Adri Richey (00:04)
Welcome to another episode of the BrewDeck Podcast. My name is Adri Richey and I’m part of the marketing team here at Country Malt. And I’m very excited to talk about my favorite topic that is marketing, branding, and social media in the beer industry. And for this episode, we invited two breweries to hear what’s working for them.

And how they approach marketing with their budget and with their team.

some breweries have a big marketing team, and others have to manage marketing with just one person. But I mean, at the end, we’ll have to find a way

tell the story, whether it’s with just one person or a team of seven people in the marketing team.

So today

we have

Kyndall Weir.

She’s the marketing director.

owner and Vibe president of Weir Beer in California.

And we have Julie Voigt. She is brewmaster

at Birdsview

Brewing Company in Washington. So thank you for joining us.

Julie and Bill (01:09)
Sorry.

Adri Richey (01:10)
hi, Bill.

Julie and Bill (01:11)
Sorry for the delay but you know

little problem with

yeah, anyhow.

I can hear just fine now.

Adri Richey (01:16)
That’s perfect. Okay, we were actually just introducing ourselves. So Julie Voigt is gonna join us with Bill Voigt.

And Bill, you’re the owner

Julie and Bill (01:26)
Yes.

Adri Richey (01:27)
at Birds View

what I’m really interested in today is not necessarily finding the right way to market a brewery, because I don’t think there is a right way

I think it’s

more about how you find your own way to tell the story.

So that’s why we’re here with you guys and

gonna find out how do you guys do it

and how do you get people to care about your story and your beer.

You guys ready?

Julie and Bill (01:52)
Yeah. Ready.

Kyndall Weir (01:53)
Do it.

Adri Richey (01:54)
how would you describe your brewery as a person?

Kyndall Weir (01:57)
Sure, absolutely. This one I feel like is easy for me. because our theme is summer in the nineties, is what we’re aiming for. So I would be a nineties kid who just likes to have fun, is really into everything nineties, Y2K, obviously like to try different beverages from that era. Lots of fun flavors, things that are colorful, things that are in style.

That’s really what we would be that that’s what I would be if I was a a person as my brewery, I’d be a nineties kid.

Adri Richey (02:32)
Julie and Bill how would you describe your brewery if your brewery was a person?

Julie and Bill (02:37)
well it’s kind of eclectic to start off with I would say. I feel like we’d definitely be like an outdoor hiking musician type.

your typical PNW person who’s like walking around with a guitar strapped to their back and like a six pack of beer in their backpack, with binoculars around their neck so they can also, you know, be watching the birds that are going by. Don’t forget the camera.

Adri Richey (03:03)
Okay, so a nitrist person and an eclectic person with a six pack of beer and a guitar.

what makes your brewery different from other breweries around you? There’s so much competition lately. So how do you guys set apart from the other brewers?

Kyndall?

Kyndall Weir (03:18)
Sure. Something that we do a little bit differently here. right, because we’re in San Diego, we’re in Southern California, which, you know, there’s a brewery on every corner. What makes our customers want to come into our place? And we actually have at any given time nine hard seltzers on tap. we’re constantly rotating the flavors because we flavor them by the keg. And we also have usually two or three that we call like our cocktail-inspired seltzers that are higher ABV.

And we pour them over ice. So that’s kind of a way to skirt around, right? Like our license for a brewery tasting room, what we can make and have on tap. we’re also a really big space. We’re 6,000 square feet inside. we’ve got again 1200

Julie and Bill (04:00)
Baby.

Kyndall Weir (04:01)
square foot front patio. We have a huge back parking lot. So we’re also an event space. So it brings in a lot of different people that aren’t just coming here for beer. So when they we’re having an event.

That’s not necessarily, you know, the beer crowd. We’re getting a lot of phone calls. What do you have on top? Do you have wine? No, but we have all these hard seltzers. and that nine times out of ten, we’re finding something on the menu for the non beer drinker. And I think that’s been really successful for us. So

Julie and Bill (04:31)
we kind of have the opposite.

issue where we’re a very small space. We don’t have a lot of room. We have a large outdoor space, but inside we’re really small. We have a very small kitchen. We only have a seven barrel brew house. so our big thing is we try to do a lot of different live music events. we do some fundraisers throughout the year for our local community. those are really, really important to us.

we have a distributor that takes pretty much the same beer every week out of here and that’s a draw for people because they like the beer and so they want to come see where it’s made. And they like they like the vibe so to speak we’ve been told. So

Adri Richey (05:18)
How many how many people can you fit in your space?

Julie and Bill (05:21)
Forty eight? Fifty. Fifty? Fifty. Yeah. Fire marshals is mo no more than fifty people, but we have a lot and of course we have a beer garden too. More more people can be out in the beer garden.

Kyndall Weir (05:31)
We’re only just coming up on our two year in October. And this was a much larger space. We thought we were going into a a space similar to you guys, Julie and Bill. and this just kind of fell into our lap. So that’s what’s kind of driven us to to host events and things like that because we need we have the space to fill out. we can have a full event going on in one half of the brewery and then we’re completely open to the public on the other half.

It and it’s just me and my husband. we’re we’re the just the owners. We own it outright, we have no investors, and then we we’re a small team of four employees in addition to the two of us.

Adri Richey (06:09)
That leads me to the next question because you know, you start your brewery with one intention and then

time goes by, and then you know, the customer is the one who’s kind of like telling you how to go and where to go, right?

So

how do you develop your brand identity and your voice? Like, did it happen naturally or like and I think this goes also kind of like together with your history.

So how do you guys start at developing your brand identity

Julie and Bill (06:37)
So I think that ours is definitely evolved over the last twenty years. when we opened in two in two thousand six, I think social media was very much just kind of becoming a thing.

know. I mean twenty years ago things were different. Very different. Yeah. so then we kind of my sisters and I kind of stepped on and started doing some more on social media and branding. And I think my biggest thing is I really I just want everything that we put out there to feel like

To feel very organic, to feel like you’re reading our social media posts, but you are hearing our voice in that.

that’s one thing that we definitely try to keep consistent is you know, we don’t want our post to sound like chat GPT or whatever. You know, we want you to be able to hear us in every single post that we make, which I think it’s kind of just involved evolved into

just really being also too a little humor helps, it goes a long way, you know.

Kyndall Weir (07:38)
I love hearing that, Julie Bill, as

I think exactly what you were saying is really as a small business leaning into our story and everything is it’s me doing all of our social media marketing, and that’s kind of our biggest platform that we use. And I talked

about it. Like I’m posting on my own account. I use a lot of first person. I I showed a lot of our build out because we bought this brewery and we turned it around in two months. It was a brew a brewery previously. We just redecorated and I showed that story on our social media account and that kind of drew the attention of our audience and our clientele. Cause I think we can you can get lost in the shuffle, especially in San Diego.

I think where a lot of people are spending their dollars right now, they want to know the brand and who’s behind the brand. So we really leaned into our story and us and like all of our our baby shower was bigger than our wedding because all of our regulars watched me be pregnant the entire time in the tasting room and behind the bar, and they all came to the baby shower. So I think

Julie and Bill (08:44)
Yeah.

Kyndall Weir (08:45)
it’s been really special and unique to share our life with our clients. and I think that’s what’s

really helped us,

Julie and Bill (08:55)
was just gonna say I think that that is so helpful too because you’re giving a face to your company and especially when your family is growing alongside your customers.

and it’s like a whole team effort. Everyone’s like rooting for you and you know, so that is really

That’s really, really cool.

Adri Richey (09:13)
Julianville, why Birdsview?

Julie and Bill (09:15)
The name is conducive to the area.

the history of the the area goes back Birdsey Minkler was actually one of the founders in the Upper Valley. And so the area became known as Birdsview.

I like the name, I like history in the area, and so we’ve just kind of carried it on and

We have a little wall in the brewery that’s got history of the Burjou area. Yeah. So people can see actual pictures and actual maps of the area and who platted out the area.

we are doing everything we can to try to preserve that history, and educate people on that. We just launched a brand new menu in February and everything, excuse me, on our menu is named after

the first settlers and pioneers that were up in this area.

Adri Richey (10:04)
And and Kyndall, I don’t wanna ask, but I’m gonna ask. So I’m guessing we’re beer is because of your last name, right? Okay.

Kyndall Weir (10:10)
Yes. that

is our last name. Me and my husband. it’s easy to say, easy to spell, rolls off the tongue a little bit. It rhymes. Yeah.

Julie and Bill (10:18)
It rhymes. Yeah.

Kyndall Weir (10:21)
So he actually, before we met, he was already brewing and had his sister actually knew like this was his goal eventually one day was to open his own brewery, call it Weir Beer, and she’s owned like the website. N what do you call The URL. She’s owned that, I think longer than

I’ve even known him. So that was like always the dream and the name. and we learned very quickly with opening a business how many times you have to put that, write that down, say it over the phone. so we’re glad that we went with like the exact spelling of our last name and like keep it short and simple.

we invested in like a really big neon sign that says let’s get weird, and that is on our front wall when you walk into the brewery. And then our mug club is called the Weirdos. so we just I like

Julie and Bill (11:12)
I love it.

Kyndall Weir (11:13)
to call us since we do all these like big events now, which is like what this is kind of we’ve stumbled into. we’ve done gothic markets, we do monthly drag shows, we we do a big tiki market. So I like to call us the collector of weirdos.

and I think that’s made us kind of this we stumbled into this little like community hub, which I’m sure I’ve just kind of gone on a little bit of a tangent. But yes, it all has stemmed from our name being weird.

Adri Richey (11:40)
your marketing team is just you, right? For both of you.

And you also have other hats. You also have to brew beer, you also have to do accounting, you also have to do many other things, right?

how do you manage your marketing strategy?

what works best for you to make your marketing job easier?

Julie and Bill (11:57)
we really just rely on on social media and

I social media in itself can be a full time job. And when you are also

handling all the brewing and all the distribution and all the merchandise and all the ordering and all of the scheduling of the employees, and I could go on and on and on and on and on.

I don’t have time to do, you know, so many different avenues when it comes to marketing. So really we just focus on Instagram and Facebook. Those are our two kind of main channels.

Kyndall Weir (12:26)
Yeah, I would say as one woman team over here, probably like you going on Julie, social media is great because it’s free. You can do paid push advertisements behind it. I mean, for big events, sometimes we’ll just throw like 25 bucks and like run an ad. But really the beauty of social media as a small business is that it’s free if you can figure out how to do it yourself, right? Bigger companies can outsource. but this is actually something that before I owned a brewery, I am a

sports dietitian, so nutrition to beer. Don’t really know how I got into that pipeline. But I have I had my own online business and self-taught with the social media marketing there and kind of learned. It took me a couple of years, but now it feels very easy to to do content. We

We are on Instagram. I’m on TikTok. Our TikTok account isn’t as big, but surprisingly, we do get a lot of people who see videos locally that come in and we hear more that we saw you on TikTok than we did on Instagram. Even though our reach seems bigger on Instagram, people tend to maybe come in more from seeing it on TikTok. I actually just like editing.

all my videos in TikTok and then I’ll just save that from TikTok and immediately post it to Instagram. So I’m not necessarily doing too much more. but that’s just how I learned to edit stuff in that app. and then it just feels very easy to transfer it over to Instagram and then it immediately posts to Facebook. We I rarely even go on our Facebook. Recently this week I even wrote on our page like, we don’t respond to messages here, like go over to our Instagram. but I think like the

The bread and butter of our marketing really is social media because it’s free.

Adri Richey (14:08)
So with that, you have to prioritize the content that you’re gonna show. So what is the most important for you guys to show on social media if it’s the main platform? Do you like to show more like

branding images or more fun stuff, educational,

what is the main content that you prioritize on social media to share your story if you only have social media

to work with?

Kyndall Weir (14:36)
videos tend to do really good for us and it could be a mixture of like behind the scenes us just saying, Hey, this event is coming up. we try to also showcase our menu, what’s on tap, what’s coming out, what’s what we’re canning soon.

I try I try to do a mixture of like funny trends, right, Bill? Like keep it funny, funny and light. This is the alcohol industry, right? Like we’re here to have a good time.

so I’ll throw in a mixture of of trends that are going on sometimes and like our little spin on it. but I think really the heart of our content is showcasing us, putting a face behind it, whether it’s us, I’ve started to get our staff more involved, which can be challenging sometimes, but they’re into it now. They’re starting to send us videos that they think are funny ideas. especially since I’ve been a little lacking on it with having the baby. So they’re trying to

give us some ideas, which is great. But honestly our best content happens when it’s just like my husband or people like when I put my husband behind the camera and make him do silly things.

Adri Richey (15:41)
So you you like to

to put organic things and then just leave like product photography or a or a pretty photo more for your website.

Kyndall Weir (15:49)
Yeah, for our website or if I’m like something random and like a story, if I’m just like out of out of stuff, I save that for a rainy day, or for flyers or things like that in the tasting room, but mostly it will we’ll try to do organic video content.

Julie and Bill (16:06)
I think yeah, definitely it seems like the videos now are where we get more views and I think that it helps you have to have a face behind it. I think that helps so much.

and some of them we’ll think are really, really funny. Like we did one with one of our only male employees to the Sabrina Carpenter song house tour, and he was kind of showing around and we

Like had to do so many takes because we were laughing so hard filming that video didn’t do that well on social media. And we’re like, but this is the funniest thing we’ve ever put out. Like, you know. and then sometimes you’ll just have something random that will go crazy.

Yeah. but yes, it’s so fun to get the employees involved and they same thing. We’ll have like group chats where people are like, we should try this next, we should do this next, we should do, you know. and I love that because I can’t come up with all the ideas on my own. So I love having help.

from them,

Kyndall Weir (16:59)
Yeah.

Julie and Bill (17:01)
and they take it very seriously, filming. and they’re good sports too. Like we’ve had some who have volunteered, you know, to have a beer thrown at their face to try to guess what it is.

And they’re like, I’ll do that. That’s fine, you know. So that helps to have a really good team who’s who’s all in. They wanna do it.

Adri Richey (17:19)
So photography is my background, and I used to spend hours creating the perfect studio photo of a beer,

like the foam kind of like

out coming out of the glass like very sexy and I will post that on social media 10 likes but then if I like filmed some random dude at the beer garden chugging a beer

500 likes in 20 minutes

people don’t care about a pretty photo. They care about who you are and what your story is.

Kyndall Weir (17:50)
Yeah.

Adri Richey (17:50)
But anyway,

the interview is for you guys, not for me.

Kyndall Weir (17:53)
I think it also like social media can just be like a volume game too, like and like how the the algorithms are constantly changing. So not being discouraged when like something you put a lot of effort to and you love doesn’t take off. But continuing to pump out content, like I give myself like a minimally I need to post three times a week. Anything else is a bonus, but like being consistent

it will push your content more into the algorithm. and then when someone discovers you for the first time and they go onto your page, they’re gonna scroll and kind of be like, okay, what’s gonna like how what is this brewery about? What is this brand about? And they will see that content at some point. So I think not being discouraged like in the moment when something’s posted, but knowing that, you know, sometimes things can go viral weeks after it was posted.

Adri Richey (18:44)
and and this is great because it leads me to my next question. Like just because you received 10 likes on a post doesn’t mean that people are not paying attention to it right away.

for you guys, what makes a social media post successful to you? Is it engagement or how many followers you gain with that post or impressions, the comments? How do you measure sales?

And social media, like what makes a post successful to you?

Julie and Bill (19:12)
I think that for us, I think if if we’re happy with the post, you know, because it’s so all over the place and it’s subjective what people like, what people don’t. and so I think that just if if we know that we like it and we’re proud of what we’re putting out, I think that is the biggest thing. And for us

No, social media views do not equal sales and they also don’t always equal followers, you know? I

mean, we had to go back to the viral, I don’t know, I guess it I don’t know if it would be called viral. It had got like something crazy, like 18 million views. Why? I have no idea. I I don’t know how that happened. We were like, we just kept watching it and we’re like, how is this happening? Like, and from that we got two

followers. So I mean it doesn’t, you know, for us that doesn’t necessarily translate. but I think the biggest thing is just staying authentic to ourselves and and putting out content that we’re happy with,

that feels like us and then people can like it or not.

Adri Richey (20:25)
Kindle, what how do you

Julie and Bill (20:25)
Well we had a

our our twentieth anniversary here just last month and we

We’re selling beers for three fifty a pint and that’s what we were started at when we opened up twenty years ago and all day long pints were three fifty and we sold sold lot of beers that day. Yeah, yeah.

Kyndall Weir (20:46)
Yeah.

Julie and Bill (20:47)
and and we we we put that out too, so people knew that they’re gonna do that on their on their birthday. So yeah, so people do read it, you know. Not everybody likes it, but yeah.

Kyndall Weir (21:00)
for for me, I would say our most successful it doesn’t necessarily equate what what I guess what I’m seeing is shares for events that we’re having. Shares and saves, I think tends to translate to more people in the tasting room. I

I would definitely, I wish I had like actual numbers, but of course, like it’s just me. I’m not gonna do that. But I tend to see the trend of something silly that we do. We have a dill pickle hard seltzer, and we have now thrown two years in a row a pickle party, a big pickle party. And that those posts that we did had a ton of shares and saves, and that tends to equal more bodies in the tasting room, is what we’ve noticed. views are great. I would say like a post.

is successful if like the views are pretty high. It doesn’t equal likes, it doesn’t equal comments. but I would say I look more first at like the shares and the saves. That tends to actually like equal people in the tasting room for me.

it’s tough. I don’t think I think it’s how you market it, right? Like we’ve posted about new products in the tasting room and maybe a couple of our regulars will see it because they’re already coming in. I think if we really want to push a product, turning it into an event and making it silly and making it have a theme, that tends to draw more people, not just like

the product itself.

we’re doing our it’ our take on Oktoberfest is Shrektoberfest. So the movie Shrek. so instead of just putting out an Oktoberfest beer, because everyone, you know, there are a dime a dozen around town, what’s gonna make ours different? And it’s the event and like how silly the event is to also launch the product has what’s been successful for us. Otherwise it’s

Like our regulars are excited, but it’s not bringing in any new bodies or new additional sales unless it’s tied to something bigger than just the product.

Adri Richey (23:08)
Julie Bill,

tell me about one post that killed it and that became super popular on your social media and that you didn’t know that it was gonna go crazy and tell me what was it? What content was it?

Julie and Bill (23:23)
So

yeah, it was a a trend that we saw that we thought was funny. We were not the original people to do it, okay? And and everyone in the comments was quick to tell us that. We know, okay. we were just hopping

Kyndall Weir (23:34)
That’s a trend.

Julie and Bill (23:35)
on a trend. and it was this video that just was like, you know, I think it was like HR training, and it was one of our bartenders walking by and slapping another one in the butt with a towel. And then

He said, you know, I bet you thought that was funny. What if it was the other way around? And so she walks by again and sli Right, you’ve seen this video, right? It’s like it’s that

Kyndall Weir (23:58)
Yeah, yeah.

Julie and Bill (23:59)
trend. And we just thought it was funny because we’re like, yeah, this is great, you know. posted it. And I think by the end of that day, it was at like 250,000 views, and we’re like, that’s wild, you guys. I’m like sending it to the group, and I’m like, this is crazy, you guys. Like, we might hit 500,000 views on this. By the next day, it was at like two million.

And then it just kept going up and we’re like, What is going on? Like, why is this? Is that what we really wanted? Like, if that was the one video that eighteen million people could see, would we have chosen that? No, probably something else.

Adri Richey (24:33)
And did you guys do that trend with a purpose? Like

also like I guess in your caption, you’d be like, come visit us, we have towels or something. Like do you do you translate that trend into a purpose

to your brewery, or do you just post that trend just to post that trend?

Julie and Bill (24:47)
I mean, ultimately I think everything leads back to getting people in the door, right? and so every post is kind of about what’s gonna get us seen. Are people gonna think this is funny and be like, maybe we’ll make a trip up there this weekend, you know? Maybe the person in that video will be working this weekend or whatever, you know? so I think it all kind of comes back to getting people in.

I just kinda let go with it, you know. I mean I mean all my all my daughters are very creative and especially Julie here and she comes up with some great ideas

and so that that’s just kinda how it kind of snowballs, you know, it kinda goes from there. So

Adri Richey (25:26)
Kindle.

Julie and Bill (25:26)
I don’t come up with

so many crazy ideas

myself other than, you know, making a new beer, but other than that, that’s about it. Yeah.

Adri Richey (25:31)
I mean that’s good enough. We need

we need good beer to market it, first of all.

Kyndall Weir (25:36)
Yeah, that’s the first step. I would say kind of going off of what Bill just said, right? Like just going with stuff. I think that’s the beauty of being a small business and a small market one woman marketing department is we’re not going through people to approve things and that you can pump out content and jump on a trend quickly, which can push it to do better in the algorithm. Whereas big companies, if you’re a big marketing department, oftentimes

Those posts have to be approved first. And they they’ll almost make it feel inauthentic or not organic because people are editing it. Don’t do it like this, do it like this, say this. and when you can move quickly with staying on trend, as even with beverages. we pivot and make beverages kind of based on what we’re seeing, what we’re hearing in the tap room versus like sticking to a shirk schedule that we came up with a year ago. I think that has been kind of the beauty of being small and a small team and

We also did a trend recently that was like

when your regular hasn’t shown up for their shift, their drinking shift, and you start to get worried. And we do have a regular that like everybody knows, like most bars do. so it was our bartender kind of just like.

Going around like pouring his mug, looking out the wind like looking out the front door for him, calling him, and she has a really funny picture on her phone of him. and then he finally shows up and she like hands him his mug of seltzer, actually. so like that was a trend. We like she was like, This is gonna be so stupid. I’m like, no, it’s gonna be great. that ended up doing really well views wise and shares kind of what I’m looking at. but we used it.

to kind of showcase different like areas in our tasting room that maybe we don’t necessarily show off in posts. And then I use it to kind of be like, have you not like you’re regular, like you haven’t joined our mug club yet? because she’s also kind of showing off like the mug. So when I can remember to, I try to like put some purpose behind it or like an additional tidbit in like the caption or something that also ties into something going on in the tasting room, even if it is just a silly trend.

Adri Richey (27:51)
sometimes it’s okay just to do a trend just to do a trend, but sometimes it’s also it works great when you do a trend and then you kind of translate it to like promote the product while doing the trend

showcase or beer garden while doing the trend. So yeah, and I think that’s the beauty of trends. You can just use them at your leisure.

Marketing is different in the beer industry, marketing is different when you work for a car dealership, marketing is different if you work in the pharmaceutical industry. So, my question: what marketing mistake did you make early on that you will not do today for the beer industry?

Kyndall Weir (28:33)
That’s good question.

Adri Richey (28:35)
Julie, start thinking ’cause you’re next.

Kyndall Weir (28:36)
Yeah.

the first thing that comes top of mind, not necessarily something that’s like, shit, but maybe that just like w hasn’t been really successful is or like maybe now since we’re such a small team and we have a baby, like what’s really worth our time and our effort? maybe it’s like wasting wasting money on products that are really for like marketing, right? So like certain t shirts or certain merch items that like it’s a big upfront.

cost and like at the end of the day it really is like marketing and putting your name out there so people see it out in the wild and then they’re like, what’s that? and it kind of just like maybe put us in a hole to begin with where we didn’t really know our clients yet. We didn’t know our audience. we’ve spent money on just like regular beer t-shirts, which you think would be successful, but like we’re sitting on so much inventory of just beer beer shirts that they’ve kind of just turned into like our free giveaways at this point.

For like our Mug Club members or like different things that we do in the tasting room. Whereas we kind of learned that mark like marketing our merch to women, they’re the ones who are spending the money. So like making sp spending a little bit more money on like cuter tank tops, those go in like a week in the tasting room. and that’s just like what we found with our audience. But I I I don’t know that that’s what I can think of off the top of my head. I think it’s like purchasing big ticket items.

before we knew what our clients wanted and then we’re just sitting on that inventory.

Julie and Bill (30:08)
having my parents, especially my mom, early on be in charge of the Facebook and the social media because I just had to go back through and this is nothing on her. This is just the way that social media has evolved since then, right? It was so funny going back and looking at Facebook posts from

15 plus years ago and being like, she has a whole album that’s just like springtime and it’s just a picture of a flower. And I’m like, really, mom? Like you had to, or it’s like, you know, Friday night and it’s just like a picture of a table of people, or what, you know, and I’m like, why did we do this so much? Like that I think is

Adri Richey (30:53)
Okay,

brewers out there who are listening, if you learn something today is don’t put your mother on Facebook. That’s it.

Julie and Bill (31:02)
Yes.

She did the best she could at the time. You know, it’s obviously very different now. but yeah, just the random, most random posts and random things that when I was going back through all these photos to print out for our history wall in the last 20 years, I was there were so many pictures that I’m like, my gosh, why did we put that on our public?

social media at this time, you know, is this something that needs to be on there?

Adri Richey (31:32)
this question is one of my favorite ones because we’re all small breweries and we are also competing with breweries who do have a budget, a marketing budget.

Kindle, if I give to you $100,000 just for marketing budget and a team of five people in your marketing team, what would you do?

Kyndall Weir (31:55)
I think I would probably love to do more in person and like around the city of San Diego events.

we do have a lot of beer festivals around town in San Diego. but we just can’t be at all of them, unfortunately. And really they’re for marketing. you’re donating the product most of the time.

or sometimes you’re, you know, maybe paying a fee to be there. we don’t tend to do those, but getting our when we have done them, they’ve been really successful. we have a like I mentioned, we have a lot of seltzer. We have a blue Gatorade flavored hard seltzer called Haterade. And every time we take that to a beer festival, it’s bright blue, it’s refreshing, it gets really hot here. So people that are, you know, they’ve had a bunch of beer, maybe they

want something a little bit different at the beer festival, they’re they see something that’s bright blue, they’re like, what is that? it tends to be a big hit. So that I think helps us make a a little bit of a splash out in our community. So I think that would probably be something if we had like a bigger budget and a bigger team. I would love to be like boots on the ground, out in like our face in the community, and expand that footprint a little bit would probably be where I started first.

Adri Richey (33:17)
It is so interesting because we interviewed a

brewery for this episode as well.

And they do have a big budget. And what they said, they spend most of their budget in what you just said events, sponsorships, community, because they were they were telling me, yeah, like social media is great, but if you have the opportunity to be out there and present, the connection is way better than anything you can do. So they that’s how they spend their money.

Kyndall Weir (33:43)
One day, maybe.

Adri Richey (33:44)
Julie, Bill, if I give you one hundred thousand dollars just for marketing budget and a team of five people in your marketing team, what would you do differently?

Julie and Bill (33:54)
Think I love the idea of doing events and getting more out in the community. I think especially because we are so far removed from a major city. and we have talked about doing an event in our space for years, doing like an invite-on for breweries event. And I think that would just be so much fun. We’ve been to so many different events,

And festivals that we kind of have our own ideas on ways that we’d like to do it. So I think it would be so fun to really go all out and do something like that and have a team of people promoting it and making videos for it and you know, visiting all the breweries that are gonna be there and talking to them. And I think that would be a blast.

Adri Richey (34:42)
Would you guys spend money in that from that budget,

like in product photography?

Like hire somebody to do like a batch content of product photography and just for your website and whatnot?

Julie and Bill (34:50)
I mean, we personally wouldn’t, but No, no.

Kyndall Weir (34:54)
Same over here, but what I invested in instead was I I finally became a a big girl and took over my own cell phone bill off my family cell phone plan and invested in a phone with a great camera.

Julie and Bill (35:07)
That’s your professional photography.

Kyndall Weir (35:07)
Like there’s a lot of

Adri Richey (35:09)
You are both dead to me.

Kyndall Weir (35:12)
Hey, honestly, sometimes though we have local photographers that kind of just want to play around with their equipment and we’ll just like do a trade.

so we do have like some stock photos that are great, but really have only been asked to use them for someone who like wants to come in and like rent the space. Other than that, like I think the what we can do with a phone now is is great. Like a lot of DIY stuff that you can do on your own with high quality.

not professional, but I mean you can you can get some great photos and video just on your phone now.

which again, like the barrier to entry is so low. You can use free social media marketing. You can use your own equipment, which is huge for a small business that is working within a a tight budget. we notice a lot of breweries that go out around us, they tend to just, you know, they’re writing checks, their Tish can’t cash. They’re just

They’re spending money on frivolous items that catch up to them later, especially on the tail end, you know, now six years out from COVID, but a lot of people took out loans and spent it on big ticket items, and then that caught up to them eventually. So we really like we have thrifted decor in here. we have things that like our flyers are just silly things that we put together. We really try to keep our budget tight. And I think it’s really cool the things that you can do now just with.

your own phone and with the internet.

Adri Richey (36:38)
this has been an amazing conversation. I learned a lot. And I hope you guys also learn from each other.

but before we go, I have two more questions.

the first last question is if people remember only one thing about your brewery,

what would it be?

Kyndall Weir (36:56)
Say our authenticity, whether that be with like what beverages we’re choosing to put out, with what events we’re doing, with our marketing, like we’re kind of just going for it and putting like our own spin on things as as a couple, as a s a small business. and we really just try to do everything very authentically to us and what makes sense for us and what we like. So

And it just as people, like as our staff, as owners, we just try to do everything with a lot of intention and authenticity behind it.

Julie and Bill (37:33)
I agree. I think that’s such a great answer. I think, you know, agreed. obviously the first thing that came to my mind ’cause we were talking about this last week was like, what do we ’cause I’m like, damn, that’s a good question. What if we can choose one thing, you know? And my mind immediately was like, Well, that we make really good beer. But I’m like, But y there has to be so much more than that, you know, it has to be the whole experience. And so I feel like that’s really what I would like people to remember is just their experience of coming here.

Our location is is unique number one. our building is unique number two. took us a year and a half to build it. It’s it’s a it’s a a yurt log structure. And people come in and they look and go, wow, this is pretty cool. And they first time they come in they t they just we have all these signs around and we have a growler collection, we have a beer can collection and and it’s very eclectic.

And people just they’ll just make all kinds of comments about this place is so cool, this place is so cool. Yeah, well that’s kinda like I think they take that away and go, you’ve been to the brewery, Bruce View, yeah, go there, check it out, it’s so cool. So that’s what I like to think people take away is our location and our uniqueness about just the building itself and Yeah. Of course our people at work here too are unique too. So Yeah, I think everything has to tie back to that experience, right? The f the because ultimately that’s what

people are spending their money on and that’s why they’re coming in the door, they’re looking for that experience.

Adri Richey (39:03)
last question and the most important one. what is your favorite drink? Doesn’t have to be beer.

Kyndall Weir (39:10)
Mine would have to be a tie between our dill pickle hard seltzer and the Italian Pilsner that we have on top, both right now.

Julie and Bill (39:19)
Woo.

What’s your favorite drink?

Well, I like

seven barrel IPA. Our seven barrel system, hence seven barrel IPA.

I think I know I’m like listening to your flavors and I’m like, okay, I’m gonna message you later and be like, how do you do the blue Gatorade flavor? That’s a great

I shouldn’t probably even admit this on a podcast, but I one of my favorite drinks, I do love a white claw. I’m sorry, okay. I love a white claw. They’re easy for drinking. If you’re doing an all-day drink fest, which I’m not doing often anymore with two children, you know, my body hit 30 and they were like, you have two beers and you are going to get a hangover from hell. So

I don’t get that with white claws. When I am drinking beer, I agree our seven barrel is so good. We worked so hard and for years to get that beer where we wanted it, that we’re really, really proud of it. but I like to do a mix. I like to do a hazy ish, so I’ll do half hazy and half seven barrel. that’s my go to.

Adri Richey (40:19)
Why you guys like white claw and you hate photographers?

Bye.

Bye.

Julie and Bill (40:24)
We are true. Yeah, we’re not these babies.

Kyndall Weir (40:24)
This is the new age, you know, you gotta get with the times.

Adri Richey (40:27)
All

right, guys. Thank you so much for joining us in the podcast. I really had a lot of fun.

Kyndall Weir (40:32)
I just I we gotta get up there and come visit you, Julie and Bill. That place sounds awesome. Yeah.

Adri Richey (40:38)
All right. Thank you guys so much. I really appreciate

Have a good day. Bye. Bye.

Kyndall Weir (40:42)
Thank you. Have a good one.