Saturday, April 26, 2014

Quick Update

Hi Y’all,

We met with our banker yesterday and we should have a good idea on financing in the next couple of weeks. We’re hoping the bank is willing to take the risk with us so we don’t have to go out and seek investors. We’re applying for an SBA loan and we used Score.org’s financial spreadsheet template which has proved invaluable. We highly recommend Score.org for individuals looking to start their own business. We’re also glad to announce that our dear friend and financial wizard Donnavan Swaby has decided to join the Second Line team as CFO.

We’ve received our approval from the Louisiana Department of Revenue which is great news and our t-shirts and pint glasses have arrived. We’re going to do a bit of gorilla marketing with them and hand out some t-shirts at Jazz Fest. If you see one of us at the Fest, be sure to ask us for one!

We are hoping to do a walk through next week with our engineer and the Fire Marshall. Once that is complete, we’ll be able to submit our drawings to the TTB and start the process on construction design. The building needs a bit of work but we love the location.

We’ve been waffling on buying a 20 barrel system vs. a 15 barrel system. The guys at JV Northwest have been extremely helpful and they recommend the 20 barrel system. I personally think we should go with their recommendation.

Our business plan continues to be modified. When we started it was around 200 pages and we’ve gotten some great feedback from multiple people on what is important for financing verses our strategy. We’ve been constantly refining the plan and it’s really been a great tool for what we need to do to be successful.

Cheers for now and happy Jazz Fest.

Karen

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Monday, April 7, 2014

"Cheers to that" Senator Lisa Murkowski

Hi Hop Lovers,



Here is some food for thought that I borrowed from Alaska's Senator Lisa Murkowski on the craft beer industry in Alaska:



"Happy National Beer Day! Here are some fun beer facts:
Alaska’s 24 breweries produce 323 different beers.
Alaska ranks 4th among the states in terms of breweries per capita and 17th nationally in terms of beer production.
Our beer industry employs over 1,000 Alaskans and generates $150 million.
From Healy to Homer, from Fox to Skagway, Alaska’s brewing companies are a key component of our economies, communities and culture. They’re also a point of local pride. Cheers to that!"



Now, who do I call first?  David Vitter or Mary Landrieu?



Cheers y'all and happy Tuesday.
Karen

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Where Y'at?

Hi Y’all, sorry for the delay in posting.  We’ve been busy.   Mark has been working with an engineering firm on the property build out as well as with the brewhouse supplier – JV Northwest.  We haven’t ordered the brewhouse yet but are hoping to this week.  Our original plan was to order a 15 barrel system BUT…  we’ll as you all may know, size matters so we are not thinking about a 20 barrel brewhouse.

Last weekend, Mark and I had the chance to get meet the owners of King Street Brewing Company.  Proprietors Shane and Dana gave us a private tour and were extremely generous with their knowledge on what they did well and what they wished they had done differently.  They brew great beer so if you get the chance you should check out their beer – Mark and I both like their IPA and their Pilsner.  They currently sell their products in draft and in cans and they have grown so much they are moving from a manual canning system to an automated canning line.

While Mark is busy working on the brewing and building, I’ve been working on our website design.  If all goes well, we should have our website launched in a few weeks.  I had no idea designing a website was…  let’s say… challenging.  I guess I was under the impression whoever designed it would manage it, write the copy, etc.  I was wrong!  I've also updated our business plan.  We received some good feedback from our fool network that our plan was too long so we've shortened it.  Our friend and finance expert Donnavan Swaby told us that we were giving away our strategic plan in our business plan but also said it was great that we did so much research; that's news well received.  We went from approximately 190 pages down to around 80.  It's an evergreen document so perhaps it will expand again one day.

Suzanne has been working the permitting with the City of New Orleans.  And, thus far, she has found the people at the permitting office to be quite easy to work with.  What a pleasant surprise.  In addition, she’s working on our marketing materials, as in pint glasses and t-shirts and stickers and such.  We're hoping to have our marketing materials together in time for Jazz Fest!

We’ve also been following the craft beer scene and want to congratulate the Cajun Fire team for their win of the Big Idea business pitch.  We wish them great success and perhaps one day we’ll do a collaboration together.

Cheers for now y’all.

Karen