In Episode 059 we spend time with Joe Yeado, owner of Gathering Place Brewing Company in the Riverwest area of Milwaukee. Home to 4 other prominent Milwaukee breweries, with one literally just around the corner. Joe and his wife just purchased a small brewery located in another Milwaukee suburb call Wauwatosa (Tosa to the locals). And similar to the original brewery, this location is on a street with 4 other breweries. But that is where the similarities end. Both locations have their own vibe and a different set of customer demographics. Listen in as Danielle and Travis learn from Joe Yeado what makes Gathering Place Brewing so special and why they bought the other brewery.
The Post Opening Interview with Nick.
Welcome to the last episode in our Opening A Second Brewery Location series. We hope you have enjoyed the different episodes describing the different challenges each faced as they opened a 2nd location during a global pandemic, in a different state, across town, in your existing brewery and finally todays episode…across the state.
This last episode is actually 2 episodes. The first was our interview prior to their opening and the second was several months after they had opened. We wanted to find out what their thoughts and perceptions were prior to opening and in the follow up interview what the reality was.
Our guest Nick, the VP of Operations & Marketing, is someone you can have a great conversation with any day of the week, but his passion for what he does comes through in both interviews. When we met for the first interview, they had just completed painting the space and you could tell that Nick was a little worn out, but he became totally animated as he talked about the brewery, the new space and the people he had met in the community as they converted the space into a brewery.
Welcome to the last episode in our Opening A Second Brewery Location series. We hope you have enjoyed the different episodes describing the different challenges each faced as they opened a 2nd location during a global pandemic, in a different state, across town, in your existing brewery and finally todays episode…across the state.
This last episode is actually 2 episodes. The first was our interview prior to their opening and the second was several months after they had opened. We wanted to find out what their thoughts and perceptions were prior to opening and in the follow up interview what the reality was.
Our guest Nick, the VP of Operations & Marketing, is someone you can have a great conversation with any day of the week, but his passion for what he does comes through in both interviews. When we met for the first interview they had just completed painting the space and you could tell that Nick was a little worn out, but he became totally animated as he talked about the brewery, the new space and the people he had met in the community as they converted the space into a brewery.
This brewery has been super lucky as it has grown in a Milwaukee Suburb. What started out as a house the brewer/owner and his family lived in later turned out to have been zoned as a brewery 100 plus years earlier when the house was built. This home brewer who found his passion for beer at a Friday Night Fish Fry at another Milwaukee brewery. Each Friday he would stop in for fish, ask a lot of questions and then spend the weekend brewing.
The more he brewed the greater his passion for brewing grew. He finally found a job at a brewery in Illinois that would help him to experience how to run a brewery and help him on his path to his own brewery.
With a brewery in his basement, licensed and permitted to sell packaged beer, he started to sell barrel aged beers in bottles out of his house on Saturdays once a month. You had to pre-buy and drive by to pick up your beer during the hours they had specified. If this sounds a little rigid, it is because they started selling beer during the global covid pandemic.
If you were going to open a brewery, this was definitely the route that you’d want to take. You could almost say that the planets started to align for this brewer as he and his wife discussed the future of their home, and the business.
But I don’t want to ruin the story. Listen in as Danielle and Travis talk to this new brewer about his unique entry into the world of brewing and brewery ownership.