Hob Knob's Future Location

Hey folks, looking for advice on Hob Knob's future location! We've almost settled on a system, and are about 90% sure we'll be going with a 3BBL system built around speed to double/triple batch. We just checked out another location that was PERFECT, but it's in Statesville...which if you know the area, the craft brew following is in question, though the city did just invest a few million to spruce up the downtown area, and it actually looks pretty nice. It's within walking distance of where I work (2 blocks), but the city is questionable, and don't really want to be away from home 6-7 days a week (which is in huntersville). Right now, it's just 4-5 days a week. Anyways...seriously considering it because it was dang near perfect with hardly any upfitting costs, and with a little tweaking, rent could be reasonable. As for the building itself, it's a little rundown in certain areas, but it has an incredible amount of storage space with the 2500sq ft that make up the main floor...It's got a cellar that would be perfect for the fermentation tanks and possibly barrel aging, and it's small enough that a window unit could keep it at a constant temperature. Building has pretty nice old-timey character. The only work that has to be done is partitioning a wall for a cold room and the bar, which could be done in less than 2 days I think. Please check out the attached pictures of the building. Location is questionable and risky. It's in the middle of a small downtown area, but the town has no real beer 'yuppie' factor that I know of. Since we'll be primarily production based, and I commute 30 minutes a day, delivery to accounts up and down my commute won't be any real issue. There's about 6 towns in between where I work and live, though our biggest market, Charlotte, NC, would be about 40 miles. I suppose we could always look at a distributor, though that would probably exceed the capacity of a 3bbl system. There are NO other brewerys/brewpubs within about 25 miles, which is a good factor, and only one other small brewery within about 40 miles. I think the brewery could host some pretty large parties...the tasting room had to be close to 1200sq ft by itself. The biggest question is, can the local market support it? Would that even be an issue with a production brewery and delivery radius of 50 miles? It allows us room to grow if we need it, and has 15' ceilings that could hold some serious tanks. A drawback is no garage door, so making sure everything would fit is priority #1. Here's a link to google maps, you can use street view (drag the little yellow man to the location marked by the blue pointer) to see what the surroundings look like. It's the building with the open flag. Click Here. Images of the site: Tasting Room 1:

Tasting Room 2:

Brewery Floor 1:

Brewery Floor 2:

Brewery Floor 3:

Cellar:

The other location we're considering is much less public than the Statesville location and off bailey road, $800/month, includes 1200sq ft, and is about 1 mile from my house. You can walk across the parking lot to Assclown Brewery, which is currently getting setup as well (not entirely sure that would be a good or bad?) It's in the heart of yuppieville central and 3 towns, but not in any real type of retail area (in a business park). There's not really any room for a tasting room though, and we could run into an issue with parking as well for any type of large groups. Upfitting wouldn't be any major cost, as they already have a separate room that could be used as a cold room by just adding the insulation. Here's the link to this location. Click Here Pics of the building are here: Cornelius Location The problem that we are seeing is that there are no real ideal spaces around the area we really want to be in which is the cornelius/davidson area. I don't want to go south of cornelius because of where I work and live, so it has to be between exit 25 & exit 49 on I-77. If you look at retail locations, they all want $14/sq ft or more, which just isn't in the budget. Everything else that has around 1500-2000 sq feet either has a crappy location or they want too much for the space. So what's a brewer to do?

One Hour - Five Kegs - Our First Festival

First and foremost, thanks to everyone who dropped by. The event was more successful than we ever imagined, and we averaged around an 8/10 on our beer rankings. Our most popular was Pedro's Lager!

With a week's notice, we got invited to the NC Brewer's & Music festival at Rural Hill by Charles Willett from our local home brew club. It meant we'd have a busy week preparing! Time to batten down the hatches! We had 2 kegs ready to go, but had 3 in secondaries that needed to be transferred and carbed. With a little help from Shawn McBride and a few tips on flash carbing the brews, the beer was ready to go by Friday! But we still needed some beeraphenalia! We had no sign, no t-shirts, no nothing! Enter alpha signs & graphics in Statesville. Andy over there had us squared away on Tuesday, and everything was ready to pickup by Friday. Andy and Phil did some great work on our banner, and we highly recommend them. Here's a shot!

So Saturday morning, we loaded up the ramblin ranger and headed for rural hill. It was our first time there, and I must say, rural hill is a beautiful venue to hand out beer and listen to some great bands! As soon as 12:45pm hit, we started passing out the brews. Before the clock struck 1:45pm, we were dry as a bone! All 5 kegs were gone. We got great reviews from all sorts of people - from hard core craft brewers to the person trying craft brews for the first time. To say our brews were popular would be an understatement. Just check out this line!

Overall, it was an extremely inspiring event, and I must say, we're more committed than ever to getting our brewery up and running as quickly as possible in the Cornelius/Davidson Area! Thanks again to everyone who dropped by, and especially Mathew Taylor for helping us get everything put away before the canopy collapsed lol! Until next time!

Prost!

Jeff

PS...Took the gopro camera to the event and took a time lapse video...one shot, every 60 seconds.  Please ignore the last shot!!! :?)

Tee Shirts For Sale!

Hot off the presses!  Hob Knob Tee Shirts For Men (Sizes L, XL, XXL) and Women (Sizes S, M)
$20 +$3.99 shipping.

Email Jeffrey.Lever@Gmail.com to pick your's up today :)

Prost!

Jeff