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Chatham local Colin Chrysler, was on his way to the Island of Palau for a few weeks of surfing and brewing beer, when some visa complications left him stranded in British Columbia.
With few days to kill at the epicenter of Canada’s growing craft beer industry, Colin decided to make the most of his time and sought out a meeting with fellow Chatham natives, Alf and Doug Hunter, who had created a formula for building breweries across the Province.
That conversation culminated with the creation of Chatham’s first craft brewery, Sons of Kent.
On this episode, Eric Janssen sits down with half of the co-founders of the Sons of Kent, to discuss beer, business, and the impact a brewery can have on community and culture.
The Ivey Entrepreneur Podcast is sponsored by Connie Clerici, QS ’08, and Closing the Gap Healthcare Group, Inc.
Transcript
You're listening to the Ivey entrepreneur podcast from the Pierre L. Morrissette Institute for entrepreneurship at the Ivye Business School. In this series Ivey entrepreneur and Ivey faculty member Eric Janssen will anchor the session.
Eric Janssen
All right, sitting down with to the founders of Sons of Kent, Colin, Doug, thanks for coming in. Appreciate you guys making the time.
Colin Chrysler
Thanks, Eric. We appreciate it.
Doug Hunter
Thanks for having me.
Eric Janssen
So I want to get into a bunch of pieces of the story the brewery, but I want to rewind the tape and maybe let's start with Colin. When you were 22 years old, what were you up to? What were you doing?
Colin Chrysler
I was having a lot of fun. I went to school in Ottawa for a couple years, mostly because I wanted to have fun out there and kind of get away from Chatham a little bit and yeah, had some I had a good time. Then I did a lot of traveling, I ended up 22, I was living in Australia. I was working for tourism companies sailing traditional Tall Ships around the Great Barrier Reef as a deckhand that kind of worked my way up and helped navigate some big boats around the east coast of Australia, which was fun. Then I ended up coming home and started a small tourism company in an area, which is where I grew up. It's on the lake where we did a lot of watersports and stuff and yeah, we threw some big events, we organised some big events and then it's more traveling after that. But long story short, I found myself in the beer industry, starting in a small brew pub, and getting stoked on beer. Actually, when I was in Australia, I fell in love with beer at a small brewery in Byron Bay and that was kind of in 2010. To give you context, yeah, I mean, it doesn't seem like that long ago, but in the craft beer world that's like, I'm like a veteran almost. So it's interesting. But that really got me excited on what a craft brewery could be and in what a craft brewery can do for a community, and how much fun you can have kind of with the idea of beer more than the liquid itself but what the idea of beer is, and what I thought it was super inspiring in that moment, and then now I'm here.
Eric Janssen
Byron Bay, do you ever go to the Byron Bay blues fest?
Colin Chrysler
Unfortunately, I didn't. I missed that one. I wasn't living in Byron, but I was passing through at the time. And yeah, it's supposed to be awesome, I've never been.
Eric Janssen
I had a company in the entertainment business. One of our first events in Australia was the Byron Bay blues fest. So it seems like so you grew up in Chatham, Ontario, it's a small town. I grew up in Windsor, so relatively small town, bigger than Chatham but Windsor is the big city locally.
Colin Chrysler
I think Chatham kind of rides that edge of being a city. It's a city on paper, like, I mean, it's the city of Chatham, Ontario and county, but it definitely has a small town vibe. It's a city, but I mean, it's small town.
Eric Janssen
So you wanted to get out and just reset. like, why did you go travel?
Colin Chrysler
That's a good question. I was always kind of driven. My parents weren't like big, adventurous people. They'd never really gone any further than Florida in the winter. Like when I was a kid, that was our family vacation, save every year. I mean, being close to the border was easy for us, I guess, but yeah, I don't know what it was, I think, for me at the time in the late 2000s, so over 10 years ago now, I was super inspired and, I just wanted to go see the world. It was also at an interesting time before smartphones were incredibly accessible and traveling a little bit harder. You know, booking a flight, you had to find a desktop computer and book your flights and then when you were traveling, you had to find internet cafes. I think about that in today's world, and how different traveling was then, and how it kind of inspired me to probably look at things a little differently and investigate things differently, I guess, in my own world. I just wanted to see the world I was really big into watersports and surfing and then beer after that, which changed my travel inspiration a little bit places I would go. I just wanted to kind of enjoy the world but ultimately, the more I traveled, the more I knew that I would always end up back home eventually. That's really what traveling taught me. How I was inspired was it really reiterated the fact where I knew where I wanted to be not necessarily know what I wanted to do yet, but it gave me perspective on where what was important to me and where I would end up.
Eric Janssen
You wanted to get out with the idea of getting some perspective but then eventually thought you come back.
Colin Chrysler
Yeah, with that being said. I've always been involved with Chatham Kent tourism and Chatham Kent Youth Retention. I'm on the board right now for CK to the power of Y which is encouraging youth to relocate back to Chatham. Typically people who maybe go to school here, and maybe someday want to move back to Chatham, and we create kind of incentives and ideas of reasons why Chatham could be a cool place to relocate. So yeah, it's been interesting for me and I think that was because that was my perspective and I was so passionate about my community, ultimately. I see all the pros of the reasons why you should move back and obviously Chatham needs young people to we have lost a little bit. So I think it's really, really important. I know that ultimately, the more young people that are in Chatham, the better quality of life I'm gonna have, because it's just more inspiration, more cool businesses, more stuff to do.
Eric Janssen
So why wasn't the default for you to go find a stable job because you traveled then you said, you came back and started your own watersports company. Why weren't you? You know, first step, go find a job somewhere and work somewhere stable.
Colin Chrysler
I love the freedom, I also loved having fun all the time. My friends and I were, you know, because we kind of grew up on the water, we didn't have, you know, mansions and stuff. I mean, it was far from that but I think ultimately, we were very passionate about the community we lived in, which wasn't a big fancy resort town, Erio, if anybody knows about it is a little tiny fishing village and when we were kids, we would go down behind the firewall and ride our skateboards, off picnic tables, it wasn't, you know, anything overly fancy. We just loved that little community and my friends and I grew up there. We grew up on our skateboards and hanging out on the bay on our little tin boats and stuff and we were just super passionate about wakeboarding and that just kind of inspired us to throw some events that were ticketed events, and music, and played in bands, we did a bunch of stuff. I always saw an opportunity. I had a clothing company for a couple years where I recognized that there was a lifestyle component and how you can market something and you can share your passion and people really want to buy in to your story, ultimately, but in an honest way. I always had that kind of perspective on how to make a cool lifestyle and knowing what I really need and, I mean, I worked for businesses as well, it wasn't always just me doing my own thing but ultimately, I always knew that I would end up doing my own thing.
Eric Janssen
Doug's been sitting here patiently letting
Doug Hunter
Oh, it's a great story.
Eric Janssen
How did you guys end up meeting? I want to get to the founding of Sons of Kent.
Colin Chrysler
This is kind of a crazy story. I knew who Doug was, I didn't know him, I never met him. Doug's a little bit older than me and his brother Alf, and so Doug and Alf are brothers and are also business partners. This was the four of us all together, but the story of Doug and Alf, I took a job after I finished brewing school in Germany. I had been back I was living in Chatham kind of looking for something to do. So I took an internship internship slash brewing job in Micronesia in Palau. So long story short, I'm on my way to from Toronto, to Vancouver and then Vancouver to Palau, which is a small island in Micronesia. I think it's about 200 nautical miles from to the east of the Philippines. So just for context, geographically, most people don't know where Palau is, but not too far from Guam. It's an independent Island, it's self governed, but 50,000 people live on there all the time, lots of tourism from Asia. So there's a brewery there. They make beer on the island, they import a lot of ingredients from the US but it was really cool. It's owned by an American guy, really creative, passionate craft brewer. I caught wind of this throw three people I went to school with and I was like, you know, this would be awesome to do this for a few months and surf and make beer and live my life. But on my way out there. My visa was denied in Vancouver. They wouldn't let me on the plane to get to Palau. So next thing you know, I'm hanging out in Vancouver waiting to get all this paperwork sorted out and I'm killing time staying on my friend's couch and I'm just visiting breweries, because why not, I love beer. I had known that Alf and Doug, brothers, were living in Vancouver from Chatham Originally, there these two brothers that were from Chatham, they're living in Vancouver building really cool breweries out there. I end up visiting these breweries. I'm on a tour of the brewery called Red Truck and it was one that elf and Doug were just finishing building and Alf's up there in the office working on some paperwork, and I get introduced all these people on this tour. We start talking about being from Chatham, he's from Chatham next thing you know, we're having beers, we go out for drinks and start talking about stores who we know obviously channel being a small town, everybody knows somebody very few degrees of separation there. We kind of started this idea of like, you think you could build a brewery, I think it could support a brewery and I'm this young guy being like, yeah, I would love to move home someday and have a sweet brewery and if these guys are on it, like we can make it happen, me being a little young and at the time, and obviously a little, maybe overzealous of the whole concept and how easy it must be to build a brewery. Having these guys as a reality check was a huge opportunity. I knew having that would would seal the deal, we could get it done and there's a lot of advantages to that. I ended up taking the job mechanism, I did it a couple months in, I get an email from alpha, and we had never really like, set the tone. We never said like, we're gonna build a brewery but I think Alf and I kind of inspired each other. We let it go for a couple months. I get an email from him randomly, somehow he found out how to get ahold of me because I was like, yeah, I'm going to Micronesia, catch you later, and I get an email from him saying, hey, when you come back, I would love to talk more about this idea. I was well, actually, my job is done in about a month and my flight will connect in Vancouver, but I'll just extend it and I'll hang it in Vancouver for a couple weeks and we can try to see this is going on and then we all got involved. Doug has always been part of that too. Then we sat down for about a couple weeks and drank a lot of coffee. We started shooting the idea and then we were inspired. That was in 2015. It took us a solid year at least to get things really moving. Then I flew back to Chatham. But yeah, so that's kind of how we met. That's how the story started. Ultimately, I think having a small town connection was the inspiration, the fact that we were all in the industry, our other partner, Tim as well, He was from Chatham, but he was a brewer for a little while back in his day and then we all kind of had this brewing experience in the fact that we were all kind of not entirely invested in Chatham at the time with our careers or jobs wherever we were. We kind of saw this opportunity of Chatham and because we were all grew up there, we all had this vested interest in our hometown, that it inspired us.
Eric Janssen
And what were you guys doing, Doug? You were working on other breweries? What were you guys up to?
Doug Hunter
My brother and often I have a consulting company out of Vancouver, and we installed craft breweries across Canada. Not just in BC, we've done them all over the place, Toronto, Niagara Calgary. So we started coming in 2012. I think we've worked on over 30 on an engineering capacity, and probably 15 on an installation capacity, like we're actually going and actually installing the barriers for people getting contractors come in.
Eric Janssen
And how did you guys develop that? Where did that come from?
Doug Hunter
My story is not as great as Collins. He's got a great story. He surfing when I was 22. When I was 22, I was in college. By the time I was 25, I had two kids, I needed a job. I was supposed to go to BC with my brother, Alf. Didn't happen, obviously, because I had two kids. So, I just got in the corporate world. I was in automotive, I was flying all over the world in automotive, and I just got burnt out. So I quit and moved to BC in 2012. In 2013, my wife said, I had to go back to work you need to go back to work. So Alfred from Olsen's he quit Molson to impact gutters, clean, masters and clean energy. And he was doing some consulting, he met a guy at a barbecue in Squamish. They needed help, which is the Red Truck very column was talking about and I had some project management experience and some sales and tech. So we say, why don't you come down, check it out, see if you can help these guys out. So he worked on the engineering side, and I kind of worked on the project management side. From there, it just took off. Then this massive boom hit.
Colin Chrysler
The timing for these guys, like craft beer boom has been ongoing. It's an interesting state right now. At that time, I mean, Alf being with Molson Miller Coors, ultimately, for 14 years previous. I mean, nobody saw this craft beer wave hitting the way it did. But obviously, of having that background with those guys for so long, and then kind of being got out of the industry exactly when the craft beer industry was about to explode and it was just, you know.
Doug Hunter
The idea, actually, when I first went out there because I have my Mech Tech out of college out of St. Clair and shot him with energy management, and we were going to start an energy management company. That was kind of the idea when I went out there and we were going to talk about it and then this crap, boom, hit. We were only supposed to work like 30 hours a week. I told him look, I've been working 80 hours a week for 10 years, I'm done. Next thing you know, we're installing three breweries at one time, it was crazy. That went on and on and on and then in 15 when we met Collin, that's when it just took off.
Eric Janssen
Before meeting Colin. You guys must have been tossing around like, we're doing this for so many other people should we just do it on our own?
Doug Hunter
Originally, Alf and I talked about it because we saw business cases I was he was using capital, when he was dealt with a lot of capital projects at Molson, you as the engineering manager, and he kind of had all the background and he knew what we needed. He knew everything we needed to build a brewery. There were some pieces he didn't have and once we started figuring out all that was, that's when we started going, hey, what are we doing, why don't we open our own brewery? That was probably just before you came out.
Colin Chrysler
The reason I knew who Alf and Doug were, were because I heard that these two brothers were fishing around ideas to build a brewery and chat. Then people started telling me that, hey, somebody told me that these guys were looking at a building maybe and they these guys want to build a brewery and I'm like, I don't know who these guys are. But I got to figure this out and find out who they are because whatever's going on in chat, and I got to be part of it.
Doug Hunter
Yeah, we had actually talked to Tim. Before you because Tim was a brewer back in the day. So in the early 90s, he was making homebrew in his house and I wasn't drinking at the time because there was a Coors Light guy back then.
Eric Janssen
Let the secret be known. He used to be a converted Coors Light that. So interesting. different stories, right. Like you went and did something totally different. Obviously had an interest in beer for a while, though.
Doug Hunter
On a career side? No, it probably started when I moved to BC. That's really when it started happening. Like, okay, this is a really great idea.
Colin Chrysler
And in 2012, ultimately, in my mind was the year that Kent started to become recognized it was there was a lot of stories, a lot of stuff in the media. Ontario was always a little bit behind in terms of when the boom was going to come. A lot of that was just because I mean, Ontario is a weird province, ultimately but I mean, you look at the West Coast, I mean, that's always been the boiling pot for, you know, creativity and stuff. So BC was always ahead. While all the boom was happening out there. I remember Alf, said he, he saw so much potential Ontario that just hadn't happened yet.
Doug Hunter
I think at the time, BC was around 17 to 20%. Craft sales and Ontario was around four or five.
Colin Chrysler
Yeah, so we saw I mean, there was a ton of opportunity early on and there still is, but it's changed. Things are always changing. This is such a weird industry in terms of the speed at which things happen. I think a lot of things are but yeah, I mean, as a whole. I mean, we're very fortunate to be in the location we're at and I'm super grateful, we're doing what we're doing. Things are changing, you got to be on top of it. It's good to know what's going on in BC in the US for that matter, things are changing fast over there. Ontario is in kind of the beast of its own in its uniqueness in the industry of beer and alcohol in general. There's a ton of opportunity, but there's also a lot of challenges in its territory.
Eric Janssen
So. Okay, so you guys meet up? Who knows? Luck, fate? Grace, I don't know what happened. You ended the meeting up, you guys saw an opportunity, all from Chatham, you move back, decide that you're going to open up in Chatham. So walk me through even briefly like how did you figure out what to do first? So I think that's, I'm not gonna say stumps a lot of people but like, you wanted to be back in Chatham, you had an interest in beer. You had a background in beer, your brother works on capital projects, you know, the technical side, like I see how all the ingredients are coming together. Then what? How did you get things going with Chatham?
Doug Hunter
Well, I think first what happened is we did a business case, out in BC, we hired a guy because it's the craft beer world. We talked to a guy at BC, that had just opened up a brewery, he's a marketing guy, he created a market case, or a business case for us. I don't even think Son's of Kent was our number one choice to start with.
Colin Chrysler
We threw some names around and this guym he's the marketing guru who opened a brewery in Abbotsford. He was really inspiring and he was kind of like, well, this is what I'm gonna kind of start with on a smaller scale and kind of how we're going to try to raise some capital and whatever. I think ultimately, breweries are very capital intensive projects. If you walk into a brewery, sure, the tap room, he got some nice bars and tables and chairs, whatever, but when you really look behind the window, there's a window or look in the back door. I mean, there's a ton of stainless steel, ton of infrastructure that has to go into it in terms of wastewater and natural gas and energy, raw energy, just turning it into stuff and then you've got concrete and the bonus on that end was Alf and Doug they've built a lot of breweries and know exactly what things are going to cost. They knew all the suppliers so we kind of could come up with a rough idea. budget of what we need to start. I'm not the financial guru but I know, ultimately Alf kind of, I think had an idea in his head of, we need this much money to just get the doors open and then we can rally and try to keep this thing like we could start on a smaller scale, if we don't get all the money we need but we had kind of a black and white number that we had to have and if we had just a minimum amount, then we could open the doors and start and then we could continue to raise a bit more money and also start brewing beer and selling beer and proving to the banks that we can have some revenue coming in to, you know, try to keep that cash flow happening. It's a capital intensive business. I think ultimately, it was, I mean, finding a location that worked for us in everything else. It was a tough start. There were days when I think we all felt like I don't know, if this thing's actually gonna happen, it was tough. We got beat down by some financial guys off the beginning, which was kind of defeating. There was some reality checks that we had to have, I think in that starting phase, but I think, honestly, for me, and everybody's different personality wise, but having partners at that point, I think, was healthy in the sense of where we all kind of motivated each other a little bit to you know, we all have to kind of leverage each other to say, hey, if somebody else is going to try, then I'm going to back you up, or it's going to keep this thing going.
Eric Janssen
So wrote the business plan, did the business case, used that case to go try to find some money and get some capital.
Doug Hunter
Yeah. But in the meantime, we did a little market study in Chatham back in 15. Data craft beer show. So we made some beer at Tims, our other owners place. He had his old equipment, what makes beer in his basement, took it there just to see what the response would be from the Chatham folk and it was excellent.
Eric Janssen
I was gonna ask, that's kind of a big leap of faith, right? I get, if you were to go to business school for a second, like, let's pick the perfect market to launch a craft brewery. Maybe it would be Chatham, maybe it wouldn't be, but you guys said, no, we're going to start with Chathams, that's where it's got to be.
Colin Chrysler
That was the standard. Depending on where you want to put a brewery would really determine your market strategy in your business strategy. For us, we knew chatting was our base, our story, or emotional connection, personally. I think our story of who we are and I think having a really inspiring story in today's day, in terms of small business, or any business in general is really important. I think your consumer to see in the craft beer business is really engaged with your story and if you can give an honest story about you know, for guys who grew up in this small town, and were in the industry and decided that they wanted to come home and build this thing is, that's a story itself that people can really interact with, ultimately that was kind of the Chatham component of it for us. Everybody could have their own story wherever they want to be. Ultimately, where you are determines if there isn't really another brewery in Chatham, so we have a pretty open canvas of what we can do. I'm not going to say there won't be another brewery someday in Chatham, I think it would probably be healthy for the city to have another brewery. If I wasn't involved this brewery and opening another one and we already existed, I probably wouldn't do the same thing we are doing. There's other avenues now that you could attract business doing.
Eric Janssen
How did you decide this? How to structure it? Did you guys put in your own money? Did you raise all outside capital? Like how did you actually get going?
Doug Hunter
So what we did is we did the business case out, we all put money in. At one point, nobody said, look, between the four of us we just don't have enough money to do what we wanted to do. So we actually went out and did an investor pitch. We did it at a club in Chatham, a little club and it was a real eye opener, the questions that we got from it, knowing that most of them, none of us are busy, we weren't business guys. We're tech engineering, brewing tech, your tech at one point we got a little eye opener there. We were able to secure some investors right at the beginning and that's how we got going.
Colin Chrysler
Going to those being from Chatham originally, I think we all had personal connections to that city. With people who worked for the bank or friends that you know were in business and could kind of point us in a direction and people which we should talk to who have some money in town they're looking to invest in a brewery is a unique business opportunity. A lot of people see it differently. I think there's a lot of opportunity in the business financially, but there's also a legacy component to it, there's a community component to it, there's a cultural component to it. Depending on why people want to invest in what they want to invest into everybody has a different justification. Ultimately, it's kind of a cool story, and it's a bit of a legacy piece. We are what's happened in that city since we've built that brewery is really inspiring. The population is growing again. I'm not saying it's the only reason that happened, but all these small pieces and really inspiring people and I think we were a little bit of a catalyst for change in even attitudes are changing in this city, we're hearing so much more positivity, there's more young people coming back to open businesses. So I think we were just one small piece of that story that helped re-inspire that whole community. Now there's more money coming into the community. A lot of the people who helped us invest obviously had other business interests in the city as well and I think it's been incredibly valuable for them, too.
Eric Janssen
So you said, this helps me figure out how you de-risked it a little bit. So you got some of your own money, found some investor money. Did your market test in some beer festivals, got some product out there, figured out there was going to be a good response. How did you figure out what elements that you wanted and what elements you didn't want? So there's this concept, and we talk about teaching entrepreneurship analogs and analogues. So the example like, you're gonna start a coffee shop, you go to all the coffee shops, you make a list of all the things you like, you go to coffee shops, make a list of all the things that you don't, through all of your experiences did you guys have this list in your head? How did you figure out what it was gonna look like? What to start with?
Colin Chrysler
There's a lot of breweries that you can investigate now. I worked for a large brewery, I'll say the name, I worked for Collective Arts, right before the brewery opened in Chatham, which is now one of the largest breweries in Ontario and they're growing like crazy. That was really interesting for me to kind of see what I liked about that place when I did. Ultimately, they're kicking ass, and they're moving a lot of volume. That was really cool for me and then obviously these guys being able to work in a lot of breweries and seeing how breweries were starting and things that they liked about them, that was really cool. I think that gave us an inspiration to open a brewery the way we wanted it and how we wanted our taproom to look. There's still things that two and a half years in, we should probably change or we still are evolving and changing and stuff. I think being able to check out markets, even the city of London now, we opened in 2017. How many breweries have opened in London since 2017? It's actually pretty crazy, I think two or three, at least. Every year, it's kind of this business is growing, this industry is growing, and things are changing and you have to be unique and on top of it and whatever. Having so many breweries available to us really inspired us and then obviously, being close to Michigan, which is a huge beer destination that helped get us kind of better.
Doug Hunter
We could sit down and we actually did some brainstorming, where we all kind of talked about your experience, I just said my experience, Tim's, and we kind of took all those things and said, we want this, we don't want this, we don't want to be a bar, we want to be a tasting room, where people can come in and sit down and drink beer and hang out. That's one small point we also talked about LCBO and Brewers Retail. What do we want to be in? What's the best thing for it?
Colin Chrysler
Depending on the size of your brew really depends on what avenues you need to pursue as a brewer. Ultimately, if you're a tiny brew pub with a small system and a really awesome location in downtown core, you don't have the capacity or the square footage, to be a massive production facility that's going to pump into the LCBO versus a really large outfit that has all the packaging equipment and huge tanks, you're never going to sell enough beer in your taproom to justify all your equipment, so you've got to find that balance. I think for us, we had kind of the best of both worlds, we have a cool location and we have a lot of space in the back. We're kind of doing a bit of both but your taproom sales or your front of house sales or whatever you want to call them are very kind of finite in my mind. I mean, you can always grow that but if you're a bar restaurant, you can get more people in the door but you're only going to be able to get so many people in the door you have a capacity. In retail, it's kind of infinite. You can keep pushing and pushing us being close to the American border, we keep that avenue open we're still investigating it, we haven't entirely pursued it yet. We've done some test markets where we've moved a little bit of beer into Detroit and did some promos to see what the feedback would be cool partnerships over there and stuff but we haven't entirely gotten down that road yet. But we will investigate more as time goes on as we see if there's more opportunity there.
Eric Janssen
So location was key. You knew Chatham, but the location that you guys ended up getting is pretty awesome. There's just cool history in the location and old movie theater right in Chatham. So that's a great spot. Who's the actual brewers?
Colin Chrysler
I'm calling it.
Eric Janssen
so Colin is the master brewer. You are the product, you're creating the product. So you de-risked it to figure out like, okay, we get some local investors, these guys know the business, you're passionate about brewing. We've tested some of the product to get put it out there in the market, people seem to like it. But then there's this like, leap you've got to take right, like we're gonna lay down money, we're gonna open the doors we're gonna get investors on and like, let's figure out if people are gonna like this or not. You open the doors on day one. How did you get people to know that you guys existed?
Colin Chrysler
We didn't even tell people. Honestly, Chatham is such a small town. I mean, any small town people love to gossip and whatever. We kind of reserved our social media. We weren't trying to go crazy, because any big project with a lot of infrastructure never had goes down on time and obviously Alf and Doug, you guys can.
Doug Hunter
I don't think we've ever had one project that met on my timeline, because I do the timeline, never met it. Because of Doug and Alf, there's a lot of moving parts.
Colin Chrysler
Trying to nail down an exact date was really hard. I mean, we wanted to be open in the fall of 2016. It was just like, wow, this isn't gonna happen. So then, you start this project, and you start spending money. The only way we're gonna start making money is if we start putting liquid into these pegs and start selling it. It's a really tight spot, because you're like, we can't open the brewery until, I mean, we had our permits and stuff but of course, you got to have your, if you want to open your tap room, that's totally different permit because it's the alcohol business and there's tons of rules. There's these lags and delays and now we have 30 days to even get our doors open once we submit the paperwork, but they won't even look at your building until you have it finished. So many of these things are happening and we were trying to get the doors open. Honestly, word of mouth was so easy. I was mentioned earlier, I don't know if I said on the podcast, but people in Chatham wanted something so bad and and nobody had offered them anything. So once this thing started happening, and people saw tanks coming down the street and going into the old cinema in Chatham downtown, people were talking, and I was really happy to kind of, we helped fuel the gossip or the the word of mouth stuff but we didn't give any definitive timelines or anything like that. We kind of just kept putting out the little guerilla marketing, if you will, in this kind of, you know, trying to get people talking and let them tell the story between themselves and let people go home at night and say, hey, I saw some tanks going into that, that building. I genuinely do believe that was a really healthy way to do it, because it kind of gave us an open book to get the doors open when we could, rather than come up with a definitive date and not hit it and it allowed people just kind of by word of mouth to get really excited and tell their story and what they think they heard and what they heard. We didn't really publish definitive things which gave us some flexibility. Then when we opened the doors, there was Retro Fest, which is a big classic car festival in Chatham, Chatham people like classic cars. We just open the doors didn't tell anybody and there's a lineup down the street, people just started talking, hey, I heard the doors are open, we got to go down there and check it out. It was packed, we were blown away. Then we had our grand opening a couple weeks later, once we kind of got through the craziness of it all. Having kind of that secret opening allowed us to work out the kinks a bit too and I think that's a healthy way to do it. So yeah, it was good.
Eric Janssen
How many products did you start with? How many beers are on tap, when you open day one?
Colin Chrysler
We have like 12 main tabs on the bar we probably opened with 8 at least. We started with some smaller equipment. We were doing about 1000 litres per batch at the time, which isn't super small, but it's small enough where it gave us the creativity to be able to do some test batches and try out some cool stuff and open with a big kind of better portfolio or a better lineup of beer, you could say and that gave us more of an opportunity on that end. Having more beers obviously draws more people in the door because it's a cooler thing and it's different beer for different people.
Eric Janssen
Before you launch, were you open about the name like did you have a website. Do you have a Facebook page?
Colin Chrysler
Yeah. So we were established. People knew there was a brewery.There isn't a lot of news going on in Chatham or atleast there wasn't then. The newspapers in the local media was hounding us, and people knew who we were, people were talking, and we weren't hiding behind brick walls and not coming out. Like I said, we kind of let people tell the story for us and when the newspaper and stuff came in, I kind of gave them a set of rules. I do most of the PR stuff and I said this is what you're allowed to say and what you're not allowed to say. I wasn't trying to be rude or anything, but I just said, because the biggest question is, what day are you opening? I don't know, before you publish some vague thing that people are going to get excited about, let's just keep it open ended. They were pretty respectful and that was cool. We took some photos, you know, like the CTV News came in, while we still had dirt on the floors and stuff, because everybody was just talking about it. It was such an inspiring thing for our community, which is cool and that was exciting that we didn't really even have to try people were coming to us left and right. Not every business gets that. But beer is beer, it's sexy and cool and exciting and inspires people.
Eric Janssen
So you guys have done an amazing job on. The story is a genuine story you make that's that's just the story of the story. It's a great story. You've done a good job of telling it and sharing it through your website and Facebook and socials and everything else. So I gather that social is a big component to marketing. It's the voice that you control. Is that where you interact mainly with your fans?
Colin Chrysler
So yeah. I understand that Chatham like Kent County demographics has a whole publish about 100,000 and it's mostly older people. I would say, the one unique thing about our breweries that majority of our market is probably a bit older than what crafter in London might be. In terms of demographics, I would say like probably 35 to 55 is our market, where other breweries might be more millennial focused but it works for us and it's cool. So when you talk about social, that's kind of blurry, because obviously younger people are more engaged with social media, although it is changing, of course. It's unique in the sense of I have friends that own brews, as well and they're like Instagram, Instagram, Instagram, of course, and it's the biggest platform now, but we get a ton of traffic on Facebook, because it's an older audience. A little bit of that is our audience. It's interesting to see that a little bit more. We sell our beer in more than Chatham, of course, I mean, Southwestern Ontario is our main region, but our beers are available across the province. We advertise and market our beer differently, depending on the geographical region, knowing that our market will change the further away we get from Chatham. Social is huge. I would say between those two platforms, that's our bread and butter, honestly. In Chatham, the radio guys, believe it or not, radio still does well for us and for our market. The guys on the radio stations are huge supporters, so that's always fun to link up with them. Even the newspapers or print still works in Chatham, believe it or not, so we still dabble in that.
Eric Janssen
How did you guys decide what to do yourselves and what to outsource? I'm thinking mainly on the sales side, or sales and marketing side. Who did the logo? Who does the branding on the beers? Who does the your social?
Doug Hunter
The original logo was done by our guy, NBC.
Colin Chrysler
Doug, and Alf had the guy who built that brewery, who was really a marketing guru, not so much like tech beer guy and he really helped us get the ball rolling on what we needed to do from a marketing sales strategy. He was like, logo needs to be great, website needs to be modern, like he played it 100%. He kind of showed us his business case and said, this is you know, being like, somebody who's been in marketing and sales for however many years, he was in it probably 10 years at least and then to say, here's my business case, that's really marketing sales driven in that perspective. We're gonna build a brewery and that's where Doug, and I kind of helped him a bit and said, well, this is what it's going to take to build a brewery financially, the equipment you're gonna need the infrastructure in terms of energy and water and everything else. He kind of gave us all these guidelines, like this is what you guys need to do, and really helped us point us in a direction that was going to get us there helped us design the logo and the name of the company and our story a little bit. Then we kind of outsourced. We outsourced a lot of our design stuff and we try to find people who are familiar with the industry, obviously, when you get into beer labels, and canned labels and stuff, a lot of rules in terms of what you can and can't have. So if you have somebody who's worked in the alcohol industry already, in terms of what you legally are obligated to put on your labels, that helps. We kind of found people who had a bit more familiarity. I think between all of us, we always sat down and said, what do we want our field to look like? And that has changed probably a bit from three and a half years ago when this idea started. What we've realized is people are a little more receptive to us but obviously Chatham being a classic car capital and having an old cinema that's a little bit more nostalgic, we really tried to feather in a bit of that retro feel. Our eight track IP or XP, kind of falls into that category quite well. From the marketing standpoint, and then we do a lot of it in house too. We have three full time sales people from London, Windsor, Sarnia and everywhere in between. Then we have an LCBO guy too, which is falls into that group. From the marketing standpoint, I actually do some of it myself. I've obviously dabble in some software in terms of design stuff, and I like to have fun with it but I have a friend of mine who has a company and we kind of outsource a lot of the video stuff through him and he helps us finalize these creative ideas that we might start on our own, but then they'll help seal the deal and get it done and get it on the internet.
Eric Janssen
I usually talk about like, what are like the critical things above all the other things? What are the critical things you need to nail in this industry? So for you guys, like I would gather that nailing the look and feel and Brandon's story was one piece that was worth investing in? Product has to be good.
Colin Chrysler
If the beer sucks, you'll never get past the starting line. It's too competitive now to not have a good product. Five years ago, nobody really cared because everybody wanted craft beer, it was such a cool idea and there wasn't a lot of them out there. So your selection was low, especially for us being in a region, for me growing up in Oregon, even growing up being in Chatham 5, 10 years ago, and being into beer was almost non existent. We would go to the LCBO and there was barely anything that was craft from Ontario. That's changed a lot now in that competitive end of things. You got to have a good product but I would totally argue that at least 50% of your sales are determined by your marketing, which is your storytelling and your strategy and your image, your brand, at least 50%. The hardest part is getting somebody just to try your beer for the first time. If you make a good beer, then they'll drink it again, but if they're let down once, there's a lot of other opportunities out there, or other options out there, I guess you could say for them to find their favorite beer, even quality consistency, on my end from the brewing slash production management is crucial. The last thing I want is a batch of beer going out, that's not good enough, because that can that has tons of long term detrimental effects, it's not just that one batch that went out bad. People who love it will probably go back to it again but if it's that first person who's trying it for the first time, they'll remember that forever. We are incredibly critical on quality and consistency and making sure that our product is always always on top. The sales guys obviously have to be the face on the street that are representing us well, we have some really talented people that are doing that. Then our brand image and our story has to be on point too. There's a lot of parts and if you don't nail one of them, then you can have the best beer in the world but if your brand sucks, then it doesn't matter. If you make the best beer in the world, but nobody drinks it, is it really the best beer in the world?
Eric Janssen
Is there anything along the way that surprise you for better or worse, something maybe that you didn't anticipate that was harder than you thought it was gonna be or something that you thought was gonna be really challenging and ended up being great for you guys?
Doug Hunter
There was a lot of stuff right in the beginning, I think that kind of opened my eyes up. Just trying to get things started and the delays that we got. We saw a lot of stuff when we're building breweries, for other people. I think part of the thing for us, we hadn't done when worked on a tasting room and trying to come up with that. As I said earlier, it took a long time to get that done, and get the branch on it and that that was a huge eye opener for me on that. Colin, do you have anything?
Colin Chrysler
One of the hardest things for me is as a growing company, we're growing probably what we did 70% growth this year, which is a huge number for any business and managing that growth is really, really hard, financially. It's hard because beer is a weird product that has to sit in tanks and then ferment and then it's got to get into the packaging process, and it's got to get packaged, and it's got to sit in the fridge, and then the sales guys got to sell it, and then you got to receive the money. There's this huge delay from raw ingredients to revenue and that is challenging when you're growing that fast. That's been a struggle for us. 70% is a big number, we were anticipating in 2020 we'll be 50%, but you know that growth curve can't stay accelerated like that forever, I think it's just impossible, but we are still seeing a ton of growth in managing growth is really challenging because that brings in new people and more bodies on the floor and then it's more managing people which we've been really fortunate with an awesome team but it's still hard. It's not just pumping liquid out and hoping for the best, there's a lot of moving parts. The one thing that I guess going to the other side of it things that I have seen that I never foresaw being as easy as they are I kind of touched on it earlier, but engaging your community in a positive way a how much people really want to believe in what you're doing if you give them something to believe in giving them a reason to do then. We have lineups out the door down the street to buy beer for ex or former Major League Baseball players that grew up in Chatham who are former NHL guys. We did a beer for RM Classic Cars, which was a big kind classic car company in Chatham. We do a lot of charity, beers where a portion of every sale goes to a local charity. Not only is that great for the charity, obviously, it's great for our community, and people rally behind that. We're obviously very engaged in our community, it's home. So those values, we always knew that were there but to really drive that and create these products that are beneficial to our community, people are so stoked on that as we are, it makes it easy to get a lineup of people down the street to get stoked on that too.
Eric Janssen
It's amazing how small towns kind of rally together to support the cause when the timings right in the stories, that's great. It's been great chatting with you guys. I love the story. For people that want to find you either online or to go purchase where are you located? Where do people find you?
Colin Chrysler
Well, we usually have two products in the LCBO across the province all the time. That's changes depending on the season, but for the most part, we always have a check, which is our IPA. If we're in Chatham, Ontario, if you don't know where that is, googling is easy enough. We're not too far from the downtown core, we are kind of are considered to be in the downtown core, obviously SonsOfKent.com will give you all that fun information that you need. We are available in grocery and beer stores, agency stores, which is kind of a new thing but we're always kind of growing our retail list. Ultimately, we're across the province, mostly in southwestern Ontario, so kind of, you'd say the Kitchener Waterloo and then southwest of that is our territory. Any of those retailers you'll find pretty easily, I'm sure. Come to the brewery, it's awesome.
Eric Janssen
That's great a vibe. Last one for before I let you go. Advice to your call it 25-year-old self like would you do it any differently?
Colin Chrysler
I wouldn't do it any differently, honestly. There's things that have changed so much in the last for me six years, since I was 25. Things have changed a lot in the industry so it's hard to say. Beer is evolving and changing all the time but I'm pretty proud and happy with what we have accomplished in Chatham in the last few years, and Chatham is changing too as a town. With an ever changing kind of economic in business area, I think we're happy with where we're at but yeah.
Doug Hunter
I don't think I would change anything, because the whole thing's been a learning curve for me. I would have like knowing what I know. Now, I wouldn't change anything. If I was 25 and it started out this way it'd be great because you're learning as you go and different people from the city, from the owners, from the people that work at the place. You're learning every day, and I wouldn't change that because every day you should be learning something new.
Eric Janssen
That's great, guys. Thank you for spending the time. It's good to hear your story.
Introduction/Outro
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