Florida Grown Beer

Florida grown beer. Welcome back to the Elevate Polk podcast. I'm your host, Chrissanne Long, and with me again, my friend, my co-pilot, Nate the Great Kendren.

I love the intros. Every single time it's different.

I love it. Gotta find a new way to say it.

I know, I know.

Otherwise it gets old. Yeah, true, true.

Very true.

And I'm excited to have my friend Dan Thunberg from Swan Brewing here on our show with us today. Welcome.

Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's very, very nice to be here.

So I want you to say something about the studio, cuz you didn't know anything about it when you walked in and you had some comments about this place. So just share with our audience members a little bit about your immediate response to this room.

Yeah. I was like, whoa, this is legit. It's, I mean, I have done several podcasts, you know, the majority of 'em sitting on somebody's couch or, you know, in somewhere loud where you can hear background noise, but this is legit, like full sound proof, you know, green screen. I'm impressed.

Awesome. And I'm working on having you start your very own podcast. So this would be a place for you to launch that idea.

I'm down.

I'm down.

And anyone else listening, if you're dreaming of a podcast at some point in time, I would love to have a conversation with you about how to make that a reality. So, but let's get into the story of you, my friend. I will tell the audience how I actually came to know you was one day I was walking down the amazing farmer's market that has grown even more amazing over the years. And I see this guy with this Drink. Local. Lakeland. T-shirt. And I stopped and I go, oh my gosh, I need to have one of those. And unbeknownst to me, I think we were already connected on social. I just didn't know you personally. And so you're like, yeah, I know who you are. And I'm like, oh, hi, I'm sorry. I don't know who you are. But since then it's like we became fast friends and it's just been fun to get to know you since then. So tell us the story of how you got here from, from, from before the farmer's market.

Sure. So I'm, I'm not originally from Lakeland. I'm from Tampa. And I came to Lakeland in kind of a very roundabout way. I, I moved up to Ohio during the 2008 recession and then got transferred to South Florida, met my, my wife. We were dating at the time. She had a townhouse here and she got promoted and said that she was moving out of South Florida to work at the Orlando office and she was gonna move back to Lakeland and asked if I wanted to go or if I wanted to stay in South Florida. Of course I did not wanna stay in South Florida. So we came to Lakeland early 2013 and I instantly fell in love. I'd been here in my younger days, but it was nothing like in 2013. It was still, it was growing and up and up and coming. But you know, I remember from the mid to late '90s, when there was nothing here. And I was just kind of wowed. And, you know, I knew instantly that I was going to love it here because the town was absolutely gorgeous. Still had that small town charm, but you could tell that big things were going to start happening. I got here. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I've done, I've done so many things and I had, you know, some ideas for what I wanted to do in the future. But, you know, I didn't, I didn't know if I could make things work here. And so I've had a passion for beer forever. I started working at an Anheuser-Busch distributorship as soon as I turned 21.

I don't think you're the only person who has had a passion for beer for a very long time.

Well, mine is craft beer. I got into craft beer when it first really started to hit Florida, when we, you know, in the late '90s, early 2000s, you know, when you started to see these little sprinklings of these small breweries. Now, of course, they're not small breweries anymore, but You know, I remember the first time that I ever had a Fat Tire by New Belgium, like, what is this beer? You know, or a Flying Dog Ale, you know, and it's like, these are things that I had never experienced before. You know, I was always that guy that enjoyed the macro lagers. Like I said, I worked for Anheuser-Busch distributorship for several years in my early 20s. And I just, I drank, you know, Bud and Bud Light. That's just what I drank. I was required to.

And it was part of the job.

It was part of the job.

I got paid to do it.

And then I, you know, I just, by accident discovered craft beer. And I said, okay, there's something more to this. And that's where I started to learn the process of actually making it, making it myself. And like I said, this is my early 20s. And then I started, you know, like everybody else did, to notice that the craft beer was booming. You know, as you start to get into like kind of the mid to late 2000s, you know, Cigar City opened in 2008. Tampa was starting to become a vibrant craft beer scene. You know, you had Asheville starting to take off, you know, all these cool West Coast breweries. There's still cool, but now the East Coast is starting to catch up. And so I— that's when the wheels started turning in my head. Okay, if I get this chance, if I— anybody ever wants to give me a huge chunk of money, how can I make this happen? And this— so this is, you know, late 2000s, mid-2000s, or 2010. So when I got here, I really started to get serious about it. Um, you know, I, I realized that I didn't want to get back into the corporate world. I didn't, you know, I didn't want to sit there and have to punch time clock anymore. I wanted to do something for myself. But I didn't have any money. I was broke.

Story of our lives.

I just, you know, still broke, but I was even more broke back then. And so my wife had a great idea. She said, look, why don't you go and see if you can do something down at the farmer's market? It's a relatively cheap investment. You're going to spend $1,000, $2,000 to go buy supplies and a tent, you know, tables, whatever you're going to need. And and see if this is even a viable market. Or, you know, what, what does the craft beer scene look like here in Lakeland? And, you know, I knew I couldn't sell beer, you know, per se, but, you know, there's a huge correlation between craft brewers, the amount of craft brewers and the amount of craft beer drinkers. And so that's, that's really why I started there. What I found out was, one, there's no margins in selling craft beer supplies, but their margins in selling merchandise. So, hello, t-shirt, drink local Lakeland t-shirt, and the IHOP LKLD. And we had a whole bunch of other ones. So when I realized that, you know, I was selling $300 to $400 on a Saturday in t-shirts and maybe $50 to $60 in home brewing supplies, that we were good to go for doing a brewery, but we needed to make sure that we were very, very conscious about our branding.

Yeah.

And, you know, and you know as well as anyone that, you know, your brand is everything, you know, be very protective about it and be able to understand how to properly execute marketing. And your liquid has to be good. Your image and the way that you present yourself has to be even better. Yeah. And so, you know, we went in and we started, you know, kind of tweaking our business plan, which Christian, my partner, and I had been developing for quite a long time. We didn't meet until It's like 2015, but we both had business plans for a craft brewery and we put them side by side and realized they were almost identical.

Wow.

So it was really, we actually met at Molly's. Awesome. And opened the business plans and they were almost identical. I said, all right, cool, let's have a beer. Let's go ahead and tweak this a little bit. Now we need to find money.

Right.

And so, you know, luckily we came across our other partners who were able to help secure the financing.

Who also love beer.

They also love beer. And so kind of the rest is history. I mean, There's a lot more involved in this, a lot more in-depth, you know, the trials and tribulations that went along with it. But that's the basic story of how we got here.

So I want to circle back. I want to dig in a little bit. You said something, a couple of things. One was your wife kind of said, hey, I'm moving. You want to come or do you want to stay? And then you said, she said, well, why don't you do this farmer's market thing? So I want to know a little bit more about her role in kind of the supportive side of things, like encouraging, suggesting these ideas, giving you kind of that ability to take these giant leaps in some cases and do these things. Talk about that whole process and how that works in your relationship with her.

So I think for me, and I think with anybody else, we all have the fear. I like to describe it— you ever seen that scene in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas where Johnny Depp had just done a whole bunch of acid and he's there in the bar and all the lizard people are all around him and, you know, they're fairly innocuous, but, you know, no, there's— they're not doing anything wrong to me. He's just completely freaked out to be in that scenario. Yeah. So that's kind of— that's my fear on a daily basis. And it kind of— it kind of keeps me from doing and pushing boundaries or going places that I I'm probably safe to go in, but I don't have enough confidence to do.

Wow.

And so this is where my wife comes in. She's the one that's grabbing me by the hand and saying, look, the lizard people aren't real, and you have plenty of sense to make this happen. You can go out and you can do this. I know we absolutely would not have opened this place if she wouldn't have pushed me to just do it.

I have the absolute, like, I have goosebumps all over right now because I think that story just right there says everything about the importance of having that person, whether that's your wife, your husband, a friend, a confidant, a relative or not a relative. You've gotta have that person who's gonna talk you out of your fears and hold up the mirror and let you see what you are. 'Cause sometimes you can't see that yourself.

Yeah.

I, I wanna dive in a, a little bit to the part where you were talking about raising financing, because I think that's extremely important for people to kind of understand what that process looks like. Because again, you said you were broke, you didn't have any money, but you had a plan, right? You had some, some traction with the farmers market. How did you guys start going and pursuing that and securing the financing? Because I— to, to me, especially for, for someone that's starting out, it almost kind of seems like, where do we go? Who do we contact? Who do we connect with?

Right. And that's— I'll admit I was very dumb. I had no idea who to go to. You know, I knew banks lend money. That's, you know, that was about the extent of it. I had no idea about SBA. I had no idea private lending, angel investors, or any of that. There— before I went in and actually started to look at private financing or bank financing or SBA or any of that, I actually did have quite a few conversations with the people at SCORE to kind of— I have a degree in business administration, but even with that degree in business administration, I was, I still felt incredibly dumb about going and finding money. It's just not one of those things that are really taught, you know, at any primary or secondary education.

Does a professor ever have the experience to teach you how to go out after finding money? Right? Like, that's just the problem with the idea of a BA or, you know, of any of that because A professor is taught out of a book, not usually out of life. And for those of you that are professors that are teaching out of life, kudos to you. Keep doing that. For those of you that are hearing me and saying I'm insulting the professors, I'm not. It's just the reality is the reality. And you've got to have a little bit of life skills to be able to teach it to somebody else.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, and I'll give kudos to all my professors. I think they're great. You know, I learned about contract law. I learned about marketing. You know, I learned about supply chain management. I learned all the things that I needed once I got up and running. But it was that first part, how to get up and running, you know, the way to start a business is where it was kind of lacking. So I met with our SCORE people here in town and, you know, it was just a couple of meetings. I remember the first one and I was almost embarrassed to do it. My son was just a couple of months old and, you know, my wife, I mean, even to this day, I mean, she, she's the breadwinner. But I was, I was a stay-at-home dad. I was dad, you know, doing daddy daycare. And I took my kid with me in his little sling to my SCORE meeting. And I set him in the corner, he was sleeping, but I set him in the corner of the room and I laid out my plan to the SCORE mentor. And I think that was the first time that anybody had actually walked in with like their kid saying, I want to start a business. Here's my plan. Can you help me with this?

Wow. And I have this awesome visual and it's just, very endearing because you've met my kid. Yeah, I've met your kid. He's not in a sling anymore. And I've also— there's a gruff side of the person that is sitting here having this conversation with us that is mostly the person that we know and love. Right. But then there's the sensitive guy who's like vulnerably walking into a place where I'm dumb and I don't understand what I need to do here. And I have this kid and I have a dream and I have a wife who's allowing me to go pursue this dream. So help me, people. And there you go.

And you're not hiding anything. It's not— this is where you're at. I think that's huge.

Yeah.

I mean, I think it was the smartest thing I ever did was to realize that I was dumb. And, you know, and I think that was— that's one of the biggest mistakes that people make is to think that, you know, absolutely everything and that your idea is perfect and that, you know, exactly how much money you're going to need and that your idea is going to work. And I'm so glad that I didn't just run with what I thought was going to work. Because I would've failed a long time ago. I, you know, I was able to take criticism and understand that, you know, maybe my idea wasn't exactly perfect, that I didn't need to have a combination of homebrew supply/brewery/taproom.

Right.

Maybe we can take some of those things out because there's one too many elements and maybe I don't need to have a full-fledged restaurant in there too that is bound to fail. You know, so let maybe, maybe we go ahead and we kind of tweak things here and understand that we need to focus on what is the most important. What's going to be the best for the customers that we're looking to serve. So yeah, I mean, that's, you know, financing. We get back to that. I had no idea. And this is where being able to talk to SCORE mentor was. And I— any business or person who is looking, business owner, anybody who's looking for financing or looking to start a business, I would absolutely recommend talking to a SCORE mentor. They're, you know, and for people that don't know who they are, they're usually retired business professionals that have done very, very well in their career and they're looking to just, you know, philanthropically give back to, you know, up-and-coming business people. You know, I know the guy that I met with and I'm sorry, I can't remember his name, but he had a very, very successful real estate business for many, many years and owned a manufacturing firm and a couple of other things. And he was, he was the one that, you know, told me that, you know, half my ideas were just absolutely bonkers and weren't going to work and it was going to be way too expensive and I needed to focus on what we were going to do best.

So there are people who will hear the person saying your ideas are bonkers and those aren't going to work and they will walk away from that advice and they will say, you don't get it, you're dumb, right? You don't understand me. I can make it work. But you, on the other hand, heard that and listened and applied it and said, okay, You're smarter than I am.

Right.

Let me hear what you have to say and let me apply what you're saying to shifting. Because ultimately at the end of the day, what you wanted was to succeed, right? Not to just have this like beating on the chest and saying, I opened this business, right? Right. You wanted it to succeed. So that is another gem of a nugget right there for people to think about. Put your ego in the back burner and start listening to the people who you're actually asking for help.

Right. When you're Scrooge McDuck-ing it after 10 years, go ahead and inflate your ego and pound your chest until, until you're at that point. You know, just understand that 9 times out of the 10, you're probably going to be one of the dumbest people in the room, you know, especially when you're amongst a crowd like that and be able to take advice. And, you know, somebody tells you that you don't, you know, your idea might not succeed, you know, take that to heart. You know, don't— they're not, they're not there. Most of the time people aren't just telling you that because they want to see you fail. You know, they don't want to see your great idea come to fruition, or they don't get it. Look, there are not too many new ideas, you know. Everybody, we're rehashing stuff at this point, right? Some people are just doing it a little bit better. So, you know, when you come, you know, with this idea, look, we're going to do these new craft doilies, and I'm sorry if I offend the new craft doilies entrepreneurs out there, you're not going to go and change the world with craft doilies anymore, you know, unless you are a brand new idea that is very well funded and is able to go and completely change the world, your idea has been taken. You just need to be able to take those great ideas that you have and be able to execute them properly.

I love that. I love that because so many people, again, like you said, they'll, they'll say, oh man, I invented this new thing or I have this new concept. And like you said, it's, you know, it's just really reinventing the wheel. But at the end of the day, like you said, every— everybody has ideas. It all comes down to execution. And I really like what you said about when you were going to the SCORE mentor about being focused, because again, when people are talking about all these different ideas and, oh, I have this concept, I have this concept, I have this— if you're not focused, it's like you can only spend so much of your energy on it, so many things without being spread too paper thin. One of the things I was listening to a YouTuber and he said, I didn't become successful until I started focusing on one thing. And then I hone that skill.

Boom. I wrote that down when he was saying that. I said, do one thing first.

Yep.

You can't do 'em all. So do the one, one thing. And then if you have time later, once you've perfected the first thing, then bring in the second and the third if you so desire.

Sure.

But that one thing's gonna take you a bit. Yeah. So be ready to wait a little while.

Yep. I mean, we still suck at making beer.

Oh no, you don't. I think, I think you've proven that to be completely false. So let's, let's dig in and let's talk a little bit more about beer for a minute. Like, let's, let's talk about what's coming on tap. What's been on tap? What are, you know, a person who is maybe sitting under a rock and has not been to Swan Brewing, what would they experience coming in for the first time? And then, you know, what are your best sellers? What's still, you know, cooking and what's kind of, you know, moving forward?

Yeah. So the craft beer industry has been, obviously the pandemic's done amazing things for the craft beer industry, forcing everyone to shut down. But it's caused us to kind of rethink how we do things. You know, we weren't set in our ways by any means, but we were very focused on how we wanted to drive the brewery. You know, Polk County is not the same as Hillsborough. It is not the same as Orange.

Correct.

Yeah. So we, you know, we couldn't be those hype, quote unquote hype breweries that are sitting there doing, you know, 15 bottle releases of some Motor Oil Imperial Stout. Every single week and expecting people to line up 600 people deep. We knew that we needed to make good beer for people that appreciated drinking good beer but didn't necessarily want to have some kind of uber-fruited sour, you know, super ultra ducked. They wanted to drink those, but they didn't want that to be the only thing available. So we wanted to focus on making really well-defined and understood styles of beer, West Coast style IPAs, lagers, Blond ales, you know, very easily approachable beers that were within a good ABV so that you could sit there and have quite a few and enjoy and not be completely schnockered at the end of the night.

Right.

So we decided that that was going to be our goal, was to make kind of quote unquote old world style beers, execute 100% on them and make them very, very approachable. We wanted to be able to attract 95% of the beer drinkers out there. Craft beer tends to focus, you know, you've got your IPA breweries or you've got your imperial stout breweries or you've got your sour breweries and they kind of compartmentalize themselves. We didn't want to be that. We wanted to be the ones that say, okay, we are appealing to the masses here.

Yeah.

And so that's what we kind of did from the beginning. And we, and you'll see that in some of the beers that, you know, really have never left The Bean, for example. But even though, The name has had to change because of, you know, cease and desist order and stuff like that.

Oh boy.

It's fine. Everybody gets them. But the Bean has been a staple since day one. It wasn't originally supposed to be. It was supposed to be a beer that we released for a grand opening. And as soon as that batch was gone, we weren't going to make it again. It's a very interesting beer. It's a coconut coffee blonde ale. Cool thing about that, that beer will never go away. It's just, we, it is our number one, number two seller, depending on the week. But the cool thing about it is we, and this is true for all of our beers we use coffee in, we exclusively use Ethos Coffee.

That's awesome.

We have a fantastic relationship with Lisbeth and Julian over there at, or Julian, sorry, Julian at Ethos, because we believe in the same principles that they do.

Yeah.

You know, you need to be able to do well by your, you know, the people that you are purchasing your product for, you know, and it's more, it just goes beyond fair trade. You know, this is— we pay a lot of money for this coffee that we use, but we want to make sure that we are getting the best product on the planet and we're doing right by the people that we're purchasing it from. And so we, we, we use Ethos Coffee in it. It's a coffee you can actually buy at the, at the market. It's called Poquille. It has a fantastic flavor. And the way that we use it, it pulls out a lot of the chocolate notes in it. So you get that chocolate coconut Mounds bar type flavor, but it's in a blonde ale, an easy drinking blonde ale. And it's, I think it's 5 or 5.5%. So you can sit there and have quite a few of them.

It is one of my favorites.

Yeah, this is a good beer. Me, I don't really like the sweet beers. I like more of the traditional style. So our, you know, our West Coast style IPA is straight outta Lakeland. Christian and I, when we got into craft beer, let's tell you, we discovered the IPAs. It was Lagunitas, you know, it was Stone, you know, it was Sierra Nevada and, you know, that really bitter piney, you know, grapefruity flavor. Well, we wanted to make that. Everybody else was starting to make the shift to what's considered a New England or East Coast style pale ale where it basically looks like orange juice in a glass. Uh, they're super sweet. Sometimes they're made with lactose and it's kind of just whatever. They're super hazy. It's just not, we're not into those. And so we wanted to kind of just go back old school and say, look, this is the beer that we grew up drinking. It was fantastic. Uh, we want to just do it 10 times better. So we've refined that over the last few years and absolutely amazing beer. But what's coming up is now that we have kind of been pressured by COVID to kind of expand our mindset a little bit and to be a little bit more creative in how we do beers. Obviously, we're bringing back our pilot system. Our pilot system is where we just go and we start playing, you know, start throwing stuff in and seeing what works. Yeah, it may or may not ever see the market, but we're going to go play with it. First one that we have coming out, we actually— and we were talking a little while ago, we got approached by the University of Florida. To do a collaboration with them. And for those that don't know, the University of Florida has really been working hard to find a way to fix some of the citrus issues that we've been having. You know, citrus greening has really just destroyed, you know, many, many thousands of acres of orange groves. And you've got farmers with empty fields that just have nothing to do. So what the University of Florida is trying to do is they're trying to find an alternative crop to grow here. And hops, because they grow vertically, excuse me, are a great alternative to be able to use in the orange fields. And so that's what they're trying to do. The problem is our climate kind of sucks for them. American hops tend to grow very, very well in the Pacific Northwest where they need kind of that cold snap to kind of send them back into dormancy for them to regrow for the next harvest. And we just don't get that here. You know, it's kind of what's same with strawberries, how you get those really, really super sweet strawberries after you get that one cold snap, you know, usually in February. But hops need it even colder. They love, you know, that constant kind of 40-degree temperature. So what they've been doing is they have been cultivating and bioengineering I don't want to call it, you know, let's just call it what it is. You know, it is, it's not GMO by any means, but it's their bio. Basically they're grafting different hop varieties together to see, to get them so that they're moisture resistant, disease resistant, and can grow well here in our soil. So they've taken Cascade, which is traditionally a very, very famous Pacific Northwest hop that is used in West Coast style IPAs. And started to grow that here in several places in Central Florida. So we worked with the IFAS Center down in Wimauma, Balm area. They sent us a whole bunch of hops and said, we wanna make a beer with you. So we had those guys come up here one day and we made an IPA. And it was so amazing working with those guys because these are the biologists. That are growing these. You know, these aren't just like some beer nerds, you know, they're like, oh, we want to come make it.

There's a science here.

Yeah, we're not used to that. You know, if you ever come brew with us, and I believe you actually were supposed to come brew with us.

Yeah, we were supposed to have a— there was this thing called COVID, I think, that put everything on hold.

That kind of just put— yeah. If you ever come brew with us, we— it's all fairly loosey-goosey. I mean, we do go through our processes and, you know, we're, you know, we're making sure we're measuring everything, but But as far as being super scientific and nerdy about what we're doing, we focus a lot on drinking beer and having a good time. You know, after all, we're, you know, we started off as homebrewers, you know, brewing in the backyard, drinking beer, listening to Skynyrd, you know.

Do you still listen to Skynyrd when you're brewing?

It depends on actually what we're brewing. If we're brewing straight out of Lakeland, we put it on the old school rap channel.

Oh, nice. Yeah. Yeah. It makes it taste better, I'm sure.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

So you had these guys from, from IFAS come out and you could tell the ones that weren't— I mean, if they were, there were some that weren't beer drinkers but were really super into making sure that this plant grew. And then you had the guys that are like, yeah, I drink beer and I'm so glad that I made this hop as well. That's cool. What we didn't realize, we kind of knew that it was going to happen, but the Cascade that is grown here is not the same as what is grown in the Pacific Northwest. I'm sure a little bit of it has to do with the bioengineering they're doing. We see this as well when different hop varietals are grown across the globe. So they, they took Cascade and started growing it in New Zealand and the flavors changed. Mm-hmm. The aroma changed all for the better.

Mm-hmm.

Um, same thing happened with this hop. What we're already starting to notice is beer isn't even done yet, but normally, you know, uh, Cascade's grapefruit and pine and, you know, kind of be super bitter. This one. Is cantaloupe and honeydew and just like flavors that you would expect from like the orange groves in Central Florida.

Wow.

You know, it's gonna be super, super interesting. Super happy about this beer.

When's it coming?

It's not gonna be long. It's gonna be just a couple weeks. Okay. Can't tell you the name of it yet. And I don't know that it'd be even appropriate to say it on your podcast because some of our beers tend to have inappropriate names.

Yeah. Well, you'll have to go check it out and ask for the Gator Beer.

That's right.

I'm sure at that point in time people will know. Yes, it will be a Gator Beer. What it's called.

Yes.

So we will have plenty of little surprise for you, plenty of social media about it.

And then, you know, as the summer goes, we've got a whole bunch of different summer varietals that'll be coming out. You know, things will quench your palate.

So I want to talk about a couple of things you said a little bit ago. One is you did the studying of the model you wanted to build this brewery, and there is no restaurant, there is no hood and all of the things that go with having to, you know, extra investment of having to put all those things together so you could have a kitchen, right? So that was intentional. And what it does to me is two things. One is you studied it and you looked into how the successful breweries were being successful around you and wherever you were studying. But it also recommends, suggests to me that you know, understand, and embrace your market.

Yes.

So you looked at Polk County and you didn't look at it as there's something wrong with this. It was more of like, this is Polk County and I want to appeal to Polk County. I don't want to try and bring a Hillsborough idea to Polk County. You understand and embrace us. So I am a beer drinker, but I am not a craft beer drinker. Right.

I made fun of you for that many, many times.

Many times, but in very playful ways. And only one time did I get offended. But the thing is that I feel welcome there and I feel like there is something for me Even though I have pedantic beer taste, right? It's not like I'm not a— but you're not a beer snob. You're recognizing that there's something for everyone and there needs to be something for everyone. And so I love that, that you did that. And I want you to, to talk about some of that research, why you didn't put in a restaurant. So for those of you that have not been, again, I'm referring to you guys that are sleeping under rocks, you're going to go and you're going to see a food truck and that is intentionally built that way.

Yes. So I, before we started building at Swan, I had been to 175 breweries. I counted all of them.

It was market research.

It was market research. And it was not just breweries in the United States. Went to breweries in South America, Central America, the Caribbean, Europe.

You went to see the monks, didn't you?

So that was not, that was after we opened. It was already open. Uh, but yes, I have been to Belgium. Uh, and, uh, but that was the European model really is what kind of, uh, hit me, but how the American model was run was kind of how we wanted to set up, but I kind of wanted to blend the two. So what I did is, is out of the 175 breweries that we went to, um, I, I asked the owners and the bartenders and the brewers what worked. What didn't work? What would you have done different? And you started to see the same pattern over and over and over again. The people that had restaurants, if there was available food around them or they had the ability to put food trucks in, regretted putting in the kitchen. So I'll, you know, that first. And the reason being is, are you a brewery at that point? Are you a restaurant?

Right.

And it all comes back to that. Do one thing.

There you go.

And do it well. So I could be a brewery and a restaurant and half-ass both of them, or I could do one thing and do it well and let the people who really know what they're doing or who are focused on that other thing, right, come in and do that. I can sit there and make my 3% margin by having a restaurant in there and have all that additional stress. I can have no margin but be able to focus more on something that is possibly going to make me more money.

Yeah.

So that was, that was written in stone from the beginning. We are not putting a restaurant in. There is absolutely no way. Aside from the cost savings you talk about, you know, the hood and, you know, the oversized grease trap and the, you know, it's just, it goes on and on and on and on and on. But it was, I really, we knew that we were focusing on beer. I didn't, I didn't want to be a restaurant. You know, we have plenty of great restaurateurs here in town that, you know, can have fantastic restaurants. And as far as the way that we, we built the taproom and kind of the environment that we built, that comes from the European model though. The European model is very beer garden focused and it's family focused. You know, a lot of breweries, some of the pretentious ones, You know, we'll, we'll be anti-kids, anti-pets, you know, come in there. We, you know, we want the beer snobs to come in who are going to appreciate the product. And I'm fine if that's what you want to run your model.

And there's no stigma around the kids being there, right? Like that's, that's the antithesis of, of what they're talking about.

Right. The, the European model is the brewery is the place that the families go to meet. You have mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, aunts and uncles, kids running around. You know, the kids are going to sit there and play games. They're going to have snacks. They're going to have little juices or waters or whatever. They're going to sit there and play games with each other. And mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, uncles and aunts are going to have a pint or two and sit there and talk about their day.

Right.

What they— and this is the reason that I wanted to do it is when I saw it, I looked around these European beer gardens and nobody was looking at their phone.

They were engaged.

There wasn't a phone to be seen. Wow. They were having real conversations. And it's kind of the same thing most of the time. Whenever you go out there and you sit at our patio, you look around and try to find somebody on their phone, you know, unless they're looking at our menu, because you can pull up our menu obviously online.

Welcome back to the QR codes, right?

Yeah, you're right. They're sitting there and they're actually having real conversations. And I long for those. Maybe I'm just, maybe I'm nostalgic and I'm, you know, I'm getting old and I'm being salty about the digital world, but—

Well, you've created the place that serves the people that you enjoy being around. And so by having a place where you can have intentional— I mean, all of our conversations are intentional conversations. It's hard to stop having a conversation with you. That's how I feel. And I feel like that's— it's like when I see you, I'm like, hey, it's good to see you. I know you're working. And then you'll always find a way to come over and we'll get in immediately into some deep discussion about whatever's going on. And that's a testament to knowing who you are and walking boldly in it. Right. And not being apologetic or creating something— you said earlier, kind of to reach the masses of Polk, but you're not. You're reaching those that this is going to serve because this is the kind of place that you wanted to create for them. And those that are embracing it are your people, right?

Yeah. And I think Polk County, you know, Polk County is very family focused. You know, we are still a very, very traditional community and I appreciate that. And, but, you know, being a traditional community, that means, you know, family focused. So when we say looking at the masses, understanding that Polk County is super family focused, build a place for families to go.

Yeah. Yeah.

You know, that's beyond, you know, being able to go to a park or being able to go to the play place at your fast food restaurant or, you know.

Yeah.

So in, in, Adults are still allowed to have fun responsibly. And what we have found is the majority of people that come in are very, very responsible. They understand that they're in that environment, they can temper themselves and really just enjoy and not go overboard. I mean, one of the reasons we don't have liquor there. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. But we always wanted that and we wanted to make sure that we understood what our demographic was. Our demographic was families. Our demographic was people who enjoyed a well-crafted product that wasn't pretentious.

Mm-hmm. Building Better Businesses, a live virtual meeting with Donald Miller and the Polk County business community. Hey, Polk County business leaders, you're invited to join me on June 16th at 4:00 PM Eastern time to meet Don Miller, the man behind StoryBrand, Business Made Simple, and a whole lot more. Join us for this unique opportunity to be connected with the business leaders in our community and one of the greatest thought leaders of the current day. He's on a mission to help entrepreneurs succeed, and he has some great ideas on how we might do just that in our little neck of the woods. In this meeting, we'll get the chance to hear from Don about his most recent book, Business Made Simple, and the vision he has for making mission-critical resources available for entrepreneurs around the world to guide them as they build better businesses. We hope you'll be there to hear from Don and to connect with more than 100 other local business leaders right here in Polk County, Florida. Whether you're starting a business right now or you've been in business for decades, we'd love to have you join us for this unique opportunity to speak with Don Miller live.

You know, and that's, that's what we focused on making.

I think that's, I mean, that's huge, man. A lot of what you're saying is resonating with me because, again, you know, in my line of work, I deal with a lot of entrepreneurs and various startups, and again, they, they kind of miss the point of focusing on a few set of things and knowing your audience too, right? You weren't trying to, to force something into a market that just wouldn't work. You paid attention to the market, you realized where you were, you realized where you were located, and you said, okay, This is what Tampa's doing. This is what Orlando's doing. This is what places are that are, that are doing in other, in other cities and other towns and other countries. But this is, this is Lakeland and this is what I need to provide to Lakeland. Mm-hmm. And, and they responded as opposed to just trying to force a concept.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And, and trying to say, oh no, this is what needs to happen. No, this is what the market is saying.

Yeah, exactly. And I wish there was more of that. I wish there was more of that embracing of who we are and recognizing that we are not Tampa and we're not Orlando and there's no need for us to make that comparison. Mm-hmm. Other than geographically we're located in between them. Right. And other than that, that's it. Like there is no other real true comparison to them. And we are us. And it's like, let's embrace that. Let's look at what Polk County culture is and not, you know, I've talked very early in the first season of the podcast, I talked about kind of the stigma of being from Polk County when I was going to college and, you know, telling people, oh yeah, I'm from Polk County. I'm from— I was from Auburndale at that point in time. And they're like, well, Auburndale, where's that? Trying to explain it to people. And then when they figured it out, they're like, oh, but you're going to college and you have all of your teeth. And I'm like, whoa, wait a minute. They're right. That is not the way that I would characterize my home, except that that is sometimes how we as Polk County people characterize our community. Right. And it's sometimes on us that we're the ones responsible for the message that we're conveying out into the world.

Well, you know, I think we also have a greater appreciation for self-deprecating humor.

You think that's it? I think so. Yeah. Well, we need to make sure we're not perpetuating that outside of the border. Right. We can do that here, but we don't need to tell that story outside.

I will say too, it's awesome to hear that, I mean, you could have technically landed anywhere, but you said, oh man, 'cause again, it resonated with me when you talked about, 'cause I grew up here too. I remember when I was younger, early '90s, nothing, absolutely nothing. But to see the growth of Lakeland and to see the individuals that are coming and the individuals that have lived here for their entire lives and are staying and adding to the community and people like you is huge.

What's funny, you say that I was in Auburndale, Winter Haven as a kid. You say there was nothing in Lakeland and we came to Lakeland because there was nothing in Winter Haven and Auburndale. So it's really funny because, you know, that is my story of coming to Lakeland was I grew up in Winter Haven. My dad had a Hallmark store. My parents got divorced. My mom moved to Auburndale. I met a guy from Lake Wales. And so I was like, let's split the difference. So we moved to Winter Haven. And then when we got divorced, I'm like, okay, I'm moving to the big city. I'm going to Lakeland. Like I never thought I was moving outside of Polk County. I just decided Lakeland was where I wanted to be. And so I've been here since 2008, but for me, this is why Elevate Polk is the podcast, right? It's because, you know, being from different parts and knowing, you know, different corners of the community, I know there are people in Lakeland that have probably never been to Lake Wales. And there are people that have not been to Haynes City, or maybe you've driven by it on 27, but you don't really know the culture of what's inside of Haynes City. And we kind of have that. That kind of pretentious attitude of, you know, we are Lakeland, you know, we're the big city. And yet at the same time, I'm that person who's like, hey, there are some really cool gems around the community. And I want to tell those stories too. But, you know, just bringing that into this discussion because, you know, we're growing as a county, not just as a city. And I think that's going to contribute to your ongoing success as the brewery continues to grow and what you're continuing to do. So just I'm just getting off my soapbox here.

I appreciate your soapbox. I mean, it's, I mean, we do, we, you know, for me and I found myself, I found I put myself in the Lakeland box. It's like, you know, I'm only like, I don't, I sometimes don't look outside of Lakeland or leave Lakeland very often. You know, obviously during the pandemic, nobody's left and gone anywhere, but I did, I ventured Last week, there's a new brewery that opened down in Sebring. Some friends of ours finally got it open after a couple of years, and we got invited to an industry soft opening for them on a Monday. And we were running a little early, so Christian and I decided to stop off for lunch in Lake Wales. And I looked at him and said, "What's in Lake Wales?" I said, "I know that they have a train museum and that's it." And well, they have other things.

They have a great golf course. They have, um, the historic downtown in Lake Wells is really interesting. It's really cool. Um, you know, it's the exploration that you have to do, not necessarily like what's here. I mean, Bach Tower is over that way. Um, but really to me, it's like, to an outsider, Lakeland, what's there? I mean, our claim to fame in many situations is that this is the headquarters for Publix, you know, But until you get into the city, into the community, you don't know what's there. And what is here is treasure, right? Mm-hmm. Absolutely. And every one of our cities, every one of our municipalities has treasures.

Mm-hmm.

So I'm glad. What, where did you end up grabbing a bite in Lake Wales?

So there's this taco place that was right off of 60 and 27.

Okay.

Mm-hmm. I don't remember the name of it, but they are authentic Mexican street tacos.

Awesome.

Yeah. And we spent probably an hour at this place because it was so good. We just kept ordering food. And I happened to YOLO some money on Dogecoin that day. Shout out to Jimin. I mean, I know it's tanking today, but yeah. So it was absolutely fantastic. And I felt so bad when we got down to my buddy's brewery because they had some food catered in.

Oh, you were full.

I could not eat anymore. We slammed so many tacos.

So right now in Polk County, other than Swan, what other breweries are there? I know Front Page just opened in Bartow, right?

They actually opened like 3 days before the pandemic.

Pandemic.

Yeah. Wow.

Have you been down to visit them yet?

So, I mean, I have been once, once when they were open. I've been when they—

They're still new. I mean, I haven't had a chance to get over there yet, but they're definitely on my list.

Yeah. Johnny and Bill, I know that they've, you know, the pandemic's just been rough on anyone, But trying to open a business 3 days before you are shut down by the state and are told that you can't open, I just, it happened to us for our South location. Our South location was open January 26th and shut down March 17th. And so it was kind of the same, kind of the same deal. We just didn't have enough time to get things set up.

So just pointing that out, listeners, if you don't know, there is a South location of Swan located on Lakeland Highlands.

Yep. Lakeland Highlands, just south of Edgewood in the Winn-Dixie Plaza.

Yep. So just make sure, like, you know, if you're not always going downtown or if you're on the south side of the city, you can enjoy the amazing, discover the amazing flavors of Swan Brewing Beer.

Ooh, discover the amazing flavors of Swan. Yeah. So that was, I know that's been a really, really hard thing for them, but you know, they've survived, they're still open. I've had their beer. Couple of times. I can't say that I've had all of their beers, but I know them well. I've known those guys for the last couple of years as they were just getting up and going.

And what else? What else we got?

Grove Roots over in Winter Haven. I have a standing call with my buddy Joe Dunham at Grove Roots, usually every other day.

Can you get us hooked up? I need to have him on the show.

Yeah. I mean, I can call him right now if you want.

Not tomorrow. But like I said, I'm trying to reach into the east side of the county. So if you're listening and you're an entrepreneur and you're not in Lakeland, I'm kind of now going to be like, not anti-Lakeland, but I'm looking for some guests to come. We're looking for some guests to come on the show from, from different parts of the community.

He would, he would be a good one to get in here.

I really want to get that story told. Yeah.

Yeah. He's, he's got a fantastic story and super smart guy. I learned an incredible amount from him. Again, when it's, you start to realize that you're not the smartest person in the room and that other people have done things better than you or, you know, have done things before you have and understand the pitfalls. He was one of those who guided me along, especially during like our licensing process, which is an absolute nightmare. And in all the things, you know, equipment and grains and how to do this and that, you know. But so it was nice to kind of have, yes, competition, but not really. Right. You know, What is that?

Friend— friendetisch? No, Kumpa.

Kumpa friendship.

I don't know. There's a word that I've heard.

Let's create a new portmanteau.

You know, I wanted to ask you, because I feel like now that you've been in business for a while, you have the experience behind you. But if you can go back to someone that's listening that maybe is a newer entrepreneur that was kind of like in your position, they didn't want to go back to corporate America, what would you advise them to do?

Don't go back to corporate America. No.

Sean Ron just said that today. If you had to ask your 10 years ago self, what should you know? Vehemently, you would say to this person, your 10-year-old, 10 years ago self, he said, don't stay in a corporate experience for just a little bit more money, especially in a toxic corporate experience. But so what would your advice be?

What was that Baz Luhrmann song back in the day, the Wear Sunscreen? It was like, visit California once, but leave before it makes you soft and visit New York once, and leave before it makes you hard or something like that.

Yes.

That's what I would say. And I honestly have, I can say a lot of bad things about my corporate experience. I was in the corporate world for about a decade in tech companies and finance companies and stuff like that. And I did, I learned a lot of good things. I learned, you know, a lot of great organizational skills. I learned a lot of semi-okay communication skills. I understood how— I learned how to be presentable, um, amongst people that were very influential and could make decisions on my future. Um, but I also learned a lot of bad habits. You know, I learned how to micromanage, which I swear I will never ever ever be in a situation where I have to micromanage or be micromanaged again. You know, management is this construct that we invented. Yeah. You know, it's, it's there to just satisfy someone's power urge. You know, people, if you find the right people that to fill the job that you have, giving them that— we practice these three principles and we teach them from day one at Swan is, is, is it's autonomy, mastery, and purpose. I basically, I'm going to give you the tools necessary to do your job. I want you to use those tools to be good at your job and to be the best at it, and then understand what you're doing is for the greater good, or there's a greater purpose than what you can see on the surface. And so if you can get someone to understand those points, you don't have to micromanage them. You give them the tools to be successful, get them to understand the vision and the direction that you're wanting to go, and they will sit there and manage themselves. Yeah.

Well, I agree with that 100%. Yeah. And that brings me back to the principles in business too. Like when you, when you mentioned ethos and that's to me, you know, a characterization of entrepreneurship that I would say the most successful businesses, the ones that are gonna be made to last are the ones that are built on principles and that they're a part of the story from the beginning. You make these decisions and you do not deviate. Right. So two examples that I have of you being in this principal place, you, before you launched, you started a, what's your club? What's your club called?

The Royal Swan Society.

The Royal Swan Society. And I was a day late and a dollar short to getting into that club, right? And I'm like, come on, friend, do me a favor. Let me in this Royal Swan Club. And you're like, no, I only I had this many that I was going to sell and you can't have, you can't have, you can't be in. And I'm like, I absolutely respect that, but dang it.

Guy Lalonde with Lakeland Moonwalk, the same thing. He has been pestering me for, he even has, he took an empty bottle and just a piece of paper and put his name on the piece of paper and duct taped it to the bottle and set it on our shelf.

Unbeknownst to you until you saw it?

Until I looked up, I'm like, what is that? I'm a Royal Swan member now. And you are.

So that was one story. And then the other story was when, when we were in the shutdown and you were figuring out how to do pickup and how to do, you know, how people could come and get their crowlers, canned growlers, and doing all of this process. And I, I know you and I had this conversation about how so many breweries had been trying to figure out how to do hand sanitizer. And there was like something principally— I don't remember the detail, but there was something principally wrong with that for you. And you're like, I'm not going to do that. And I'm like, wow, like, this is the kind of character that is behind this company. And that's why I see the growth. I see the things that I think are improving your, you know, future. You know, obviously it's been a really big struggle, but you're built on principles and I love that.

So, well, Well, so the hand sanitizer is a little bit different of a story. Not that we didn't want to, we absolutely wanted to. It was illegal. It was illegal for breweries to make hand sanitizer.

And yet there were breweries that were doing it.

Right. And so that, yes, I'm principled because the legality of it held me back. Yeah. I wanted to, to be able to give back to the community in some way. And I knew that there was such a shortage and people were just sitting there just price gouging on hand sanitizer and really pissed me off. But, you know, we needed to be able to find a way to do that. There wasn't a legal way for us to do it for the community, but what we were able to do was we were able to work hand in hand with Lakeland Regional. So we ended up making hand sanitizer. We just didn't make it for the public. We ended up making hand sanitizer for Lakeland Regional Hospital because they were running out.

Because there was a legal way to do it.

There was a legal way to do that. Yeah. Being able to utilize their supply chain and their pharmacists to supervised the blending and all of that. We were able to go in and actually help supply them when they were running out. So at least I felt better because I was able to give back to my community and give it to the most vulnerable, you know, not the person who was sitting there trying to buy 5 gallons of it so they could hoard it like toilet paper and gas.

Oh boy, here we go. I don't know what's going to happen with this gas situation. I hope it's a short-lived challenge. But the last thing as we wrap up, you know, I just— what would you say is the best part of doing business in Polk County?

The best part of doing business in Polk County? Man, I— it's just— but Polk County is wholesome.

I love that. Yes.

You know, and They're just as big as it is. And I keep saying this over and over again. It's, you know, Lakeland-Polk County, it is a giant county. We're still spread apart. We still have very, very traditional values. And I say that not in a political way, but, you know, we appreciate family, we appreciate friends, we appreciate good times. We're not pretentious. Not all of us. You know, some of us are. But yeah, you know, at the end of the day, I'm proud to be here because it's, you know, there's the stigma that you talked about earlier, you know, with the, oh, you still got all your teeth. No, I can't believe that you've got a college education. That's slowly going away. Come on, people. There are 5 colleges here in town.

Right? Right.

But when I say that I'm from Polk County, you know, I'm proud to say it because I know what that means to me. It is wholesome. It means that I care about my family. I care about my friends. I care about my community. I care that we are making this place so much better, that we're on an upward trajectory and not everybody is solely focused on themselves. And we have people, and I'm sitting here, I'm going to pat you on the back a little bit. We have people like you, Chrissanne Long, who care about Elevating Paul.

Yeah.

But more so than just that, elevating each other. You know that there are a lot of people that you can call in trying times. You know, when I lived and worked in Tampa, I had a list of about 5 people that I could rely on if things got really, really, really bad. Here, I've got a contact list of 100, 150 people that will pick up that phone.

But that's because you're that guy too.

I don't know, man.

I'm going to throw that right back at you because I know that, and I know that people don't get on your contact list list just because they want to be needed someday. Right. They get on the contact list because you've done something for them. And now they're legitimately and authentically a connection that you formed over a conversation and a beer that is more than just, hey, if I need you, I'll give you a shout.

Fair enough.

Okay.

And I think that's to a certain point, but I feel that that's the people in Polk County though, are a lot more open to being able to build those relationships.

Yeah. Yeah. That's true. That's true.

They don't feel so sheltered and kind of just, you know, I'm a very, very small person in a very, very, very big pond.

Yeah.

This town is huge. This town is incredibly small.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

True.

Yeah. And, and that's the thing that I like what you're speaking about because it's so true because you can have access to someone that has a lot of leverage in a small, in a small town, but has so much impact because again, it feels small, but it's growing at a rapid rate and it isn't small at the same time.

Yeah. Yeah. And we also have to not lose sight of the fact that we're in— once you become a part of this myopic conversation, like we're talking about a very small part of the community, right? So I'm always like, okay, let's open it up. Let's open up. Let's open up. Because I don't want to lose sight of the fact that there's a person who just moved to Lakeland where you were, however many years ago that you came and found this amazing gem of a city. Where I came from, you know, being from Winter Haven and, you know, kind of feeling my way around, right? So to me, the idea that the wholesomeness, the openness, the warmth that we exude as you get into this conversation with people is what I want people to remember Polk County by, right? Like the connection isn't just come in and your family, but it's come in and be a part of the conversation long enough and consistently enough that we can know we can count on you.

Right.

And then as soon as we can know that you're part of— you're in the culture, you're in the fabric. So yeah, this is why I love you. What a great conversation. Like we said at the beginning, I'm like, I want to get the story told, but I also wanted people to really, truly hear the great human being that you are. And you brought it. You brought it big time.

Yeah, it was awesome hearing your story, man. Thank you.

I'm glad I didn't have to talk about being the pixie dust spreader on the tilt world this time.

So yeah, we didn't want to hear that story anyway. So anything you want to say as you wrap up?

I just— I really appreciate you guys inviting me on. Again today. It has been a very, very long time since I've been on a podcast and it's— these are fun. These are fun conversations to have.

Just think you could do it every week if you wanted to.

Man, I know you're pushing me towards it.

I think it's going to happen.

He's pushing the plug.

Be on the lookout for a Polk County Brewery podcast extraordinaire in the future.

I guarantee you it will be R-rated.

That's fine. You, it's your podcast. You do what you want. You do you, friend. All right, everybody, thanks for listening. And remember, we have a new episode each week, so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. And remember to leave us a review. We promise to read every one, and you can always find all our, all of our episodes at elevatepolk.com. And if there's something you want to hear about on an upcoming episode, somebody in the east side of the county that needs to have their story told on Elevate Polk, reach out to us on Facebook at Elevate Polk. Yeehaw, y'all!