It’s been awhile since our last post… we’ve been busy! We’re over a year into the Second Line project and we have learned a hell-of-a-lot! We first got the idea of opening a production brewery in New Orleans in May 2013. Since that fateful evening, we’ve had quite the journey and we are getting close to opening the brewery.
Since our last post, we have finalized our LLC Operating Agreement, received loan approval for our brewhouse from a local bank, ordered our brewhouse and have submitted our TTB paperwork. On top of the paper chase, Mark has had time to brew some test batches that have turned out to be quite tasty and we’ve applied for our trademark for one of our flagship beers.
If you are wondering what’s next, well we have some work to do on our building, we need to hire a couple of people and we need to get our website up and running. In the meantime, we’re still having fun, drinking great beer, and looking forward to selling our first beer.
More to come.
Cheers,
Karen
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Summer fun!
Bienvenue Hopfools,
It’s been a busy and fun three weeks since we last posted. The big news is that we’re just a hair’s breadth from finalizing all of our financials and ultimately the purchase of our new brewhouse, fermenters, bright tanks, pilot system, walk-in, etc.
The basic elements of our taproom and brewery are starting to come to life on paper and we’re beginning to vet contractors in anticipation of starting construction.
Along the way I also managed to visit Ontario and spend some time with our friends Peter and Andrea Chiodo of the award winning Flying Monkeys Craft Brewery in Barrie, just outside of Toronto.
It was a great first visit to Barrie and I really enjoyed hanging out in the brewhouse with his brewer, Paul Buttery and the rest of the “monkeys”. This also gave me an invaluable opportunity to bounce around ideas about brewery layout, process workflow, standard operating procedures and equipment selection.
It wasn’t all just work and technical talk mind you. I also managed to take in a Blue Jays game (sorry Boston but your kung fu was just not strong enough) and the Toronto’s Festival of Beers as a VIP guest of The Flying Monkeys. The three-day festival was located close to Lake Ontario and this year over 60 breweries were represented. There was also a number of musical guests and I was lucky enough to be a backstage guest of the Flying Monkeys for k-os, a Canadian born rapper/singer.
There were some really great beer offerings and lots of intriguing taste profiles (I actually took notes). It’s really fantastic to see and experience such a vibrant local craft beer community and for me underscored the enormous potential for craft beer in NOLA, Louisiana and the South.
I also ran into Ginger Johnson of Women Enjoying Beer, at the festival. It was good to finally meet her in person and I was able to collect on the beer she “owed” me for helping with some questions she had last year regarding the health benefits of beer.
Overall it was a great week of beer geek fellowship, beer tasting and incredible hospitality, many thanks to Peter, Andrea and the rest of the flying monkeys!
Lastly, Karen and I recently went to dinner at MoPho only to run into the crew from Yalobusha Brewing Company. It was really great talking with Andy O’Bryan, Tony Balzola and Amos Harvey, comparing notes, talking beer and finding out that the light at the end of the tunnel isn't a train. Yalobusha's offerings that evening included their Miss-iss-IPA and River Ale. The latter is billed as a pale pilsner owing to the predominant role of pilsner malt in the grain bill and it really worked great with my pho.
Well that’s all for now. Expect more news soon as we move along with making equipment purchases, renovating our space (located at 433 N. Bernodotte) and refining recipes.
Till next time thank you for all of your support, inquiries and patience as we continue our progress. And of course, please continue to drink craft, drink local and drink responsibly.
Cheers,
Mark
It’s been a busy and fun three weeks since we last posted. The big news is that we’re just a hair’s breadth from finalizing all of our financials and ultimately the purchase of our new brewhouse, fermenters, bright tanks, pilot system, walk-in, etc.
The basic elements of our taproom and brewery are starting to come to life on paper and we’re beginning to vet contractors in anticipation of starting construction.
Along the way I also managed to visit Ontario and spend some time with our friends Peter and Andrea Chiodo of the award winning Flying Monkeys Craft Brewery in Barrie, just outside of Toronto.
It was a great first visit to Barrie and I really enjoyed hanging out in the brewhouse with his brewer, Paul Buttery and the rest of the “monkeys”. This also gave me an invaluable opportunity to bounce around ideas about brewery layout, process workflow, standard operating procedures and equipment selection.
It wasn’t all just work and technical talk mind you. I also managed to take in a Blue Jays game (sorry Boston but your kung fu was just not strong enough) and the Toronto’s Festival of Beers as a VIP guest of The Flying Monkeys. The three-day festival was located close to Lake Ontario and this year over 60 breweries were represented. There was also a number of musical guests and I was lucky enough to be a backstage guest of the Flying Monkeys for k-os, a Canadian born rapper/singer.
There were some really great beer offerings and lots of intriguing taste profiles (I actually took notes). It’s really fantastic to see and experience such a vibrant local craft beer community and for me underscored the enormous potential for craft beer in NOLA, Louisiana and the South.
I also ran into Ginger Johnson of Women Enjoying Beer, at the festival. It was good to finally meet her in person and I was able to collect on the beer she “owed” me for helping with some questions she had last year regarding the health benefits of beer.
Overall it was a great week of beer geek fellowship, beer tasting and incredible hospitality, many thanks to Peter, Andrea and the rest of the flying monkeys!
Lastly, Karen and I recently went to dinner at MoPho only to run into the crew from Yalobusha Brewing Company. It was really great talking with Andy O’Bryan, Tony Balzola and Amos Harvey, comparing notes, talking beer and finding out that the light at the end of the tunnel isn't a train. Yalobusha's offerings that evening included their Miss-iss-IPA and River Ale. The latter is billed as a pale pilsner owing to the predominant role of pilsner malt in the grain bill and it really worked great with my pho.
Well that’s all for now. Expect more news soon as we move along with making equipment purchases, renovating our space (located at 433 N. Bernodotte) and refining recipes.
Till next time thank you for all of your support, inquiries and patience as we continue our progress. And of course, please continue to drink craft, drink local and drink responsibly.
Cheers,
Mark
Friday, July 11, 2014
We're Making a List and Checking it Twice!
Hi Y’all,
We’ve got our final list together on the tasks that need to be completed to get the brewery up and operating. We’re hoping to have all of the boxes checked within the next three to five weeks. It feels like traction…
We’ve done a huge amount of work with the Louisiana Small Business Development Center (https://www.lsbdc.org) in Metairie and they have really helped us streamline our business plan. In addition, they love craft beer; we think is a win-win for our business and for other up and coming craft breweries in the State. We plan to give our advisor from the LSBDC a tour of our brewery this week.
We’re just about ready to submit our TTB paperwork, our website is coming along and we’re trademarking our beer names. We’re working on some of our label art and language so we can get COLA approval and order our labels, cans, etc.
On the beer brewing front, we are working on some additional prototypes and plan to share some of these brews with our friends, family and fools network. Mark is heading to Flying Monkeys (http://www.theflyingmonkeys.ca) in Barrie, Ontario for a week to work on a production brewing system and the rest of the team is working on the task list. We’ve been pretty fortunate and have added several additional key investors; this has been a godsend.
Well y’all, cheers for now. As we get closer we’ll try and keep the blog a little more up to date.
Karen
We’ve got our final list together on the tasks that need to be completed to get the brewery up and operating. We’re hoping to have all of the boxes checked within the next three to five weeks. It feels like traction…
We’ve done a huge amount of work with the Louisiana Small Business Development Center (https://www.lsbdc.org) in Metairie and they have really helped us streamline our business plan. In addition, they love craft beer; we think is a win-win for our business and for other up and coming craft breweries in the State. We plan to give our advisor from the LSBDC a tour of our brewery this week.
We’re just about ready to submit our TTB paperwork, our website is coming along and we’re trademarking our beer names. We’re working on some of our label art and language so we can get COLA approval and order our labels, cans, etc.
On the beer brewing front, we are working on some additional prototypes and plan to share some of these brews with our friends, family and fools network. Mark is heading to Flying Monkeys (http://www.theflyingmonkeys.ca) in Barrie, Ontario for a week to work on a production brewing system and the rest of the team is working on the task list. We’ve been pretty fortunate and have added several additional key investors; this has been a godsend.
Well y’all, cheers for now. As we get closer we’ll try and keep the blog a little more up to date.
Karen
Friday, June 6, 2014
Time Flies When You’re Planning a Craft Brewery
Hi Y’all,
Almost a month has past since my last entry. You may wonder what we’ve been up to… First, we’ve been visiting as many craft breweries as possible and are of course return customers to our favorites. In the past two weeks, we’ve been to King Street, Midnight Sun and Seward Brewing Company. We’ve had some great tips from the owners and have had the pleasure of sharing some really good beer. While not drinking good beer, we’ve been working fulltime day jobs and working the brewery plans at night.
Here’s where we are… our business plan is being modified again for submission to the SBA. Our banker put us in touch with a great service through the LSBDC Greater New Orleans and Bayou Region. This non-profit helps small businesses and banks alike get their ducks in a row for paperwork submission to the SBA free of charge. There are some pay for service programs out there that do the same; I recommend starting with your local organization. Of interest, we only found out about this service through our bank, the SBA people failed to mention this to us when we spoke with them.
Outside of the business plan and financing, Mark has put together a rather extensive list of permits that we need to obtain and we’re working our way through them one at a time. Our first win was with the Louisiana Department of Revenue approval so now we’re waiting on the TTB and working with the City of New Orleans to get our occupancy approval.
Our architect is working on the engineering design for the taproom and brewhouse layout and associated mechanical work. We has originally thought we were going to have to tunnel through the building’s existing slab but we’ve talked with several brewery owners and have decided to build our brewing platform / sump area on top of the existing slab. We believe that this will save us some big dollars without impacting our operations.
There are some hurdles ahead but we think we’ve got a pretty good plan in place to work through them or work around them. All in all, we’re making progress but it’s slower than we expected. It will be great when we’ve finally resolved all of our design and engineer work and begin construction.
That’s all for now y’all and cheers to that,
Karen
Almost a month has past since my last entry. You may wonder what we’ve been up to… First, we’ve been visiting as many craft breweries as possible and are of course return customers to our favorites. In the past two weeks, we’ve been to King Street, Midnight Sun and Seward Brewing Company. We’ve had some great tips from the owners and have had the pleasure of sharing some really good beer. While not drinking good beer, we’ve been working fulltime day jobs and working the brewery plans at night.
Here’s where we are… our business plan is being modified again for submission to the SBA. Our banker put us in touch with a great service through the LSBDC Greater New Orleans and Bayou Region. This non-profit helps small businesses and banks alike get their ducks in a row for paperwork submission to the SBA free of charge. There are some pay for service programs out there that do the same; I recommend starting with your local organization. Of interest, we only found out about this service through our bank, the SBA people failed to mention this to us when we spoke with them.
Outside of the business plan and financing, Mark has put together a rather extensive list of permits that we need to obtain and we’re working our way through them one at a time. Our first win was with the Louisiana Department of Revenue approval so now we’re waiting on the TTB and working with the City of New Orleans to get our occupancy approval.
Our architect is working on the engineering design for the taproom and brewhouse layout and associated mechanical work. We has originally thought we were going to have to tunnel through the building’s existing slab but we’ve talked with several brewery owners and have decided to build our brewing platform / sump area on top of the existing slab. We believe that this will save us some big dollars without impacting our operations.
There are some hurdles ahead but we think we’ve got a pretty good plan in place to work through them or work around them. All in all, we’re making progress but it’s slower than we expected. It will be great when we’ve finally resolved all of our design and engineer work and begin construction.
That’s all for now y’all and cheers to that,
Karen
Monday, May 12, 2014
The Friendly Skies Need Craft Beer!
Hi Y’all,
I’m writing a quick update at 30,000 feet and am wondering why do the airlines (with the exception of Alaska Airlines) not sell craft beer? The US airlines needs to embrace craft beer! Enough on my flying rant… Here’s an update on Second Line Brewing… we’re working with an engineering firm to ensure that the building is up to snuff – what does this include? First, is the fire suppression system in good working order? Is the slab of the building strong enough to support our tanks? Is the electrical system adequate or do we need to upgrade it? Where are we going to put our backup generator? Are we in compliance with all of the various building codes? Where is the most cost effective place to put our tap room, etc.
We’re hoping to have those questions answered soon. We’re also working with our very smart and beer savvy lawyer on updating our operating agreement. We’ve had several people approach us who want to invest in Second Line. While we are excited by the interest, we need to ensure we’re following the SEC rules and have our operating agreement up to snuff from a legal standpoint. A startup is risky business but in the words of friends down at King Street Brewing, "if you brew it, they will drink it"!
We had a great time at Jazz Fest and did a bit of gorilla marketing by handing out Second Line t-shirts. That was a lot of fun and the weather was the best – both weekends were beautiful. I can’t remember a Jazz Fest when it didn’t rain at least one weekend.
We’re still working on our business plan and have been updating it as needed. We think our pro forma is fairly reasonable and accurate based on benchmarking data from the Brewer’s Association and other industry sources.
Since so many people were in town for Jazz Fest, we also held several tastings and we were able to share a few Second Line brews with Jeremy Labadie (aka "the Beer Buddha") and Nora Mcgunnigle. Great people and huge craft beer enthusiasts – you’ve got to love that…
We’re still targeting a soft opening in November so I hope my next blog posts states that brewhouse is being built.
Cheers for now y’all.
Karen
I’m writing a quick update at 30,000 feet and am wondering why do the airlines (with the exception of Alaska Airlines) not sell craft beer? The US airlines needs to embrace craft beer! Enough on my flying rant… Here’s an update on Second Line Brewing… we’re working with an engineering firm to ensure that the building is up to snuff – what does this include? First, is the fire suppression system in good working order? Is the slab of the building strong enough to support our tanks? Is the electrical system adequate or do we need to upgrade it? Where are we going to put our backup generator? Are we in compliance with all of the various building codes? Where is the most cost effective place to put our tap room, etc.
We’re hoping to have those questions answered soon. We’re also working with our very smart and beer savvy lawyer on updating our operating agreement. We’ve had several people approach us who want to invest in Second Line. While we are excited by the interest, we need to ensure we’re following the SEC rules and have our operating agreement up to snuff from a legal standpoint. A startup is risky business but in the words of friends down at King Street Brewing, "if you brew it, they will drink it"!
We had a great time at Jazz Fest and did a bit of gorilla marketing by handing out Second Line t-shirts. That was a lot of fun and the weather was the best – both weekends were beautiful. I can’t remember a Jazz Fest when it didn’t rain at least one weekend.
We’re still working on our business plan and have been updating it as needed. We think our pro forma is fairly reasonable and accurate based on benchmarking data from the Brewer’s Association and other industry sources.
Since so many people were in town for Jazz Fest, we also held several tastings and we were able to share a few Second Line brews with Jeremy Labadie (aka "the Beer Buddha") and Nora Mcgunnigle. Great people and huge craft beer enthusiasts – you’ve got to love that…
We’re still targeting a soft opening in November so I hope my next blog posts states that brewhouse is being built.
Cheers for now y’all.
Karen
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
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
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
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
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