven barrel brew house, you'll outgrow fairly soon. And on top of that, you'll have pretty, you know, high costs. If you're planning to be distributing kind of more package focused brewery, I would strongly consider looking at 15 or larger, 15 barrel brew house or larger just because those economies of scale at the current market, those the difference in a seven and a 15, especially if you're looking used, is very, very I mean, it's almost minimum, sometimes cheaper for a larger system because they're less, desired right now. So just keep all that in mind that equipment is fairly cheap right now. Labor is expensive and can, you know, can also have a lot of trying to to brew overnights and things like that or fitting in seven, eight batches a week, trying to do more turns than your brew house is capable of will just lead to burnout. Keep all that in mind as you're navigating your brew house. Same with the seller. You'll have plenty of calculators out there to determine how much production you need. I would say that the the the biggest takeaway I learned early on was that we needed, larger tanks sooner than I thought. So we had a lot of, you know, single brewing. So our initial brew house is 15 barrel. We upsized to a 30, so we have both now. We have we commissioned our 30, about four years ago, and that one or three years ago. That one is still operational with the 15, but we had a lot of single brewing 15 barrel fermenters that we just decommissioned. We didn't need as many. Depending on your product split, if you're doing a lot of rotators and specialties and seasonals, you want smaller tanks and more of them. But if you're going to build, you know, ideally, some flagships that have some staying power and you're going to be scaling them up, then consider bigger, double, and maybe even triple brew length tanks. If you're doing a seven barrel, consider some of those 20 barrel fermenters, At least one or two just so you're not having to take up too much space. Footprint will you're you're gonna think you have a lot more space than you need. You're gonna come to find out that, you'll outgrow it sooner than you thought, and it's easier to to grow up, and and add more capacity that way than it is to grow out. So, taller tanks give you more capacity, take up less footprint. Manufacturers, there are so many out there. Just a couple here, but make sure you get quotes from multiple vendors. Visit breweries that have the, you know, specific either brew house or even maybe seller packaging equipment that you're you're considering. Check used markets, auctions are happening all the time right now. There are some really amazing opportunities out there. Just keep in mind that they come with some caveats of, you know, how long have they been, what kind of rigging and tank, you know, tanking and rigging costs will be associated. A lot of people look at a auction for a 30 barrel brew house and see that the highest bid is, you know, a couple thousand dollars and don't realize that the cost to remove it is gonna be in excess of that. Keep all those in mind as you're navigating auctions and other listings. Then work directly with those. There's still great opportunities for new equipment as well, especially something that you want customized to your space. So just find the right vendor, get multiple quotes, and just keep in mind the lead times. You know, they're a little bit more succinct than they were in the past, but everyone's gonna have lead times on new equipment. And especially with stainless prices changes changing, you need to know exactly what the terms are for deposit to to delivery. I always caution people to, you know, put too much into, you know, your your very start up equipment that you don't need. So there's quality of life investments you can make after opening. For us, it was our 15 barrel, you know, brew house was two vessel steam. We skipped the mash mixer, which just meant I broke a bunch of paddles in the first year. I think we just end up buying boat oars on Amazon. They were you know, as someone who's a little bit taller, I would snap quite a few of those. And that was, you know, a good good workout, but a good way to save on our, you know, top just off the bottom line of our initial equipment costs a little over $10,000 We added it right after our first anniversary. Same with our dedicated Whirlpool, we added a third tank as our vessel. That is just a way that you can scale up and grow with your business rather than putting all the money into all the bells and muscles right at the beginning. It doesn't mean you should shorten anything that is critical, but find some ways you can maybe bring that cost down a little bit, make it work for a bit, and then make those investments as you get operational. Not as critical a piece for the business plan, but there should be some thoughts to your branding and your your a little bit of your marketing strategy. The more exhausted this is, the more people will buy into it right away. So I would strongly recommend at least talking with either, you know, a graphic designer, marketing team, or a marketing consultant, somebody that can help you at least, you know, give some ideas to what you're creating. For us, that that was kind of our branding. And, obviously, I've I've got some examples here. You can see the different iterations we went through, but, that helped us really coalesce what we're kind of building. It's one thing to put it into a business plan, especially it doesn't need to be, you know, something set in stone. But it does need to have some thought, and it needs to be communicated to people you're pitching that you have given some thoughts of not just the brand, but also how you market it, how you communicate it. And and that's it's less important, I think, in the business plan than it is in those first few months. So make sure you give it the time it needs, and put something in your business plan that gives people something to buy into. And the last piece is kind of the, you know, getting into the specifics of production and and recipes and and ingredients and going from, okay, here's, you know, how how much am I gonna spend to make these beers? I don't even know what I need. So if you are not someone who has some brewing background, even as a home brewer or something else, make sure you find someone that you can work with. It doesn't need to be a partner. It could be a consultant. It could be, you know, someone else. Could be a, you know, employee you're looking to hire right away. But I had a much more difficult time scaling from my home brew to the professional brewing just on the equipment itself. The the recipes, you know, there's there's easy ways to scale those and kinda navigate that, but process is very, very different. And so I think, you know, I I learned it quickly, but it would have probably been a a really beneficial, you know, use of some funds to work with consultants longer. Obviously, a lot of the equipment manufacturers will provide someone to help commission that equipment, run you through it. But after they're gone and after that first batch is brewed, you're on your own. If you don't know what you're doing, which I didn't, find someone who does, or learn very quickly. And that's kinda all I have. So if there's, any questions, I know that's a lot and kind of a I covered a ton of different topics. So, check the q and a. If anyone has any questions, throw them in there. I know we got four more minutes. Or Jamie, if there's any I don't know if you had anything come in. I will WeldWorks. Great question. So William asked, what is the idea behind the name WeldWorks? It's a great question and fun story. The the county we're in in in Colorado is Weld County. I really wanted to call the Greeley Brewing Company, but a lot of people were much wiser and said that might be a tough, reputation to overcome. If you're not from Colorado, Greeley doesn't have the, the the most pristine reputation in Colorado, but I really wanted to celebrate where we are in Weld County and also play into some of the, you know, manufacturing. And and at the time, it was a more of a steampunk idea, so that's how we made the amalgam into WeldWorks. How much time did you balance between brewing and then running the entire business? Great question, Tom. Too much time brewing and in operations. I think the the hardest part for me was was going from home brewing and thinking that's what I wanted to do, professionally. If that's what you wanna do, if you wanna be a professional brewer, I don't know that opening a brewery is the best answer. I think it's probably running a business ends up being much more of your bandwidth and resources and time. You still get to be involved in everything you want to, but the more time you're on a brew deck, and candidly, I have not brewed in years. It's not because I don't enjoy it or don't want to, but because we have a way more capable team now than when I was brewing. I think the more I spent time working in the business, less I could work on it and growing it and positioning it for all the things and challenges that we faced. I think having someone, especially if you're the, you know, if you're the CEO, if you're the founder, owner, whatever you're doing, if you're kind of driving things forward, make sure that you, find a way to not step aside, but put people forward. I think I spent too much time. I did step away soon enough and gives others the opportunity. It made it harder for us to grow at first. As soon as I gave up a little bit of control, I found not only were people more capable, but I had more bandwidth to focus on what we really needed. Aaron asked about partners. I did have initially three different partners, one that we have had transitioned before opening. She kinda moved into just a passive investor. And I do have another partner, and that was I mentioned as critical as the business plan pieces. Even more critical for us personally was that operating agreement. So, I I separated with my partner almost four years ago now, so we spent the last three years navigating that. Fortunately, it wasn't a clean or easy process, but it was at least outlined in some regard in our operating agreement. Without that, it would have been much messier. Make sure you give a lot of consideration to both best case, everything goes great, and worst case, you have to decide how to move on. That gives you the ground rules for how that goes. I think that might be all the time we have. Thank you guys so much. I I'll think I'll let Jamie take it from here or, you guys, I think, have a little time before the next. But thanks so much for having me, everyone. And if you have any questions, you can I think I included my LinkedIn there? You can just shoot me a message there. It's probably the easiest way to reach me, or email. Just neil@weldworks.com. Happy to answer. I don't always have the time to respond right away, but I'll try to get back to you, and hope to to see some of your opening soon. Cheers.