Using Kickstarter was a good way to do a couple of things at once, Cox says. For starters, a crowd-sourced brewery is unusual enough that it provided some good local news coverage and marketing opportunities, which in turn encouraged more people to donate to the brewery. It also retained a bit of the co-op feeling, of getting locals to invest in a vision. “Even if we’re not a co-op, you can still feel a part of the company because you donated a little to help us get off the ground,” Cox says. “We don’t just have our hats out. There’s a little quid pro quo and we like that. People feel invested in the brewery even though they’re not investors, and we think there’s real value in that.”
As of December 2011, there were 21 breweries that were either actively soliciting funds on Kickstarter or had already met their funding goals. While Community Beer Works asked for only $15,000, some breweries—Pipeworks Brewing Co. in Chicago, Mystery Brewing Co. in Hillsborough, NC, and Wilderness Brewing Co. in Kansas City, Mo.—have each successfully raised more than $40,000, a significant chunk of startup costs. However, raising funds through Kickstarter is in no way a sure thing. Several brewery projects had failed to meet their Kickstarter funding goals, which means pledged donations were returned.
Brian Castner is one community member who saw value in donating to Community Beer Works. Though he knows nothing about brewing, he admired what Cox and his partners were trying to do and wanted to do what he could to help. So he threw in $100. “I want to live in the kind of city where a thing like CBW can exist,” Castner says. “So if a little capital helps get them there, then I’m happy to do it.”
Castner reaps the benefits of his donation whenever he enjoys a glass of The Whale, CBW’s brown ale. “But it’s the intangibles that are the best,” he says. It’s cool to help start a brewery, and he likes knowing he helped create something that supports the local community and economy. “It’s hard to get more crafty or local than a nano-brewery that distributes out of the back of a car to its immediate neighborhood,” he says. “I admit the Kickstarter model is a bit odd at first—why would I essentially donate money to a for-profit business? Shouldn’t I save my donations for actual charities?”
He pondered the question, but ultimately was satisfied with his justification. “I think society in general is getting more and more conscious of where our money goes,” he says. “Every consumer choice is a de facto investment. I’d rather spend my money at CBW than Walmart, and I’d rather ‘pay extra’ to do it.”
Creating community
Breweries owned and operated by the community are also more apt to offer educational and incubator-type opportunities.
Just because Flying Bike doesn’t have a brewery yet doesn’t mean it hasn’t been busy getting the community involved. It held its first homebrew contest in September 2011—“we’re in Seattle, so of course it was an IPA,” Dery says—and out of 35 homebrewed entries, members chose one IPA as winner. A local brewery, Three Skulls Ales, produced the beer, called Fly PA, and it was available on tap in the Seattle area for several months, Dery says.
