The lengthy process gave Black Star time to solicit thousands of members and gather a $150, one-time fee. By the time it was ready to open last fall, the cooperative had roughly 2,800 eager members waiting to visit the brewpub. “The word spread very easily with this kind of business model,” Young says, adding that Black Star has members in 15 countries. “As soon as we opened our doors, we had 3,000 people anxious to come visit us, so we didn’t really have an initial lull. We were more afraid that we would initially get our ass handed to us with too many people and not be able to keep up, and that’s kind of what happened. I mean, it’s a good problem, but our problem was too many people knew about us.”
That built-in customer base is one of the benefits of a community-supported brewery, says Herz at the Brewers Association. “When breweries go to their networks for fundraising, it often gives them instant cheerleaders right out of the gate that are more heavily invested in their success than the average beer lover from down the street.”
It also brings with it a stable of volunteers and pro bono consultants who can lend their varied business expertise to the co-op’s success. “It’s their brewery. They want it to succeed,” Dery says. “Truly, our greatest strength is having membership.”
For instance, Flynn, who works as a recruiter in the IT world, uses his skills to help recruit members for the co-op. Roger Baty, another Flying Bike member-owner, works in marketing and has produced marketing and advertising material for the brewery. “I do what I can, when I can,” Baty says. “They know I’m here and that I can help them.”
Bellingham Beer Lab in Bellingham, WA, is another brewing business with a nontraditional business model that is trying to harness the power of its community. Leading the effort is Jim Parker, who during his 24 years in the industry has been a brewer, publican, beer writer, all-around beer promoter and former administrator of the Institute for Brewing Studies in Boulder, CO. He wanted to open his own brewery, but was a bit wary of the traditional path. He tried to open a brewery once and lost a house in the process. So he wanted a different route this time. He looked at several alternative business models, but none exactly matched his vision. “So, we’ve decided it will be a conglomeration of all of them,” he says. “It’s a cooperatively owned brewery incubator with five brewing entities sharing one production facility and tasting room.”
Parker saw a gap in the local brewing community and the larger craft beer world. He wants to create a place, an incubator, where aspiring brewers are able to build their brewery business without bearing the significant financial investment on their own. He drew his inspiration from Oregon’s wine industry. Specifically, he wanted to replicate the model used by Carlton Winemakers Studio, which provides shared production space and a tasting room for a number of up-and-coming winemakers. “It’s a great model for a beer business because the biggest chunk of capital is in brewing equipment, but it sits idle for most of the time,” he says. “There’s a lot of time that system isn’t being used, so why not join forces?”
The Bellingham Beer Lab already has five startup breweries committed to the project, including Parker’s, Happy Valley Brewing, which will share production space and a tasting room. The co-op doesn’t have a location yet, but Parker is hoping to have one secured in the latter part of 2012.
Parker held the first fundraising event in November. His goal is to attract 1,000 members, who would each pay a one-time, $150 fee. In addition, Parker hopes to sell annual subscriptions, or shares, for $300, which would entitle the buyer to a predetermined amount of beer over the course of a year. The community-supported-brewery model is borrowed from small-scale farmers who generate some much-needed operating income by selling community-supported-agriculture, or CSA, shares to customers, and then delivering to them a steady supply of veggies throughout the year. “If we can get 1,000 members at $150, we can open a moderate brewery,” he says. “And with some CSB subscriptions, we can get the ball rolling.”
The incubator would allow breweries to build their businesses at a fraction of what it would cost to go it alone. “For one of us to open our own brewery, it would be next to impossible without mortgaging our house and begging, borrowing, and stealing from our friends and relatives,” Parker says. “Then if it doesn’t work, there’s some real major pain on a lot of people’s parts. In a co-op no one has more than $150 at risk.”
