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

"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

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

Progress!

Greetings Hopfools,

It’s been a busy month for us here.  We’ve been working hard on recipes and have about nine new beers ready for a first tap with friends later this month.

In the meantime we’re pouring over contracts with engineering firms, working with our project coordinator, finalizing our logo, getting our website ready and in general, making steady progress towards our goal.

Speaking of progress, it appears that the craft beer community of New Orleans continues to develop and grow.  A recent post from Nora McGunnigle’s blog reports that The Courtyard Brewery recently enjoyed a significant victory with the local City Planning Commission; three cheers!

It’s great to see that the city is open to the prospect of a vibrant craft beer community.  And why shouldn’t they be?  Not long ago I did some research regarding the economic impact of craft beer on the state economies and it was pretty enlightening.

A 2013 economic impact study, commissioned by the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee of Pennsylvania found that in 2011, craft breweries in Pennsylvania paid over $4 million in taxes, employed over 2500 people and paid $49 million in payroll.  All told, the study estimated that beer produced and sold in Pennsylvania resulted in over 10,000 jobs, $296 million in wages, and $1.1 billion (yes with a “b”) in output.  That’s not chump change!

Similar studies have been commissioned and performed by the brewer’s guilds of Texas and California and while these entities may be biased, the economic evidence of the benefits of the craft beer industry on state economies is truly undeniable.  It’s great to see evidence that the city of New Orleans appreciates the positive economic impact that craft beer can have on the local economy.

Well that’s all for now.  Till next time don’t forget to support your local craft brewery. Oh, and only 43 days till Jazz Fest!!

Salud,

Mark

And We're Waiting

We submitted our loan application for an SBA loan.  We’re hoping the loan comes back with a big ole APPROVED written across it.  While we’re waiting on the bank’s thumbs up or thumbs down you may wonder what we’re up to…  so here it is.  We’ve visited our friends at the City of New Orleans to try and figure out that process.  Apparently, the building will almost have to be ready for occupancy prior to receiving an Occupational License which means the business owner has to take a lot of financial risk before being approved to do business in the City that Care Forgot.  And, New Orleans does have a progressive One Stop Shop for permitting and everyone was extremely friendly (what a nice surprise) but the process on the City’s website isn’t accurate (shocking, right?).



So we’ve had our architect draw the building’s footprint.  It’s 12,000 square feet of multiple possibilities.  So how do you design a brewery layout with thinking about future expansion and without spending a ton of money on plumbing upgrades?  We’re working with our team trying to figure this out.  The great news is that the Lafitte Corridor Rails to Trails construction is set to begin in 2014.  Wouldn’t it be beautiful if we could open in conjunction with the opening of the bike path (assuming the bike path does actually happen in 2014).  We really like the look of Great Raft’s brewery in Shreveport which means a road trip is in the near future.



We’re also updating our business plan.  Our finance genius has advised that we’re giving away too much of our long term strategy and that potential investors may yawn at its length.  That said, every hour we put into the plan was worth it and we love that we really dove down into the details.



Outside of the business plan updates, the actual footprint of the building and working with the TTB, we’re also ordering some swag to give away at Jazz Fest.  If you’re interested in a t-shirt and you are one of the first 15 people to email within the next thirty days with your address and let me know you read this blog and I’ll mail you a t-shirt in a few weeks.

Cheers for now,

Karen

Where Y'at?

We’ve been busy cranking out some great tasting beers over the past few weeks.  We’re waiting on the roll out of our session IPA, IPA and pale ale.  What’s next you might wonder?  It’s a secret (wink wink).

Outside of brewing great beer, we’re working some promo materials including t-shirts, glasses and bottle openers.  We should have that out on the street soon.  We are still working on the brewery layout now that we’ve signed the lease and have hired Peter Waring to help with our design.  We’ve also applied for our SBA loan and have handed our business plan over to several of our peers for review and input.  Right now, we have so many moving pieces…

We’re thinking our first two beers to production beers will be a pale ale and ???  do we go IPA or ….  What do you think?

Anyway, happy Mardi Gras y’all.  We hope you are enjoying the king cakes with some tasty craft beer.

Cheers,

Karen

Funding and Logo

Hi Y'all,
It's been a while since I've posted...  so I thought I'd share what's happening with Second Line...  We are collaborating on recipes with our brewmaster and several other brewers who have been helping us on this journey...  We've trade marked Second Line Brewing...  we've submitted our paperwork for a loan with our banker (it's so nice to actually have a banker that you actually know, trust and can call), and have funded our checking account with the funds we've received from several of our partners....  and we've landed on one of several logos.
We're in the process of working on our Second Line Brewing website and we hope to have that launched soon.
We're busy and hope y'all are drinking good beers.
Cheers for now,

Karen