Coronavirus Diaries (3/27): Adapting to the New Normal
In this ongoing series, I have been posting the reflections of brewers and cidermakers as they deal with the unfolding COVID-19 coronavirus. In today’s post, reports from Alesong, Baerlic, Heater Allen, Old Town, and Zoiglhaus about how things are going..
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We have another longish post with reports from five breweries, including: Matt Van Wyk (Alesong, a premium barrel-aging brewery), Ben Parsons (Baerlic, a packaging brewery with two taprooms), Lisa Allen (Heater Allen, a packaging brewery with a taproom), Adam Milne (Old Town, a brewpub with two locations), and Alan Taylor (Zoiglhaus, a brewpub that packages). Since it’s long, I’ll get straight to the reports, with one comment, summarized from advice Matt Van Wyk about how to help your local brewery. 1) Purchase bottles 'in the wild' if you see our beers that go to the wholesale market. This will help our distributors out with inventory. 2) Go online and take advantage of ordering, deliveries and deals where available. 3) Stop by tasting rooms for bottles/cans to go. 4) Check out possible benefits of becoming a member of bottle/mug clubs where they exist.
To the report!
Current Updates
Ben Parsons (Baerlic): “From a business standpoint, I am more optimistic today than I was 5 days ago. But as with all of this, things can change drastically in as little as an hours time. One thing that really, really worries me—on top of my own challenges—is the fate of all my friends in the industry. What is the new reality for small breweries that are tied to distributors and rely heavily on draft sales? It's obvious that distributors are going to lose focus on those businesses. Will they survive this? No one knows. I count myself very lucky to be in the position Baerlic is in. We own a canning line. We self-distribute. We had a cooler full of canned beer in anticipation of organic growth and the expected seasonal upswing. The tanks are currently full and we've got ingredients in house for several batches of beer. That helps me sleep at night, but what about all my friends that are more f*cked than me right now?”
Lisa Allen (Heater Allen): “We had a decent day of sales out of the brewery last Friday and will probably be sold out or almost sold out of beer at the end of this week--we're canning next Tuesday (March 31st) so we'll have more beer available then. The unfortunate part of all of this is the people that are taking advantage of it, the brewery was broken into last Friday night. Two laptops (one only a month or two old), a few hundred dollars cash, our hop scale, and our hydrometers (WTF?) were stolen. As I mentioned last week we've moved our production work down to three days a week, which I imagine we will do until the end of April at least. Part of me wonders if we should just mostly close down and isolate ourselves for two weeks, and if that will stop/slow this thing faster. For now I'm just going to keep doing what I can to keep things moving.”
Adam Milne (Old Town): “[Abweek ago] Friday we had to stop the mounting losses from our downtown location. There were such few people downtown that we had to reduce our hours and stop our lunch business. That day we also launched cider and beer delivery with our good friend Reverend Nat. Friday evening was a surprisingly busy night for our Northeast location. Our downtown location dinner business was barely making it, in spite of going full throttle with most of the delivery apps (Postmates, Caviar, GrubHub, DoorDash).”
“On Sunday pub sales at both locations were extremely slow. Monday was even worse. We decided to also no longer offer lunch at the Northeast location. We just couldn’tafford to lose more money staying open rather than closing. This required us to have another round of layoffs. These were really good people that were going to be in tough financial shape. It didn’t seem right. Old Town went from a company with 28 employees to 8, two working per shift. We went from pub locations sometimes packed with over 125 customers, to empty halls with no one sight. It was both sad and eerie. Finally I decided to take a peak at how bad pub sales had dropped since the Governor’s mandate [on Monday]. Pub sales were down 73%.”
Reverend Nat is helping out by delivering Old Town beer.
Matt Van Wyk (Alesong): “We don't have a lot of changes to report this week. When the Governors mandate came in, we checked the details and realized that A) our brewery could continue production and B) our taproom could continue to-go sales. With our model that relies on brewing wort 12-18 months ahead of sales and packaging beer 2-3 months ahead, we are brewing 2021 beer and packaging summer releases. This helps keep our staff working. We've also let them all know that at anytime that they don't feel comfortable coming in to work, they are invited to stay home. The work mentioned above can all be completed by the founders, Doug, Brian, and myself and can be done with the mandated 6-foot distances. We're working hard to keep a clean and sanitary workplace, as we always do, but with increased vigilance.”
Alan Taylor (Zoiglhaus): “I was very happy that were able to can and ship out 8 pallets of beer this week, which really helped my psyche a lot. We will be canning late next week and the following Monday for a big load to go out to Maletis on the next day. Lots of Zoigl-Pils, some Hopfenbombe, Zoigl-Weiss and a bunch of Awesome Sauce. We are down to two of us brewing and it is keeping us busy with enough down time in wort production to work on some maintenance projects that I have wanted to get to for quite a while. Our expansion projects are still moving forward with a new walk-in in the basement for canned and kegged products being built and rearranging tanks for us to be able to open a pathway into the next door building. So work is hectic and stressful. I miss the rest of the staff and the sounds of customers talking and laughing in the restaurant. It feels so strange to walk through an restaurant with no seated customers all day.”
Home Delivery/Sales
Ben Parsons: “ We have started delivery and are overwhelmed at the response. I believe our self-distro experience and infrastructure are crucial to how well we have pivoted our business model to this new reality. Because of solid sales we have been able to put people back to work to cover the delivery shifts and to cover several shifts in the brewery to meet demand. We've also instituted a very rigid social distancing plan in our operations and with our staff that we are evolving daily to create as little risk as possible. The stress is unreal in that I won't know if any of the decisions I am making right now are the right ones until this is all over with.”
Bottles still available!
Matt Van Wyk: “As for the to-go sales at the tasting room, we are also allowing our staff to work if they feel healthy and safe. We had one tasting room staff choose to stay home, and again one of the founders picked up that shift. As you might imagine, tasting room visits for bottles is slim for a brewery 20 miles from Eugene, especially in March, but we also recently completed our Blender's Circle Club release and since we hold beers for 60 days, some members are coming out to pick up shipments, and luckily, those loyal customers are buying extra bottles when they visit.”
“Before we dip our toes into home delivery, we are going to increase our online sales presence and take advantage of our shipping privileges in Oregon. We have already updated our webstore and as of Wednesday are offering free shipping on all orders over $75 and giving everyone club pricing (10% off). Hopefully this will encourage folks to continue to shelter in place and still enjoy some new Alesong beer.”
Adam Milne: “ Last week we had dropped our Crowler price to $6 and were seeing some really good sales. It was one of our few shining lights, selling 7 times our normal Crowler pace. The problem was we were hitting the end of our Crowner supply and our vendor was saying recent demand meant we’d be out for a month. Our team reached out to every brewery we knew but we were not hearing good news. It took a few days but it wasn’t surprising when Dharma and Jack at Rogue came through. [CEO] Dharma and Jack loaned us 230 Crowlers to get us by and ordered a pallet from their vendor. Rogue has been so good to Old Town over the years and saved the day once again. These guys are true friends for life!”
Other Observations
Adam Milne: “At the suggestion of a few good industry friends, I filed an insurance claim in hopes that we could use our business interruption policy. We were also warned that insurance companies were fighting these claims and the issue would likely end up in the courts. We didn’t was to miss the opportunity, so we filed the claim to be safe. It only took a few days for the insurance adjuster to call and then email a rejection letter. ‘Viruses’ were ‘exclusions’ from our insurance policy. In addition to all the types of insurance we pay (liquor liability, property, general liability, food born illness, employment practices, cyber liability), apparently we needed to shop for pandemic insurance.”
“On Wednesday and Thursday I spent a ton of time combing through the Senate Bill to see how it would help our workers and small businesses. I was really glad to see that there was $600 per week in supplemental unemployment benefits and new oversight preventing a slush fund for big business. While the bill has some promise for small businesses, it is all conceptual and I couldn’t find any specifics on how to apply for these new funds. I also wondered if there was enough in the bill for all of the small businesses and how would the government prioritize the dollars?”
Matt Van Wyk: “As for the wholesale world, something that we still rely heavily on despite having a club and a tasting room, we want to encourage people to seek out our bottles in the retail chain if they are out shopping. We are fairly newly distributed by Maletis and Bigfoot in Oregon, and very newly (like probably not in stores yet) distributed in Washington. We want to continue to work with these distribution partners since data from the off-premise category seems to be going well. The fact that many retailers aren't able to prioritize new items and we aren't able to sample them out in person, offers more challenges for us. Add to that the delayed spring resets and we are just not certain what we can do to make sure Alesong beers are part of that equation. Keeping our communication high with our primary and secondary distribution partners will be big for us.”
”I have seen so many fantastic people helping small, independent breweries by taking beer and food to go and ordering on-line. And most importantly, support local and independent breweries when you can. And wash your hands!”
Free toilet paper with every delivery of Zoiglhaus (while supplies last).
Alan Taylor: “I have always loved my job, since my very first day in Berlin as an intern. Loved it. Felt undeservedly fortunate to make a living doing something that makes me happy on a daily basis. Now, when I am working in the brew house or loading grain in the mill, I feel even more lucky to be still working, making beer, and planning on what will be after all of this finally settles down into some sense of normalcy.”
Ben Parsons: “ Another thing that I really want the world to know is how vital the Oregon Brewers Guild has been in all of this. Full caveat, I am a board member. But the world needs to know how hard our Co-Executive Directors Christina and Tony—and our lobbyist Jonathan—are working to not only save the brewing industry in Oregon, but their own jobs as well. The Guild is a member-dues and event funded organization and their fate is as unknown as ours. Here I am trying my damnedest to save one brewery and they're tasked with trying to save hundreds. They as well as the rest of us need all the help they can get.”