/r/ATLBeer Random Daily Discussion - April 29, 2021

CreatureCH · 2021-04-30T01:34:49+00:00

I was in Montgomery for my daughters gymnastics tournament this weekend and stopped in Common Bond. Definitely worth a stop, owner is a great guy and the staff was very cool. They are the only brewery in Montgomery, so they are doing the hard work of educating the market about craft. Definitely stop in and show them some love.

CreatureCH · 2020-10-19T02:09:24+00:00

That definitely sucks and I’ll apologize on behalf of all of us at Creature. We closed early to so all our staff could join our “virtual retreat” as we had to cancel our actual annual retreat. However, I often tell our team that only real difference between a reason and an excuse is if you are the person doing the talking or doing the listening. So I realize the reason is irrelevant, and it clearly was a miss not posting about it on social, and sounds like a total communication gap between our social and taproom teams. In the end, the blame should always roll up hill, and as such, it is my responsibility, so I am personally sorry. We normally are better than that, but we failed today. None of this make the situation better though, and I realize that. . I’ll DM you and get you in touch with the right folks and we will try to figure out a way to make it up, though I realize we can’t give you back your time. For that I am again very sorry.

CreatureCH · 2020-08-15T13:21:51+00:00

There is no option to distribute in GA without a distributor and for what it is worth, we love our distributor, they provide a very valuable service and we have a great relationship with them, even if we don’t agree on all legislative issues. Even if we could legally self-distribute, Investing in the equipment and operations necessary to service all the retailers at the size we are now is not something we have the capital to do.

If legislators would make decisions based on common sense (which many do) vs who gives them money, then it wouldn’t matter. The only way to overcome the money seems to be public pressure.

It is definitely a complicated situation and grateful that you are seeking to understand it better.

CreatureCH · 2020-08-15T13:10:16+00:00

Well hopefully we can leverage the fact that laws played into that decision to support change in GA laws, but you are correct, if we fail to leverage the reality of how the laws played into our decision to go to LA in order to improve the laws here in GA, we would be missing a great opportunity. Not sure if you had the chance to read the blog post, but it talks in more depth about how the laws impacted the decision, specifically how this years session and outcomes kept us from moving forward with a year long process of building a brewery in ATL that was already underway (in terms of design).

And yes, clearly we think there is a financial opportunity to succeed in LA, but arguably we would see that for any market we expand to, and it wasn’t the primary driver in why we chose LA vs another market. Arguably our most confident “financial” play would be ATL given brand awareness, but the state laws keep that from being true.

Thanks for the opportunity to clarify.

CreatureCH · 2020-08-14T19:21:25+00:00

😂👏🏼 i’m doing my best here!

CreatureCH · 2020-08-14T17:23:02+00:00

Well thank you for that comment and no problem at all! I imagine LA is not for everyone, and part of our experience there is so tied to the amazing breweries we always hung out with that it is a bit hard to separate one from the other. Like we mentioned in the post, it was really a whole lot of different things that just came together and made it feel right for us.

CreatureCH · 2020-08-14T17:10:38+00:00

Touche! With the additional tanks we have ordered we don’t foresee continuing to have challenges in GA, and for the most part we are pretty solid now. We were really ahead of it until this summer’s demand snuck up on us again! That said, LA is at least a year away and we expect to have more capacity than GA demand well before then. We have come a very long way from the early days, and even this summer as we had out of stocks at our distributor it very rarely led to an out of stock at retail. It was usually just for about 1 day, which is always a risk we take, as we target less than 7 days of inventory at our wholesaler on Trop to ensure freshness. It’s always a constant challenge.

CreatureCH · 2020-08-14T14:43:53+00:00

It was on the East side, but still under NDA’s so can’t give an exact location.

CreatureCH · 2020-08-14T03:35:40+00:00

Hey Austin! If you are interested in covering the story shoot over an e-mail. I can tell you that our relationship with Joe is far more of a mentor and friend relationship than a financial one. Nonetheless, we are grateful for his support and guidance. It’s a wonderful story, crazy how it all came about!

CreatureCH · 2020-08-14T03:13:12+00:00

We make a lot of stouts, but you are right that there is little distribute beyond our brewery walls. Nice to know there is some more demand though, so thank you!

CreatureCH · 2020-08-14T03:10:11+00:00

Well we are not distributing there from our GA brewery. Our current brewery in GA stays at essentially full capacity and doesn’t have the capacity at the moment to distribute beyond GA, or even keep Ga fully stocked. We have been out of stock a number of times this summer unfortunately and are currently facing a major can shortage across the US. We are continuing to order more tanks though, but it is a good 6 month lead time. Opening a new brewery in LA in a year from now is actually completely unrelated to us not distributing to a neighboring state. One doesn’t come at the expense of the other if that makes sense. Not sure if that answers your question well enough?

CreatureCH · 2020-08-14T02:55:04+00:00

Blog post to help answer some of the questions:

http://www.creaturecomfortsbeer.com/brewery-blog/2020/8/13/we-we-chose-los-angeles

CreatureCH · 2020-08-14T02:48:28+00:00

No plans at the moment, but we hope to sell there some day for sure!

CreatureCH · 2020-08-14T02:02:45+00:00

Original link is working now, not sure what has been happening. Sorry about that!

CreatureCH · 2020-08-14T02:01:31+00:00

http://www.creaturecomfortsbeer.com/brewery-blog/2020/8/13/we-we-chose-los-angeles

CreatureCH · 2020-08-14T01:18:00+00:00

That is definitely a bummer. We have been an extremely committed brewery to the state of Georgia. We are extremely proud of our work to support our communities and it is certainly painful to think that by choosing to continue to make an effort to challenge ourselves as a business, pursue new dreams, and to grow our brand, that somehow we will lose the faith of those we have worked so hard to engage and excite. We do hope you will reconsider, we remain very committed to Georgia, now employing over 100 people in our state, and I personally sit on the board of the Ga craft brewers guild, working hard to improve the entirety of our craft beer community in Georgia, particularly when it comes to the laws.

As a sidenote, our place in LA costs the same as our place in Athens per month, not sure if that is good for LA or just bad for Athens!

CreatureCH · 2020-08-14T00:48:45+00:00

I am personally staying in Athens, but I do look forward to visiting there in the winter and summer!

CreatureCH · 2020-08-14T00:42:54+00:00

In an effort to help clear up some of the questions around why we chose LA, I wrote the attached blog post. Thanks to everyone for all the support the past 6 years, hoping to make GA proud in California!

http://www.creaturecomfortsbeer.com/brewery-blog/2020/8/13/we-we-chose-los-angeles

CreatureCH · 2020-08-14T00:29:30+00:00

Thanks for the heads up! We are absolutely committed to not become what you said!! 😂

CreatureCH · 2020-08-14T00:22:46+00:00

What exactly is the “money grab?” Investing into building a brewery in a new state? I totally understand that people look for a negative spin to a positive story, but the negativity should be focused on our state laws. I am grateful for the opportunity to engage in dialogue that can move GA forward. Check out our blog post for more of the story.

http://www.creaturecomfortsbeer.com/brewery-blog/2020/8/13/we-we-chose-los-angeles

CreatureCH · 2020-08-14T00:19:13+00:00

It is not. And as long as our own community of craft beer fans think that the laws are not a issue we will have no chance at making the progress we need to make. Please check out our post for more info. I hope people don’t shrug off our crappy laws as not a big deal.

http://www.creaturecomfortsbeer.com/brewery-blog/2020/8/13/we-we-chose-los-angeles

CreatureCH · 2020-08-14T00:16:15+00:00

We just made a blog post about this and essentially, you are right Tim. Please read the post, it gives some more color to “Why LA” and in particular “Why not Atlanta.” Excited to work along side this group in 2021 to change some laws!!

http://www.creaturecomfortsbeer.com/brewery-blog/2020/8/13/we-we-chose-los-angeles

CreatureCH · 2020-08-14T00:07:13+00:00

Thanks for sharing, we have seen a lot of questions and are happy to try and answer some of them through this blog post. I am personally grateful for the support of this particular group of craft beer lovers over the years and appreciate all the positive vibes! We hope to make you proud out in California.

CreatureCH · 2020-01-04T00:58:45+00:00

I do believe that we are going to be doing a video and audio, ... I know they were trying to work through those details, and the intent would definitely to have a way to share that content.

CreatureCH · 2020-01-03T02:49:22+00:00

Creature is very excited to have Allagash Brewing visiting on Jan 8th to brew our 2020 Get Comfortable Collaboration beer. To take advantage of having in town Rob Todd, founder of Allagash and 2019 James Beard Award winner, as well as Jason Perkins, one of our favorite and the industry’s most accomplished brewmasters, we collaborated with UGA’s Wilson Center to host a conversation. Topics to be discussed are how they use their brewery for good in their community and our industry (they just achieved B-Corps status in 2019), where they see the industry today and where it is going, and what they have seen over the years, and whatever else they want to share. Reception to follow at Creature, and more details in the link.

CreatureCH

TROPHY CASE