The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Hayes Humphreys Of Devils Backbone Brewing Company Joined Hillary L. Murray On "The Juicy Details"

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

Hayes Humphreys, Chief Operating Officer at Devils Backbone Brewing Company, joined Hillary L. Murray live on The Juicy Details! Follow The Juicy Details on iTunes Follow The Juicy Details on Spotify The Juicy Details airs live Wednesday from 2:15 pm – 3 pm on The I Love CVille Network. Watch and listen to The Juicy Details on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, iTunes, Apple Podcast, YouTube, Spotify, Amazon Music, Audible and iLoveCVille.com.

Yes, I respond to the rules. I realize I'm in town. Hey friends, welcome to the sixth episode of the Juicy Details. I'm Hilary Murray, your host, and today we have a great guest, Hayes Humphreys. He is Vice President of Regional Craft Beer for Anheuser-Busch InBev. That's the one you picked, okay. Yes, yes, there's many titles. That's the one he currently embodies, but he started all the way at Founders of Devil's

Backbone, which is a craft brewery. And we're going to get into all the juicy details about Hayes, his career path, how exciting his life has been, and how he's built a company to exit to a multinational corporation, which is just phenomenal. So to start, Hayes and I, we don't have a shot today. We have a Lumi Green Juice. Love you, mean it. This is Hayes' first time we don't have a shot today we have a Lumi Green Juice, love you mean it this is Hayes' first time you'd love the orange juice but I was never a green juice person so now I am we're going to see his feedback

in real time here, cheers cheers I wasn't sure if I was supposed to chug the whole thing I'm glad that we didn't do that no it's 10 ounces, I'm not forcing you to chug the whole thing. That's good. I dig it. I like cucumber.

I like apple. Yep. A little hint of celery in there, which is solid. Can't taste any kale, so really hitting all the marks, I think. Hitting all the marks. And Italian flat leaf parsley, which is really good to help eradicate heavy metals from your body. I see that. Yeah, there's a little freshness on the back end.

I get it. I like these tasty notes. I'm going to write them down. We also have a Devil's Backbone Orange Crush here. This has natural... Speaking of removing toxins from your body. Yeah, we're removing toxins, and this is actually pretty not toxic

in the sense that it has natural juices, orange juice in it, and vodka. So cheers. We're going to also cheers. Cheers. We make no health claims, just to clarify. Yes, yes. We need to clarify that.

For Lumi, we make health claims. For Orange Crush. We have fun. Orange Smash. Yeah, they have fun. Is that it? Is that the tagline? No.

It's just truth. Ready to drink is what it says. Yeah. That is your tagline. Okay, so Hayes, tell us all about it. And this is a new, normally the guest is sitting across the way, but Hayes is sitting next to me today, which is great. I feel like it's less of a problem.

I'm a craft beer guy. I came in and I messed everything up. That's what we do. All right, well, tell us, start at the beginning. How did you get, well, before you went to business school at UVA, start maybe there and then how you've made the transition to Devil's Backbone, and just tell us your story. Sure. The early stuff's not that interesting.

I grew up in New York City. I was lucky enough to grow up in Brooklyn, New York, which was awesome. I give my parents a lot of thanks for moving there in the 70s. I think a shout-out to my dad. He said he didn't, he grew up in all over the place, but largely more rural Indiana. And he said he didn't want to be a big fish in a small pond. He wanted to be a small fish in a big pond. So they moved to New York and I got to grow up in New York and it was awesome. And like a Brooklyn in an apartment building in New York or like?

So again, luckily they moved early on. So we grew up in a brownstone which was affordable in the late 70s in the neighborhood that they bought in so yeah I had a pretty the older I get and the more I go back to New York the more I understand how non-traditional really my New York upbringing was but it feels

it was like the Sesame Street upbringing so it felt like the New York you see on TV did you learn your ABC's from Sesame Street? I did learn my ABC's from Sesame Street upbringing, so it felt like the New York you see on TV. Did you learn your ABCs from Sesame Street? I did learn my ABCs from Sesame Street, for sure. As my children are today, it's still rocking. Totally. Yeah, after 18 years there, I wanted to go somewhere else. I love New York.

And I always remember my college guidance counselor was like, what do you want in a college? And I was like, I would like it to be warm and far away. And she was like, great, what else? I was like, those are pretty much my criteria. That's pretty easy criteria. Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't know, from New York, what's warm and far away?

Florida? I mean, everybody goes to the brick building schools in the Northeast where it snows all the time. And so that wasn't really my jam. So anyway, I ended up in Southern California at a school called Claremont McKenna College. And it was great. It was amazing. I loved going to school out there. I got a degree.

I went in as a history major. I loved history. I still love history, but along the way I got sidetracked by accounting of all things and so I got an economics and accounting degree there and left school as a public auditor with KPMG. And did you go to New York again? No, I chased my girlfriend at the time back to Washington, D.C.

Okay. And audited companies around there. My favorite was Amtrak. I got to ride the train some morning. They do their accounting in different cities. And so some mornings I would just get up and ride the train to Philadelphia. That was cool. Oh, my goodness. I love that. I'm a get up and ride the train to Philadelphia. That was cool. Oh, my goodness.

I love that. I'm a huge fan of Amtrak. I love Amtrak. Trains are my – I wish that we had more high-speed rail in the United States. Yeah, yeah, yeah. More trains coming to Charlottesville. Shout out. Take Amtrak.

They're always full, which is good. Oh, there are more trains going to be coming? Yeah. This episode is not sponsored by Amtrak, but we are thankful there will be more trains coming. Sometimes soon we're going to get service to Norfolk, which is cool. So we won't just have to go north and south. We can go east as well.

So are you affiliated with Amtrak? I'm not. I just like the train. It's a relaxing way to travel. So, yeah. Anyway, I did that in D.C. for a few years. Wasn't really my jam. I think that was the first time I sort of figured out that I wasn't really a big, didn't really fit into a big company, really.

What was it about a big company that didn't fit you? I mean, I don't know if I can articulate it. At the end of the day, the moment that I will always remember was I had a client in Dallas, Texas. And it was February and it was cold, and I was traveling, and I was one of the only two people on the team traveling to this client. Everybody else was local,

and I was there on a Saturday, and I was there with the partner on the engagement, and we were both sitting there tying out financial statements, which for those who aren't accountants or auditors, that means basically you're just redoing all the math that people already did to make sure that whatever you publish is accurate. And it's not the most glamorous part of accounting.

And I wasn't very senior, so it made sense. But my partner was doing the same thing. And I was like, man, this guy, he's achieved top level. And I have not. And we're both here at the same table on Saturday doing the same thing, which from a leadership perspective, I appreciate that he was doing that, but I was also like, I got to get out of here because my goal is not to be here for 20 years and

still be doing this. So. Well, it sounds like Groundhog Day. A little bit, a little bit. And, and like, I have to say while being a public accountant wasn't exactly my cup of tea, I've used those skills nonstop and I would recommend them to anyone. It's genuinely, I believe, the reason that I got into Darden. I ended up coming down here

because I came to the Darden School of Business at UVA and I firmly believe that I was in a class full of very impressive people and then there was me and I firmly believe that the only reason I was there is they need X number of people every year to explain accounting to everybody else. And I was one of those people. And graciously, they put accounting in the first quarter.

And so I was able to demonstrate my worth first before having absolutely no idea what was going on and have to lean on everybody else. But that worked out for me. So I would always say that at the very least, my accounting degree got me into business school. And I got to do some really cool things along the way. The other thing when I was a public accountant that I realized, I couldn't really articulate what I wanted to do that wasn't what I was doing. But the thing I liked best about what I was doing was when we would go do inventory counts, and we would actually go to the manufacturers or warehouses or whatever and like

count the actual things they were making and that was really exciting for me and I started to figure out that I actually wanted to to make something to have something tangible as a result of what I was doing and that actually worked out for me later on and that's proven to be true but that was that was one of the things I figured out there. So yeah. Then Darden. It was great. I survived. Sure. I think survive is one of the words we use at Darden. Surviving is thriving at Darden. Yeah. I came in. I wrote all my essays about doing renewable energy and being a great steward to the environment. And then after being there for a little while, I realized I didn't really know anything about that,

and I wasn't interested enough to convince everyone that they needed me. What do you mean by not interesting enough? Like for the renewable energy? Because this was 2011, right? 2010. So renewable energy was kind of, it was a new thing. Yeah. It wasn't a new thing.

Every time I would talk to somebody in business about renewable energy, they would say at the time it was a field dominated by engineers figuring out all the technical things that had to be done for renewable energy, and they desperately needed more business people involved, but they didn't know it yet. And so it really came down to I realized that I wasn't passionate enough about it to try to convince them that they needed me. They seemed to be doing just fine on their own.

I would argue they've done just fine without me. I didn't know what I was going to do. I was kind of floating around. Then shout out to my classmate, Stefan Tallman, who turned to me in class one day, the middle of macroeconomics, GEM, the class I understood the least about. Did you have Alan Bekenstein? I had Alan Bekenstein.

I had him as well, and I actually saw him speak on the last Friday. He's very smart, and I never understood any of it. Still don't. Still don't, yeah. And he leaned over, and he said, hey, man, do you want to start a brewery? And it was like, I always say it was like an 80s montage in my brain where it was just like every preconception that I subconsciously had about beer that I didn't realize I had just came flooding in about how beer is made

and how beer is sold and who drinks beer and every association ever with beer. And they were all completely stereotypical. Some of them true stereotypes. I would say now that I'm in the industry, but a lot of them just like what I'd seen in movies. And I just, I was like, wow, I had never considered that as a job that you could do. I really enjoyed going to bars

as anyone I went to school with could tell you. I enjoyed drinking beer and I just had never thought about it as an actual job. Like the idea of selling beer, like how hard could never thought about it as an actual job. The idea of selling beer, how hard could that be? Everybody loves beer. It turns out it's very hard. There's a lot of rules.

Tell us about it. Foreshadowing. It's hard. But yeah, and I started looking around, and I would say right around that time, 2009, 2010, craft beer was undergoing a transformation from not the earliest, earliest stages of craft. Craft beer really got its start, you know, depending on who you want to credit with, as early as the late 60s with Anchor Steam or, you know, more people I think would say. Oh, Anchor Steam. They're from California, right?

They're from California. Yeah, they're good. Is that Scrimshaw? No, that's North Coast. I also love that beer. We'll have to do a beer tasting one day on air. We could definitely do that. But yeah, I don't remember at all what I was saying, but that's okay.

Oh, sorry. No, you're fine. You're fine. You're fine. Sorry for my interrupting. Sorry. You were talking about how you knew nothing about beer. You knew nothing about what brewing was like.

Yeah, yeah. And you thought you could sell beer because you knew how to drink it was like. Yeah, yeah. So it wasn't the... You knew how to drink it well. Great prompt. So yeah, it wasn't the earliest, earliest stages of craft, but craft throughout the 80s and 90s started to grow.

And it was really at a time when people didn't actually believe that you could make, that an average person could make really high quality beer. People were very, honestly, if you read the earliest books, like afraid of craft beer, which is so weird to think about now

because really people loved the technological advancements that got you to big macro lagers. They were perceived as safe and these sort of trophies of American manufacturing, and people loved them. And the idea that you were going to drink something that some dude made in his garage understandably turned people off a little bit.

I think of red houses and skippies. Yeah. So that first round really convinced people that you could do it. Yes. And then a bunch of people rushed in in the late 90s, and it turns out not everyone could do it, and so there's a lot of bad beer out there, and the industry had a little bit of a consolidation.

And then it kind of took off again throughout the 2000s, and I came in really at a midpoint in that where breweries had started opening but they were still really early stage sort of baby companies and I would say even some of the largest ones out there. I remember in 2009, 2010 as I started thinking about doing this, going to the grocery store and looking at the craft beer shelf and it was all this crazy cartoony tie-dye packaging,

all these things that really felt pretty basic. And I remember thinking, you know what, I think I actually could make a difference here. So I started getting into it. Really quickly, in 2008, 2009, for people that might be younger, people that might be older, people that like their generic Coors Light, Bud Light, things like that, the craft brewing space was like in Atlanta, Sweetwater, right, was happening here. Samuel Adams, was that no longer considered craft in 2009 in Boston? No, that was craft, still considered craft for sure.

I mean, they were definitely the leader. New Belgium was big with Fat Tire. A lot of the bigger breweries today were the biggest breweries then, but they were much smaller. The scale of the industry overall was much smaller. And it was before, so when I started at Devil's Backbone in 2011, there were 1,500 craft breweries in the country. There's now 11,000-ish.

Wow. You know, the scale of expansion since then has been significantly faster. And the beer was good, and we were making a lot of traditional European styles IPA hadn't you know the IPAs that people were making tended to be more traditional English style IPAs the west coast IPAs that we're familiar with now we're only starting to be born really but yeah I remember then between 2010 and then 2011 when I actually got into it I think a lot of those sort of leading companies I specifically remember New Belgium. New Belgium did a packaging refresh in 2011 when I actually got into it, I think a lot of those sort of leading companies, I specifically remember New Belgium. New Belgium did a packaging refresh in between when I first looked at

the shelf and then when I graduated. And it was like they had the same realization where it was like they grew up on the shelf as a company. And it was almost like uh-oh, maybe they figured it out and they don't need me after all, you know. Totally. Yeah. But yeah, I ended up

sending my resume. I just, for my summer internship, I mean, this is a lot of, I love this story, but essentially for my summer at, you know, in between first year and second year at Darden, when everybody goes off and gets a fancy internship, I was just desperate to get anything in the beer industry because I had no credibility. Craft was a pretty tight community.

There was a lot of sort of fear of outsiders, right? And I understand it now because there is this idea that, oh, beer is fun. Like, everybody wants to get in beer. Like, you know, you pull up in your beer cart and no doubt someone would be like, hey, man, got any samples for me? You know, can I be your taste tester? And so people are always nervous in the industry that somebody who wants to get into the industry just think it's fun and games all the time. And so it was an insular industry.

And I was just trying to get into it. And I literally found the list of the top 50 craft breweries on the internet. Sent my resume to all of them. None of them responded. I was really starting to sweat. I bet they're regretting it now. It was like, I don't know about that. There's plenty of good people. But man, it was like starting to sweat. I bet they're regretting it now. It was like, I don't know about that.

There's plenty of good people. But, man, it was like end of April, first year. Everybody else had a job. Yes. My parents were looking pretty hard at me like, you're going to do what now? And then finally there was a brewery in D.C. called Capital City Brewing Company. Sure. That I'd been familiar with when I was up there.

And they finally called me back. I'd started sending out to I was up there. And they finally called me back. I'd started sending out to some local breweries, and they finally called me back. And, you know, the brewmaster there, Mike McCarthy, who runs a great brewery in Waynesboro and Front Royal now, he called me. Is that Basic City? What is his Front Royal one called? It's called Vibrissa beer. It's really, really good.

But yeah, he called me back, and he was basically like, hey, I have an opening for a truck driver. Oh, fun. My truck driver quit, and I need somebody. They had three breweries. They brewed at one, and they needed to deliver to the other two. Sure. He was like, I see you're in business school.

He was like, I don't want any of that nonsense. None of that. You're just here to drive the truck. I'm going to pay you $10 an hour. You cool with that? I was like, yes. Thank God. Thank God I have a job. Career services did not feel the same way. They did not think that was an adequate job. I think it's probably the best job. You got to be boots on the ground. It was great. Tell us about it.

I got to, I lived at a buddy's parents' house in Falls Church. Okay. So fun in Falls Church. Really a lot of activity. So fun in Falls Church. We were right off the, I forget what it's called now, but there's a bike trail that goes along the old railroad tracks. So I could ride my bike to work, which was great.

So I didn't have to take, you know, sit in traffic, in the middle of Virginia traffic. It was a pretty long ride. It was work, which was great. So I didn't have to sit in traffic in Northern Virginia traffic. It was a pretty long ride. It was like six or seven miles. I wasn't much of a bike rider before, but I rode my bike to work. I lifted kegs all day. I rode my bike home. I was pretty ripped. It was pretty great.

Never had that again in the beer industry. But yeah. You still gained a few LVSs. Yeah, yeah. Less bike riding, more beer drinking now. But, you know, more amazing happenstance, right, between when I accepted that call and two weeks later, when I took the job, I actually showed up for the job. Two of the other brewers had gotten picked off to go be supplier reps and stuff in the industry. And so without even being

there, I had already moved up the chain from truck driver to like truck driver slash maybe brewer sometimes if they needed someone to lift bags around and that gave me access. Did that give you a two dollar price? It did not no they got a good deal they got a good deal I was getting plenty out of it and um but that enabled me to learn to actually brew to make the beer and I am by no means a brewer. Any of my brewers who would hear this would not claim that I'm a brewer. I do think I learned enough to at least be competent about the process, right? And so that's helped me a ton. And the other thing it did was it got me that in into the industry. It got me a little bit of street cred. And it turns out it's not how I got the role of Devil's Backbone, but our brewmaster, Jason Oliver, at Devil's Backbone

was good friends with Mike McCarthy because he used to brew in D.C. And so when I did start hanging around Devil's Backbone, Jason called Mike and was like, what is this guy's deal? And Mike was able to be like, nah, he's cool, it's fine. He's not going to mess up your life too much. Now, I don't know if he was right about that, but it helped. So Devil's Backbone had already kind of been established. Yeah, so Devil's started in 2008, right before, right as I got here, basically.

So end of 2008. By here, you mean Charlottesville, Virginia? Charlottesville, yep. For UVA. And they were the pub only. They were the anchor business for what was intended to be a housing development at the base of Wintergreen Mountain. Okay. And I actually just learned the other day, I think this is amazing.

So our founder, Steve Crandall, and his wife, Heidi, they ran a home building company. That's how they made their living. And they built all these houses up on Wintergreen. Sure. And he had always wanted to develop this piece of property where we are right at the corner of 664 and 151 in Elson County. It's absolutely beautiful for anybody that comes to Charlottesville.

Devil's Back Road is a must visit. Yeah, he lived three miles down the road. He drove by his office. He literally turned the corner to go to his office and build houses on Wintergreen every day, and he always eyeballed it, and it finally came up for sale. And he got it, and he subdivided it, and he was going to turn it into a housing development.

But it hit the market right in 2007, 2008 as the market crashed. Yeah, really great time. Great time to be developing houses. But all that I knew, what I learned recently, I had always understood that he had started Devil's Backbone to be this anchor business and help bring attention to the development. And what I've learned recently, actually, is that he started it because nobody was building houses and his whole building crew was was out of a job basically and so he said like screw it let's build let's build the brewery now

and so he he accelerated the brewery building project to make sure his team could stay employed and keep their livelihoods and do all that it's amazing they are amazing people um who cared very much about their their employees um and i used the past sense steve passed away a few years unfortunately but his wife heidi is still involved with the company and lives right down the road but who cared very much about their employees. I used the past tense. Steve passed away a few years, unfortunately. But his wife Heidi is still involved with the company and lives right down the road. Cheers to Steve. Cheers to Steve, for sure.

Taking care of people. Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, so built it. They had started winning awards. Jason made amazing beer very early on. Was he responsible? What's the one that had the trout on it? That's Striped Bass Pale Ale. Striped Bass. They had started winning awards. Jason made amazing beer very early on. And then I really... Was he responsible? What's the one that had the trout on it?

That's Striped Bass Pale Ale. Striped Bass. Bass, not trout. Is it ever coming back? Great question. We debated a little bit last year. We've had it on draft in the past year. It'll probably be on draft again.

That was a beer that we did. Nelson County is technically in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Yes. And the Crandalls have always operated their property in accordance with the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Yes. And the Crandalls have always operated their property in accordance with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's guidance for how to maintain the watershed appropriately. Yes. Big believers in supporting that.

And so we actually did that beer in partnership to raise money for them. Super cool beer. It's funny you ask about it. We put it on tap when people came out of the woodwork. I mean, it's literally my favorite. If I could buy it in the store, I'd be buying was a beautiful it'll be don't tell me these things now i go to work tomorrow and i'm like guys we're bringing back straight back i mean i wish that

people from you know global headquarters could hear it it's not them it's not them i killed that one most most most of the things we've done wrong are my fault oh you're fine you killed that one you killed the strike yes i killed that one i killed that one. I killed that one. I did a day in the tap room as a server last year, and I get a lot of guff because I also sunsetted our Schwartz beer, which is our kind of house favorite beer. All the brewers love that. I love that beer. It's a great beer.

It's just we needed to rationalize our portfolio a little bit. So this was the accountant in you. It wasn't that people loved it. Is it a higher cost product to make? No, it's just... And you're not making money because you're giving it to conservation? There was a time in craft beer where lots and lots of variety was great. But craft beer has started to consolidate a little bit. And so there's not as much space on store shelves anymore for sort of one-off brands and things like that. And so we had to try to make proactive

decisions to stay ahead of that. But the servers at our restaurants really take the brunt of that feedback because people who love a beer that I have discontinued don't get to talk to me. They express their opinions to the servers. So I did a day as a server just to... I asked a dumb question about something in our tap room.

No dumb questions. No, is it? Well, true. But it was the little pokey thing that you put the checks on. I don't even know what it's called appropriately. question about something in our tap room. No dumb questions. Well, true. You know the little pokey thing that you put the checks on? I don't even know what it's called appropriately still. But I was standing there and I watched someone do it and I was standing there with my GM at the tap room and I was like, I don't understand

what that's for. And I've been with Devil's Backbone for 12 years. I've been technically in charge of restaurants for 12 years. I've seen you work the tap room before. She just sort of like did one of these and then was like, I think you probably need to come in here and do some work as a server. And I was like, okay.

So what's the purpose of that? I don't know. It is basically an audit trail during the shift so that it's how you know if somebody says, hey, I ordered this or I didn't order that, or I asked for a side of this, you can go back and find the tab. At least that's my understanding of it. That's probably wrong. And I probably still sound like an idiot who never leaves his desk, but I think that's what it's for. Well, let's go back to Steve Crandall. And you were talking about long story short, I worked in the tap room and I got yelled at for

discontinuing Schwartz beer a bunch. So it was good. It was good for everybody that I got to get the feedback that I'm an idiot. I mean, I don't think you're an idiot, but I think maybe there's some things, this is why it's so important as an entrepreneur, at least I've seen it too, is when you're actually like doing a tasting at, you know, anywhere going and working in the, in the, um, in the tasting room, you see people's physical reaction reaction like watching you drink farmhouse greens every time i see someone drink a loomy or anything i've created i like physically cringe in anticipation of are they going to hate it or are they going to like it so i mean it's a good thing that you did it and um but yeah i think we skipped we skipped ahead

this is a good that was a great story example but i would be good let's go back to these beginning days where you were just kind of devil's backbone is born in this middle of nowhere field yeah with the most fantastic sunsets and views you could ask for where it was going to be a development and you turned it in it's steve crandall turned it into a brewery to put people to work he was brewing his own beer and then you and this kid who was sitting next to you in global economics class came? Yeah. He didn't come. He was smarter than me and got a better job. Smarter is debatable.

Look at where you are now. Sure. Fair enough. He got a more established job, a safer job. He decided not to play the lottery, and I played the lottery. Luckily, I won the lottery. So from 2010, when you started Double's Backbone, talk to us. Was it just a tasting room with some beers yeah so i mean you know clarifying you kind of started to start you

know something like i set a company up to be sold to a multinational whatever right big team wasn't there first um i i played a role um but i came on board really right there was like how many of you were so there was a restaurant right we were we were a two-year-old, two-and-a-half-year-old brew pub that had already won like four medals at their first Great American Beer Festival, four medals at their first World Beer Cup, had won like best small brew pub in the world at the World Beer Cup. They had won four medals the next year at the Great American Beer Festival. So like the beer, the fundamental product was really good, right? The

beers that we were making were really good. Um, and the phones were already ringing off the hook from folks locally who wanted to carry the beer in their bars, but we couldn't make enough. It was, you know, our, our local wholesaler, Virginia Eagle would come by every week and see if there were any kegs available. Are they still your distributor? They're still our distributor. Virginia Eagle. Yeah. And they deliver in West Virginia, don't they? They don't. No, they don't. There's lots of Eagle distributings.

Oh, okay, okay. No, they run all the way from Springfield, Virginia, D.C. suburbs, all the way down to Blacksburg. Oh, wow. So huge, huge operation. Yeah. But, yeah, started right here, essentially. So there was an established thing you know which I think as as you think about

starting a business right like I would in retrospect and as I look around today yeah man getting the first couple years under your belt when there is literally nothing is yes an experience that I have no experience with and is terrifying and hard. Like I don't know, it takes a level of just like self-belief to get in there and do it and bootstrap it and like not worry about things being perfect but just like get it going. I came into a functioning business with a good product that was small and wanted to be bigger essentially. And so I came on board. Darden would let you do projects for class credit. I had run a conference

at Darden for people that wanted to work in wine, beer, and spirits. And people from the local industry had come. You started that, right? I didn't start it. Jen Drapish was before me. I don't know where Jen is today, but she was in the industry for a long time. Hey, Jen. Check it out. Yeah, check it out. She was the first one who took the Darden Wine and Cuisine Club.

Whack. Ha ha. Weighted average cost of capital. That's an accounting term. No, it's a finance term. Sorry. I feel like it's a finance term, yeah. She took it from just being like a club for people that wanted to drink wine and eat food

into people who might want to work in this seriously. So she was there before me. She crushed it, and then I took that over. And it was a really good resource for local businesses to come in and get information because we would have Gallo and Anheuser-Busch and all these other big companies. And if you're a small winery around here, you don't have access to a lot of that information. So to hear what they were seeing in the market was useful. So anyway, the GM at Devil's Backbone's restaurant at the time came to that and afterwards reached out to them just little info at wine and

cuisine club conference or whatever it was and said hey you know we are thinking about growing and we need help with our advertising do you know anyone that could help us and i was like i do know somebody that could help you who delivered beer yeah uh so i showed up and what i interpreted that they were looking for was was a kind of a not even analysis, but like how do we take who we are and put it on a bottle essentially is what I distilled it down to. So I was in design thinking class at the time and I tried to use a lot of those concepts to... With Jean Lidka? With Jean Lidka, yep. She's still there today. Check out her book. Yep, they're amazing. To try to evoke responses from people and how they felt about Devil's Backbone in ways that they wouldn't normally figure it out. And it was really cool. A lot of what I've learned from

that I think we are still true to today. And one of the key things I thought was so interesting then and is still true now is like my two favorite questions we asked people if Devil's Backbone drove a car, what kind of car would it drive? And we did a round with all the staff and the staff all said, oh, this is a rusty, beat up, rusted out, overworked pickup truck covered in mud or whatever. That's how they described Devil's Backbone.

And they were describing their experience there. And then you'd talk to consumers and they would be like, this is a Lamborghini, this is a Porsche, you have a high-end sports car. And it was like, okay, so from internally like we're a hard-working you know potentially overworked you know gritty brand but loyal and always there for you yeah but the way our consumer sees us is super fancy right and so that

was important in putting it together because you know you're always you're working with what you know and so when you start internally you're like oh we're working with what you know. And so when you start internally, you're like, oh, we're this like gritty pickup truck and we're, you know, blue collar and blah, blah, blah. And like all of our customer base was like these people up on Wintergreen who had their second homes and everything. And they were like, no, you are a premium product. And so it was really good to have that reminder.

And then we asked who Devil's Backbone spokesperson would be. And that was fantastic. But Mike Rowe was the most common answer, which I thought was great. Like former opera singer turned blue collar work guy wow um so cool cool uh cool results but a lot of that's still in the brand and I would say if I bet if you ran that study today you would still find internally people are like you know beat up hard working pickup truck and externally people are like yeah you've got a you've got a porsche so i mean i think that your product is a consumer of it is higher end when i think of like for sure and the

beers that are out there i mean yeah striped bass being the highest end possible if it was on the market yeah so i mean yeah crap beer consumer in general is right even as the demographic has widened it's still a fairly narrow slice of the universe we're constantly trying to grow it beyond that so from 2010 when you started there to building out the tap room and building out the It's still a fairly narrow slice of the universe. We're constantly trying to grow it beyond that. So from 2010 when you started there to building out the tap room and building out the direct-to-consumer through Virginia Eagle distribution network to selling to Anheuser-Busch, and when was that, 2018? 2016 we joined Anheuser-Busch. Okay, 2016.

Talk about those six years. I mean, that's a pretty short ramp-up, and then all of a sudden Anheuser-Busch is knocking on six years. I mean, that's a pretty short ramp up, and then all of a sudden, the entire Bush is knocking on your door. I mean, it was wild. We were one of, some years, the fastest growing craft brewery in the country. Other years, one of the fastest growing craft brewers in the country. I would say it speaks to, the beer industry is a really complicated place to do business. Alcohol is complicated. There's a lot of regulation. There's a lot of things you can and can't do. Most places have a mandated three-tier system. And so you are required to sell. You can't, other than at your location, and in some states you can't even do that, you can't

sell directly to a drinker. You have to sell to a wholesaler who's then going to sell to a bar or a restaurant or a liquor store or a convenience store or a grocery store or whatever. And then that grocery store finally gets to sell to the consumer. So you are, you have a lot of customers down the line. You have to convince a lot of people to carry your stuff. And there's a lot of feedback up and down that chain, right? Like your wholesalers have a bias, your retailers have a bias, your consumers have a bias. And so understanding at the end of the day, what's really going to work is super complicated. I would say the fact that we partnered with Virginia Eagle, who was a really capable wholesaler that went and visited every account,

and they were really into our brand, right? Did they let you go with them to visit their account? Yeah, yeah. So we did and we do a lot of work with. The industry has changed a lot. When we started with Virginia Eagle, in Virginia there was only, I think technically there were only, I think, technically, there were like 150 breweries, but I could probably name 25 of them, and the rest, I think, just existed on paper. Sure. And there are now close to 400. So at the time,

the wholesaler network in general, and particularly the Anaheim Bush Wholesaler Network, was really hungry for craft brewers to be able to participate in the local craft beer scene. And so we were essentially their first craft brewer along with Blue Mountain. And so they were, it was, the incentives were aligned, right? We wanted to grow and they wanted to grow their participation in this market that they hadn't been able to participate in before. And so they pushed us hard and then Bold Rock came along and they did the same thing. And so it got to a place where where every new account that opened up, they were presenting to a new restaurant, like, hey, if you're going to have taps, you need to have a Bud Light,

a Bold Rock, and a Vienna Lager on tap. And that was huge for us. So that partnership, and then they were able to network us with the rest of their fellow wholesalers in the state, who are all also very accomplished wholesalers. And that was such an accelerant to our business in a way that had we either had to or wanted to do it on our own account by account, it would have taken, we still wouldn't be there. It would have taken forever.

And they were able to help us accelerate so quickly. So there's a lot of, you know, pluses and negatives to wholesaler relationships and opinions about it in the alcohol industry. For us, it was the rocket fuel that helped us out. It also helps. I mean, these are like nitty-gritty things, but it helps that Virginia is a chain grocery state because there's syndicated grocery data, which seems really inane. But a lot of states don't have that. And so you could be the best-selling brewery in Maryland. You could be 100 times bigger than anybody else. And almost no one's going to know about

it because there's no way to track that data. But in Virginia, because we were growing so fast, our phone was ringing off the hook because that data gets published month after month after month and it would show us. And there was a measurement that showed that we were growing. And so it became a self-fulfilling story for a while. Wow, that's awesome. And yeah, eventually the big guys took notice. I mean, I wasn't there, but I've heard stories. The current CEO of Anheuser-Busch is a guy named Brendan Whitworth. He's awesome. And, and he was the region one sales VP at the time. And I've heard we are region one technically. Yeah. We're in the Northeast region, I guess is what we call it now. But at the time it was region one.

And he apparently had been new in the job and he landed in Virginia. I think it was down in Roanoke. And he went to the wholesaler down there and he walked in the warehouse and he was like, what is all this expletive basically? I don't know if I can curse on here, but whatever. We'll keep it clean. We'll keep it clean. He was like, what is all this garbage? this garbage yeah exactly what's all this garbage in the

warehouse and they were like you don't understand man this stuff sells like crazy and so that was kind of the first um and then we also had another crazy coincidence there was um one of the very very most senior leaders of ab global uh was based in richmond at time, weirdly. And so he saw it rise. And so, you know, everything good is a combination of some good decisions and some luck. And we had a lot of both, for sure. Well, what would you say, like, was a failure moment? Or not a failure moment, but a moment where you're like, oh, man, I'm not certain this is going to work. Or did you never have those? I would say early on.

This will sound so, I'll say something that sounds very conceited, but one of my favorite things about talking to entrepreneurs in business school was they would always come back and talk about the things that had failed, right? Their failure stories are so funny in retrospect, and they're funny because they now have a successful one, and so they can look back and laugh, ha ha ha, about all the dumb ideas they had that didn't work. And they don't really talk about the ones that work that much. They talk about the ones that seem like great ideas or were great ideas but the wrong time

or just something didn't work or whatever. And they're fascinating. And we got to about the time that we were going to partner with AB and I felt very much like we had just been riding this rocket ship and we hadn't had a significant failure. There's certainly one I can think of along the way, but it didn't impede the business significantly. And I was eager.

I was like, when am I going to fall on my face so that I learn something rather than just riding this wave? And that did happen later. I would say there was one along the way. Did you fall on your face? Yeah, for sure. One of my favorites, my sales director and I, early on, every year you go to your wholesale of what's called the annual business plan,

and you say, here's all the new brands, and here's the marketing support, and here's what we're asking for you to do on our behalf, and here's how much we're going to invest in marketing to fund it, and samplings, and yada, yada, yada. All the business school things. Yeah, and I mean, we had just been drinking, I had just been drinking. All the business school things. Yeah. And, um, I mean, we had just been drinking, I had just been drinking a lot of our own Kool-Aid and we showed up with this whole plan we had worked on for months to Virginia Eagle, but we had worked at it on our own by ourselves in our, in our brewery and your bubble. And we

took it to Virginia Eagle and they just, we did the whole song and dance hour and a half long presentation. And they were basically just like, no, we're not going to do any of those things. And it was like, I'm sorry, what? And they're like, yeah, no, we don't think those are going to work. We're an independent business. We're just not going to do those things. And they were our first of a series and they were all the subsequent days. And if your largest customer just flat out says, no, we're not going to do this, like you don't really have a choice. So then we went back and reworked the whole thing

and went back to basics. And again, it was overnight, so we couldn't do it with feedback. And we did a better job the next time. We basically took Virginia Eagle's feedback. So I guess that was our feedback. We took their feedback and turned that into the plan. Well, I think that's good.

I think you have a great story. And I think since knowing you since 2011, when I first met you, it's always been about you learning very quickly and being willing to listen and take feedback and iterate it on and immediately. And that's what's made you successful. And I think those success stories are incredibly as important as a failure story is like, you know, you don't want to make all the mistakes I made, right? I've continuously make mistakes every single day and I just keep going and keep getting hit down and stand back up. Those aren't, but I don't think they're funny. I think they're more of like, what point am I going to learn? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, now we sit down and, you know, we sit down early in the year, uh, you know, may usually our biggest customers. We say, Hey,

here's the earliest stages of what we're thinking. Like, shoot some things down right now. If you're like, no way, or if there's some big gap, you tell us, and we've still got enough time to work on it. And we make sure now by the time we get to that planning meeting, they're seeing nothing new. They've seen it over and over again, and, you know, it's in some ways a formality because we've already done all the ugly stuff, and they've already told us we're stupid, but they've done it at a time when we can afford to be stupid and not when like the rubber is going to meet the road basically um but no one's told you you need a striped bass yet i mean i heard it a lot last

fall when we put it on draft so okay maybe one day feedback feedback heard yeah um all right so since you now are vp of regional craft brew breweries What does that mean? How many breweries falls under your? So technically two now. We last spring went through a transition and I took over Blue Point Brewing and Patchogue Long Island and Cisco Brewers on Nantucket. And then throughout the fall, ABE reached a deal with Tilray

to spin off a few of the craft brands. Blue Point was one of them. So I like to think in that six months that I was so successful at running Bluepoint that it turned it into a saleable asset, but that is BS. The people up at Bluepoint were doing fine without me. They're doing fine now without me. I just got to have a couple of bacon,

egg and cheeses along the way, basically on in patch hog and eat some bagels and some chicken cutlets. So that was good. But yeah, now I have, you know, I've gotten to incorporate a team of folks, a pretty small team of folks from Cisco Brewers in Nantucket. Really cool just to see how a different team does it.

We don't sell a lot of beer in Massachusetts, so to see how that alcohol is really regional in the way that it works. Devil's Backbone doesn't sell a lot of beer, but Cisco does. Cisco does, yes. I have not had experience up there prior. Yes. And all the little markets and all the cities are different, and so it's been fun to have a connection up there. And also just to, you know, they are a small group of people who are really passionate about Cisco in the same way that we are a group of people who are really passionate about Devil's Backbone, and so being able to be a part of that

and, like, having a new thing that you're excited about is is super fun um and so we've learned from i mean back to sort of the feedback thing like they adopted the sort of early in the process wholesaler conversation conversations this year and it went really well for them so that was great and we've adopted some things from them um they are scrappier than we i mean we've we've been with ab for longer and and you know they have not and they've been they're scrappier than we've, I mean, we've, we've been with AB for longer and, and, you know, they have not, and they've been, they're scrappier. And so we've adopted some of that stuff. Um, so it's been fun. I've, I've enjoyed that. Well, what's your favorite, uh, small craft brewery that is not affiliated with a larger, um, multinational brewing company? I mean, which small craft brewery is not affiliated with a multinational craft brewery these days? I mean, I think, well,

I guess even Long Trail in Vermont is. Our New Hampshire is now. Vermont, is it? Yeah, I don't remember who it is, but they do have a partner. I don't think they're with a big boy, but they do have a partner. So is there anyone independent? What about our guy down the street in Waynesboro? So Basic City's crushing it.

They're doing great. Three Notches is doing great. It's hard for me, especially locally, to separate the businesses and the people, because I've known the people for so long, and I think that really good people run really good businesses. I was here when 3Notch got started and worked closely with those guys in terms

of them bouncing ideas off and love what they've grown into and think they're doing a great job. Dave Warwick's an amazing brewer. Same thing with Basic City. I wasn't nearly as involved with their startup, but I've gotten to know Bart and that team along the way. And they've, you know, continued to be great partners and great friends.

And they just make really good beer. And I would say, you know, Basic City, especially right now, I would say is definitely like in the zeitgeist right now, you see their beer everywhere. I think it's definitely like in the zeitgeist right now, you see their beer everywhere. I think it's great. For sure. Specifically in Virginia.

I mean, well, Virginia, I don't see it outside of Virginia, but it is everywhere here and it's good. Yeah. It's delicious. Okay. One of the things that you tie yourself as is a leisure sports enthusiast. Yes. Talk to us about what leisure sports you're playing these days.

Now we're getting into the really juicy details. Yeah, the juicy details. I have been playing kickball for, I guess, the same amount of time that a devil's back, 13 years, with the same kickball team here for beer. Shout out to you guys. We are aging together, but some of you are still older than me, so that gives me permission to keep playing, which is great.

And we go back and forth every year with Awesome Sparkle Squad, who is the other oldest team in the league and have been together for a long time. So play a lot of that, play a lot of bocce, shuffleboard. Wait, how many teams are in this kickball league? It fluctuates. Fall's the biggest. I'd say there's also a JV sometimes.

There's like eight to ten. You play eight games a season, so you don't play all the teams. So I don't know, 10 to 12 maybe. Is there like a Virginia regional kickball tournament? There is. We tried to host one at Devil's Backbone once, and that's when I realized how manicured real fields are because our field's full of potholes and stuff,

and we're just falling all over the place. Seems like it could be a twisted ankle. But, yeah, it's how I met all my friends post. I stuck around right after Darden, and everybody else left more or less. And so that's how I met all my friends post you know I stuck around right after Darden and everybody else left more or less and so that's how I met all my friends so big shout out to Seville Social and all the sports they do okay so talk to me about mentors do you have any people that asides from Steve Crandall and these other people that have been long-standing supporters as you transitioned from the world of accounting to the world of craft beer. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, there's tons. I've had a lot of people who have taught me things along the way. Sure. You know, Steve, I knew I was learning from while I was with him. Sure. But also was like his counterpart. And so sometimes you're like, he was the energetic, visionary. His job was to make promises and my job was to fulfill those promises. And so that can create friction, right?

Oh, yeah. And when it was the two of us doing those things, it was often frustrating, even though I could appreciate his role. Since his passing and honestly, since we've gotten together with AB and the dynamics have changed, like, I miss that energy so much. It is not my fundamental skill set, and I try to step up and step into it because I recognize that somebody has to be that.

But it is, not to say that it can't be learned, but man, some people just have it, and he had it, and that's something now where I will try to channel Steve. You know, a great example of that is is actually this this orange smash right not for a random product plug but also orange smash tell us award winning distillery you know we had been open for a few years in 2014 and i think he decided he felt like craft beer was getting crowded he was already seeing yeah what was coming way before i saw what was coming um Um, I was just like, I was like, man, I was drinking our own Kool-Aid. I was so excited about what we were doing. And he was like, I want to open a distillery. And I was like, Steve,

why do we want to do that? Like we've got all this run room. He was like, it just feels more open. It feels like craft beer was 20 years ago. And we went to our first distillers conference and it was like, all right, I'm going to learn this and we'll open it and whatever. And we was like, what are, what are we going to make? He was like all right i'm gonna learn this and we'll open it and whatever and we i was like what are what are we gonna make he's like i don't know i just want to have one you know and part of the deal and we to get the money for it was was one of the motivators to to partner with ab and so once we got with ab we built the distillery and we started out with a line of bottled spirits pretty traditional thing sure and they didn't work that well yeah you did bottled spirits like not just mixed and they didn't work that well yeah you did

bottled spirits like not just mixed no this wasn't really a thing at the time there were a few but it wasn't really a thing like vodka yeah 27 so we made we didn't want to make vodka because one it's specialized equipment and then two we just felt like a lot of people one thing i noticed was when you go to we went i remember we went to seattle for the distillers conference and every distillery startup story there was a whiskey distillery, startup distillery there, was a whiskey distillery waiting for their whiskey to be ready, and so they were making gin and vodka then. Yes.

And so it's like you spend two to three years training a consumer that you're making great whiskey, or making great gin and vodka, and then suddenly one day you have your whiskey, and you're like, ah, forget about all that. How about our whiskey now? And it's like a weird switch. And so I, I wanted to try to find a way that we could do it more naturally. So we made dark rum, um, to start. And then we did make gin

cause gin, uh, for like, we have a, a distiller, our master distiller was a brewer with us first. It's a little bit like, it's a little bit like IPAs. You can infuse it with stuff and you can, yeah. So they, they like making gins. And we started there, and we launched in bottles. And like Newsflash, it's very hard to launch a spirits brand in Virginia because it's a controlled state, and you're really limited in terms of what you can do on the shelf. We got great buy-in. We arguably got too much buy-in from the state.

The state put us in most stores across the state with our rum. I didn't know this at the time, but rum's a small category, and dark rum's an especially small category, and you can't really do that much marketing behind it on the shelf. You can't really sample people. So it was really, really hard. We lasted a year, and then that sort of faded. And to be clear, like, Virginia Eagle cannot distribute hard liquor.

They can only distribute beer and ready-to-drink cocktails and maybe wine or no? Yeah, they can do wine. And wine. Anything but spirits. But Virginia, and there's a couple other states that are controlled states, you have to go through an ABC store, which is a state-issued store. So we ship everything to a central hub in Roanoke, and they distribute for us. So that didn't last long. No, that didn't last long.

So that wasn't a failure, but that was another of like how you went down an iterative path well that was a failure but but the but the point was like then so then along the way heidi steve's wife was like hey i'm starting to see these cocktails in a can like let's try those and i was like all right heidi that can be your project like you do it thanks heidi and so heidi kind of started inventing these essentially. And this has worked. Like this is our new Vienna Lager. Vienna Lager is the biggest Virginia-made craft beer in Virginia by all long shot. And Orange Smash is a, on a national scale, is a top 20 canned cocktail brand. And we only really sell in Maryland, D.C., and Virginia.

So it's huge. It's absolutely huge. It's amazing and the only reason that we have it is because steve kind of had a wild hair that he wanted to build a distillery and so when i think about our innovation process and how we innovate like i am by nature the person who's going to like pull all the data and decide what we should do and you know somebody said to me a while ago it's true like if there's data it means a lot of people are already doing it and steve was the kind of person that was just kind of like feels like we should do this and that's not always perfect but like man you need some of that and so yeah but

you need that in the innovation like i need data people i need people are pulling the numbers and saying hey this is why that's a good idea bad idea like here's how i can how i can correlate it to things but you also need some people who just fundamentally are passionate about the thing they're making and are going to put in the effort to teach people about what it is they're making. And that's like, we try really hard.

One of the areas that we screwed up, one of the big mistakes that we made along the way is our innovation got really, really, really commercial led. So it was always like, hey, here's the market opportunity. Brewers, make this. And A, they hated that. Did that come from you all or did that come from higher up? That came from me. No, that came from us.

Self-awareness is very important. Some of it's trying to figure out how to navigate through a big company and see where the white spaces are and the opportunities are. But it's also like, hey, we get jealous. We see somebody being successful at something else and we want to be successful at that. Virginia's ours. We should do better. Virginia is yours. and we want to be successful at that. Virginia's ours. We should do better.

Virginia is yours. Yeah, it is, but it's also not. There's lots of other good breweries as well who do better at some things than we do. And so for a while, we were directing so much, make this, make that. And sometimes you have to do that by necessity to fill a hole on the shelf or whatever,

but we've tried to move our innovation process now to where it's far enough ahead of our commercial needs that it is largely brewer and distiller driven. And it's like, hey, make a slate of things that you love and make them a bunch until they're really great. And then we'll put those through a commercial filter. And we'll see. If you made 20, there might be only one that's commercially commercially viable, but at least you love it. And it came from somewhere organic. That's how you hit the grand slams. Like we can, you need to hit singles all day. Right. And that's what data-driven innovation is like, I got to keep up, right?

If there's something, if I'm the largest craft brewery in Virginia, which I am, and hazy IPAs are trending, I need to make a hazy IPA. I need to participate. Isn't it named after you, the hazy IPAs are trending, I need to make a hazy IPA. I need to participate. Isn't it named after you, the hazy IPA? It used to be. It used to be. Very insultingly, they kept the beer and changed the name because apparently no one wanted to buy a beer with my face on it. Yeah, and his face was on the beer.

I remember seeing it for the first time. I was like, oh, hey, buddy. Spot it because you were on it. Brutal. That was brutal. That's what the brewers do when they're mad about something you make them do. They name it after you. Okay.

So we had a pumpkin beer named Ichabod Crandall named after Steve Crandall. Yeah. And then, yeah. Well, would you say that it's helpful that you have this tasting room to kind of be like an innovation center? I mean, think of the diverse population that comes through Devil's Backbone. Yeah. Yes. Absolutely.

And we're trying to use it better. Okay. And we also are always trying to be realistic about. Is the demographic that comes to our location. Also the people buying our stuff in the market. And in some cases it is. And sometimes it isn't. Yeah.

Typically on our craft beer. It tends to be. So it's a pretty good proxy. I'm not coming for the food. On things like this. Ouch. Wow. Chef Dale is amazing.

We have an amazing set of beer dinners lined up. We move them all over the property. We have them in the greenhouses. We have them in the distillery. You've clearly never been to one. I haven't been to one. I need to go. I'm saying from my experience.

The next one live from a Devil's Backman beer dinner. Let's do it. Brutal. Let's do the next one live from the kitchen. There you go. And at the dinner. I would love to do that. Listen. I'm just giving you the business. one live from the kitchen there you go and and at the dinner i would love to do that listen i'm just i'm just giving you the business don't make the kitchen mad because the

beer is my favorite fair enough um but uh but yeah so so we we try to blend those things right i i do think more and more the industry is also evolving right it's sort of peaked i would say pre-covid during covid-ish with like around the time where people were like hey this is crazy this can't last right and they were kind of right it's what can't last like the the craziness of the amount of alcohol that got consumed when people were locked in their house that part uh we don't hate but more the uh gimmickiness of innovation, I would say. So you started getting Doritos beer and fried chicken beer and stuff like this and stuff that was not done for the quality of the product,

but done for the shock value. Sure. And that was the jumping the shark moment. I'm surprised you don't have a Farmhouse Greens beer. We had some grapefruit beers that were phenomenal. Great idea. Yeah, we have a grapefruit smash that's really good.

But I think that things are starting to come back down to earth. All the trends that we're seeing and reading about are back towards more traditional style beers.

I think we're a few years out from like right now IPAs are king. 100% not only IPAs king but like 9% IPAs are king. And now we're at a place where people look around being like,

that can't last forever, right? And what I've learned in... Well, I just can't have one of Devil's Backbone and drive home with 9%. Yeah, no, it's a lot. That's why you buy it at the convenience store right next to your house. Yeah, exactly. But I've learned now, being in the industry for a while, that when people start being like, this can't last, could it?

That's like the first moment. It takes years for that to actually follow through. So IPAs are not going anywhere. I'm not here predicting the death of IPAs. But we're starting, I think, to see that next phase. And it's coming as breweries close. Craft is now flat, essentially. And so everybody's got to get smarter about, hey, what's the next evolution?

A lot of us, devils included, rode this rocket ship during the 2010s. Craft has been here before. It's gone through several expansions and consolidations and now, for a lot of people, devils included, it's at the first real moment of tightness and so you've got to get through it and be smart about it. And then there's green grass on the other side and so that's kind of what we're all

working towards and I think I am much more back towards it needs to work at our location. Like if people are, if we can't sell it to people at our own bar, who's going to buy it out there, right? It's not true of everything, but man, we got to be good at that. Well, I think that's a good question. If, what do you, do you think this, it will always be a regional craft or do you foresee or your plans to go all across the country with Vienna Lager?

We don't have those sorts of aspirations in this moment in craft. That's a bigger ask. There's not a lot of folks that are doing that successfully right now. We have a big home market here, and so we're constantly trying to figure out how do we continue to be more and more ingrained in our home market here and be more relevant here and make sure that we're participating all the spaces that we need to participate in. And then, you know,

there's opportunities to do things here and there, but you know, 10 years ago, yeah, people were just like, Oh, 50 States go. Um, that is, and most of them collapsed under that. Like I did that with my juice company, 50 States and go, sorry, not a, not trying to pick it all. No, it's fine. No, it's good. It's tough to support that, right? that with my juice company, 50 states and go. Sorry, not trying to pick old wounds. No, it's good. It's tough to support that, right? It's incredibly tough. It takes a lot of money. It takes a lot of partnership. It is what we thought we were going to do when we joined AB. And for a time, walked around feeling like, why aren't we doing this? And now you look

at the world and you look at who's successful and who's not successful. Man, there's really strong, as things get tight, there are these really strong regional players that are doing well. We are one of them and we want to continue to be one of them. And so, you know, who can say what's going to happen in five years or six years or whatever. But right now, the name of the game is like, if you can't sell beer to the people within a hundred miles of your brewery, like you probably can't sell beer to people in California. For sure. Well, so Hayes told me before the show started that those doors open, and I forget how you said it. You said it so fluently.

Can you say the door open quote about which one you should walk through? Sure, yeah. I said my philosophy in life has always been to keep as many doors open as you can for as long as you can and don't walk through one until you have to and then just pick the best one that you have. So the 50 States is still open. It just hasn't been walked through yet.

Yeah. You know, same, I think set a different way. It's like make as many friends as you can and see what happens. You never know what, what's going to happen in the universe. For sure. I mean, look, you came onto the podcast. I mean, yeah, I, our first day at Lumi, I didn't think, you know, whenever that was 2015, I didn't think, you know, whenever that was 2015, I didn't think I'd go from like, you know, putting carrots in a juicer to being on a podcast with you. I know it's a big change. Um, well talk to one last thing I want to ask you is,

you know, what kind of advice would you give to people that, you know, are pursuing a career change and, um, you know, an adventure like you went through? Yeah. I know for me, I am only successful when I'm very passionate about the thing I'm doing. And it's not just about beer or making beer. I do think that's exciting, but I also just love the role that we fit into people's lives, that people come to our locations when they want to celebrate something,

that people crack open a Vienna lager when they're having a good time that people are taking orange smash on a boat and and enjoying their time with it like I want to drink responsibly though drink responsibly don't drive the boat while you're you know let somebody else drive and then you drink the orange a friend with the boat is that's the best kind of boat so that's what you want um and so i just love being a piece of that aspect of people's lives that's what's really motivating to me and then also the fact that devil's backbone over over the years has gotten to a scale where we can be really supportive of things in our community we do a ton of work with the blue ridge area food bank okay we've done a ton of chesapeake Bay Foundation. Really important causes that we're able to make significant impact on. And so as long as we're sort of providing

fun to people and helping the community and being a part of the fabric of the community, that is what gets me excited about this job. And then the people I work with are what get me out of bed every day, genuinely. I know that's like a thing people say but I've just hired amazing people and I love working with them but I would say just like I think that's true of most people you're going to be more successful if you love it and so if you're going to take a risk and you're going to jump off a diving board and start something new like, unless there are some people who are very financially motivated, and if that's your thing, do it. But otherwise, you know,

when you talk to all those failed entrepreneurs, they have funny stories because they liked what they were doing even while they were failing at it. And that's better. I was lucky enough that the sale to Anheuser-Busch happened right as my fifth year Darden reunion came up. And so I did get to look smarter than I was at that reunion.

But I'll never forget the number of comments. Like when I started at Devil's Backbone, like I took a pay cut from pre-business school. Oh, sure. It was not. I mean, KPMG to a brewery. Yeah, it was not a sure thing. My parents thought it was crazy. I'll always remember my mom like emailing me an article from the New York Times about craft beer,

and that's when she finally decided, oh, the New York Times wrote about it. Maybe this is real. That's funny. But, like, you know, I had nothing to lose. I wasn't married. I didn't have kids. There was nothing going on. It was fine.

But it was also, like, could have gone super wrong. And a lot of my friends did the, you know, hey, I'm going to go work in finance for two or three years, and then I'm going to get to what I want to do, and none of those people came back to the union and was like, I'm glad I made that decision, right? They were all like, I should have done what you did, which felt good because time is finite, and I've enjoyed pretty much every day of my job,

and I wouldn't trade that for anything. So I think you do better work when you're passionate about what you're doing and it's a lot more fun and sometimes you get to make money doing it. I've been very lucky in that regard. But I'd be, I was happy even when that wasn't the case, you know. For sure. What does your mom say to you now? My mom passed away a couple years ago.

Oh, I'm so sorry to hear. It's okay. I'm over it. Not a big deal. Well, you never have to be over it, but did she see you be successful? She did. She totally did. And how did she change your mind? You know, my mom was proud of me in whatever I did.

I had a mother who went to business school in the late 70s. Okay, what did she do? She was an executive at Citibank. She did a lot of finance and HR. Yeah. She did that in the early 80s when it was not, you know, women were not senior executives at Citibank. She did a lot of finance and HR. She did that in the early 80s when women were not senior executives at Citibank. My mom was a power lady. And actually, one of the most moving experiences of my life was, I might get choked up now, was at her funeral. There were a lot of

people I had never met there who came up and they were like, you don't know how much your mom helped me and mentored me as I came into the business world. And like, I knew a lot about my mom, but I didn't know that aspect of her. I knew she was a, a feminist, but I thought she executed it largely in her own sort of like the way she went to work. And I didn't realize what a network of people she had brought along. So it's amazing. Very cool. What was your name? Sharon. Sharon. Yeah. Cheers to Sharon. Cheers to Sharon and cheers to a UVA medical center who took care of her along the way, on the way out. They did a great job, genuinely. That's great.

So she came down and moved to Charlottesville, and so she got to be here. And you got to be with her. Yes. Okay. That's good. She was down here for my baby shower. She got sick and went to the hospital. Oh, my gosh.

Super brutal. Which is probably the toughest. Let's change the topic. Yeah brutal let's go to a different conversation I love my mom I miss her she would have been a great grandma it's mostly funny to me that you've dug yourself into this hole I'm good at digging my own cells and dolls

well to Sharon and her city bank and that's awesome that she supported others because I think women in that financial world even last week I was talking about how women in finance a lot of times don't support other women in finance, which is like unbelievable, but it sounds like your mom was one of the anonymous, which was awesome. Um, and so now that you're a father yourself and you've gone through, uh, being a parent, uh, what's kind of your advice to your children? I don't know. Luckily they're not at a place where I have to give them

advice yet. I mean, I think it's that same advice. I think it's, I think about it a lot. Like, I've taken a fairly traditional, you know, approach to life, even though I've been in craft beer and it's been fun. But, like, you know, I grew up in New York City. I got a great education there. I went to private undergrad. I went to the business school. I was an accountant.

I'm now, like, you know, I'm an executive. I'm in craft beer, but I'm still a business guy. You know, like one of my kids is super into music. So I think about all the time, like currently his life goal is to be a bucket drummer. He's five years old. So there's still time to do other things, but it's like, okay, what if that's his thing? So how do we support that? And it's like, I don't know.

I don't know what's going to work. I'm not an experienced parent, but I hope the goal is that same thing. Just try to be the best, genuinely like try to be the best bucket drummer you can be. I mean, Washington Square Park in New York City has got a lot of great bucket drummers. Yeah. I mean, go be an off-Broadway stomp bucket drummer or something. Like there's, there's angles for everything to work. So like I said, luckily I have some time to figure that out, but mostly my advice now is don't put that in your mouth is pretty much the main thing I'm telling them.

That's good. That's good advice. Awesome. All right, cool. Hey, Judah, can we get a time check, please? Okay, sorry, I'm really bad at keeping... Oh, it's 3.23? Oh, so we went over. Oh, okay, so anyway, this is why Oh, so we went over. Oh, okay. So anyway, this is why I need to get a clock on the juicy details.

No, there were such good things we talked about, but in the thing of time and having to get kids at school, and this is live, we have to finish the show. But I think we covered a lot. We covered transition of our entrepreneurship. We talked about being an accountant,

how you've really just learned from everything. You listen well, and that you've really just created this amazing life for yourself. And so one last question, since you also say that you're an amateur globetrotter, where's a favorite place you've been and your bucket list place? And we'll end on that.

Oh, man. Bucket list place is tough. Those are both tough questions. I proposed to my wife in Bruges, Belgium. I love Belgium. And we took one of the, actually I think the last trip, not the last trip,

one of the last trips prior to kids was to Croatia, to the Mediterranean coast of Croatia. So beautiful. Very hard to get there. Highly recommend it to anyone who is able. It was very, very, very cool. And just such, such nice people. I think bucket list for me next is I really love second cities, smaller cities and places.

And so there's a lot of places. I've been to London a lot, but, like, we used to brew beer in the U.K. and it was in Wolverhampton, and I loved Wolverhampton, which is in the Midlands. And, like, um, there's a lot of other cities in Germany I'd really like to get to and drink beer. Um,

I've never done the Christmas markets thing. So, um, that is where I hope to get to someday. Well, thank you. Um, the juicy details,

we definitely got emotional in the juicy details today. I'm sorry about that. Hey, I'm so thankful that you're here. Yeah. All right. All right. So thankful that you're here. Yeah, all right, all right. So thankful that you're here, and thanks for talking and being honest. I think people really appreciate that.

All right, well, love you, mean it. From here, the juicy details to you all at home, and see you next Wednesday live at 2 p.m. Eastern, 2.15 p.m. Eastern. Thank you, Hayes, so much for coming. Yeah, see you, everybody. Bye. Bye. Bye.