Hello from St. Pete Beach, Florida

Hi y’all, Mark and I had the chance to visit Green Bench Brewing in St. Petersburg, Florida yesterday.  They are a brand new production brewery.  They opened approximately 3 months ago and have a great brewery, tasting room and outdoor seating / yard area.  When we arrived at the brewery yesterday, they were sponsoring a yoga class.  There were about 100 people out in the yard getting their bodies in shape so they’d be nice and thirsty for a cold brew when they finished their workout.

Green Bench has 18,000 square feet.  Of that their brewery is located in about 4,500 square feet their tasting room is 1,500 square feet and the remainder is nicely organized outside space.  They are brewing on a 15 barrel JV Northwest brewing system.  They have several fermenters including an oak barrel fermenter called an oak foundres– that was a first for me; I’ve seen lots of oak barrels but this is actually an oak barrel fermenter.  Pretty cool.

Their tap room was really well designed and is an open and airy space.  They have a great bar for people who want to either grab their beer to go or get it to go in a cup to sit outside.

I had their Green Bench IPA which was a very hoppy and nice IPA.  While Mark and I were enjoying their tasting room, Khris, the brewer invited everyone in the tasting room for a tour.  Mark and I quickly joined the group of about 20 and were invited into the brewery side of the property.  Khris is really enthusiastic and quite knowledgeable.  He gave a detailed explanation of their name and the brewing process as a whole.  We were all offered a free beer so I chose the Saison de Blanc Vert which is a light farm ale.  It may be the best farm ale I’ve had to date.  It certainly was the freshest.  This is the first brewery I’ve toured where they’ve had the farm ale on tap.



Where can you buy some Green Bench brew?  Well for now, it’s only available in St. Petersburg and in Tampa.  I guess that means you’ll need to hit the beach and take a brewery tour while you are here.  In the past year, 5 or so breweries have opened in the area.  Most offer tours.  I’m hoping we make it to 3 Daughters, I hear that their tasting room is in the middle of the brewery.

Cheers for now y’all.  Enjoy the photos.

 

Karen  

Happy New Year from NOLA!

Hi Y’all,
Happy New Year and Cheers from New Orleans.  Mark and I made the trip to NOLA for an end of 2013 and beginning of 2014 visit.  We’ve been busy since our arrival…  We’ve looked at three potential brewery properties, have met with our lawyer and banker and best of all got to meet our brewer Jason Weissberg in person.

 

Before we head back to the almost North Pole, we’re hoping to decide on a property and we have two on our shortlist.  If all goes as planned, we’ll have a lease agreed to in short order and we’ll be forced to order the brewhouse.  We’ve decided on a manufacturer and now just need to ink the paperwork.  We’re waiting to ensure we have a place to install it so we’re not putting the horse before the cart although it’s quite exciting to think about.

 

The business plan is just about wrapped up.  We hope to hand over a draft copy to our banker tomorrow and then get our Private Placement Memorandum completed in a couple of weeks.  Mark and I have done a lot of research on the Securities and Exchange Commission requirements and Blue Sky Laws.  Legalize is complicated to say the least but I think we’re in a great spot.

 

Tomorrow we take Jason by a few of the properties.  It will be interesting to get his take and then hopefully we can reach an agreement with a great landlord and start the brewery build out process.

 

More to come in the next few days!

 

Cheers,

Karen

It Feels Like We're Getting Close!

Hi Y’all, it’s been a while.  We are rapidly pulling the business plan together to present to our banker when we arrive in New Orleans at the end of December.  We’ve also hired a lawyer to help us finalize our Operating Agreement and develop our term sheet for potential investors.  We’re following the Private Placement Offering (PPO) sometimes referred to as the Private Placement Memorandum (PPM).   Unfortunately, we’ll need to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission and we need to ensure we’re in compliance with state Blue Sky Laws.  The legalese is complicated but certainly manageable.



We have found the perfect property and it’s located in Mid City.  We’re working with the property owner to negotiate a deal that will give us some relief on the terms of the lease agreement should we not be able to get our Alcohol and Tobacco, Trade and Tax Bureau (TTB) permit and our non-conforming use permit from the City of New Orleans.   Manufacturing alcohol is capital intensive on the front end.  Basically, you can’t apply for any of your permits until you have a signed lease agreement or you own the property where your brewery will be located.  There is no way around this.



Our current plan is to present our business plan to our banker and lawyer at the end of January.  Have our lawyer finalize our Operating Agreement and develop our investor Term Sheet and then start raising capital.  In conjunction with this, we are hoping to sign the lease agreement on the great piece of property we’ve found.  Once the lease is signed, we’ll file the TTB papers and start the NOLA permitting process.  If the stars align, Mark will head to New Orleans in June to receive our brewery and we’ll have our brewery and tap room up and operating by January 1, 2015.  Happy New Year’s Y’all.



We’re planning on selling a lot of draft and “bombers”.  We’re also looking at a canning line.



Well, I’d better get back to finalizing the business plan.

Cheers Y’all!



Karen

Financing the Brewery

Hi Y’all,

Happy Thanksgiving to you!  We’re in Seattle doing some recon on good craft beer.  We’ve been to several choice restaurants and the numbers of local brews that are available is really impressive.  Perhaps one day, Louisiana and NOLA will have as many offerings.

 

We’re chugging along on the business plan.  We head to New Orleans on December 29^th and we want to meet with our banker at First Bank and Trust to discuss financing.  We found some great help at score.org.   It’s a website dedicated to free small business advice.   One of our larger challenges is figuring out the profitability and company worth.  We have a few gaps – we need quotes for insurance – business interruption, worker’s compensation, inventory, etc.  We hope to get those by the end of next week.  The other challenge is developing the pro forma without a piece of real estate.  And, speaking of real estate – the $500k question is do we lease or buy?  Again, we’re huge fans of buying but that will lock up some cash.

 

As soon as the pro forma is complete, we’ll meet with our legal team in New Orleans; they’re going to help us put together a term sheet so we can go out and raise money through a Private Placement Offering (PPO) or a Private Placement Memorandum (PPM).  They’re the same.  We need to figure out where we want to price the offering.  We’re hoping the legal team can help with this.

 

Our logo is almost finished, our designer Jennifer Carbuto has been doing a great job.  When the logo is complete we’ll get Secondlinebrewing.com up and running.

 

Cheers for now y’all,

 

Karen

The Business Plan. Part 2.

Here’s and update on where we are with the business plan.  We submitted it to the Oregon State competition and apparently there are better writers out there; we didn’t win.  Ho hum.  We did receive very positive feedback.  And in the meantime, we’ve been busting a hump day and night working on updating the business plan.
Here are the basics of the plan:

 

1. Executive Summary


2. Company Overview (who, what, where, when, why)


3. Products and Services


4. Beer Market Analysis


5. Our Market Segmentation


6. Demand


7. Demographics, Etc.


8. Industry Analysis


9. Our Business Strategy


10. Our Marketing Strategy (lots of stuff on social networking!)


11. Operations (including HR!)


12. And…  Profitability - we’re still working the end.

 

Our goal is to have our completed business plan to our banker by December 15^th for a face-to-face meeting in early January.

The business plan is a labor of love.  The more we read and learn, the more we want to keep updating the business plan.  The line in the sand will be drawn on December 15^th for the banker.  The line will be erased on December 16^th as we progress.

 

We’ve got a lead on a piece of property.  It may be a financial leap but it’s all that we could ask for and more.  Ten thousand square feet of light industrial warehouse space in a “hot” part of New Orleans.

 

More to come y’all!

 

Karen