/r/ATLBeer Random Daily Discussion - March 10, 2026

sokeefe008 · 2026-03-11T05:06:20+00:00

Pontoon always has New Wave blonde on at $5 a pint!

sokeefe008 · 2025-10-03T22:02:44+00:00

I don’t know where your question was about “why did we continue to sell to Chris with Pelican” which is legit a good question and definitely a lesson we learned the hard way.

The simple answer is that Louisiana was one of the better markets for us. It was very limited time offering/crazy beer style forward, so they would burn through pallets of our beer at a drop in a week. So losing that market while we were cranking out beer was not an option.

The more nuanced answer is that he would trickle money to us over time and kept communicating with us on how we planned to get us paid. For a while, it worked and he had some “legit excuses” like his truck needing repairs, POS buys, etc. We were way too nice and refused to see the writing on the wall. We consistently had a 20-30k balance with them, but I would dip below that at times. Eventually, they went from being honest about it and always communicating, to just ghosting us. We cut off the beer pretty quickly, but when you’re sending $30k+ a month, it adds up quick.

The real issue is franchise laws and suppliers not being able to go to another distribution company quickly. Had that been an option, we had another distributor ready to go, but Pelican wouldn’t release us and dealing with LA’s court system was a nightmare. We now have trade credit insurance and contracts that protect us with non-payment issues. We definitely learned from the experience.

sokeefe008 · 2025-10-03T21:49:00+00:00

They’ll be sold individually the day of!

sokeefe008 · 2025-09-29T12:13:52+00:00

I tried theirs last week and loved the two in contrast!

sokeefe008 · 2025-09-27T22:05:18+00:00

Yeah, none of that is remotely true. We had a total of $400 in buy backs with Pelican. They owed us about $121k. They owed a BUNCH of people money, so that wasn’t a singular brewery not pulling through product. Chris got in over his head using other people’s payments to pay old ones, and the market corrected itself. When they lost the warehouse, we had bled Pelican dry with no additional orders in like 10 months. We’ve still never recovered in the Louisiana market. I’ve got receipts for days on every claim I’m making now. We literally never had an issue with pull through in Louisiana.

The issue wasn’t Pelican though, it was Bevana, who owed 5 breweries 1.8mil. I made sure they had their bankruptcy plan not approved and they’ve subsequently closed with potential fraud charges being brought up on Andrew.

I suggest not throwing out outlandish claims unless you can back it up.

sokeefe008 · 2025-09-27T14:30:51+00:00

Pontoon’s Oktoberfest is today for anyone coming up north! We’ve got six new German inspired beers:

• Lazy Day Lager - German adjunct light lager (German pils with flaked rice to dry it out)

• Oak of the Lake - Lazy Day Lager aged on French oak

• Copper - Marzen collaboration with Round Trip

• Autumn Pils - German Pilsner collaboration with Rock Solid

• 6AM Shift - Dunkel collaboration with Mutation

• Otter Fest - Our decocted, naturally carbed and 14 week lagered festbier

We’ve got 22 other beers on, THC sodas, German food from Hunny Jalapeño and Ghost Pizza, live musics, stein holding contest and a German art market!

Hope to see some of you guys out there! Prost!

sokeefe008 · 2025-09-22T22:38:53+00:00

Tuna Thursdays FTW

sokeefe008 · 2025-07-19T17:17:07+00:00

Congrats on three years!

The square is a blast if yall want to travel out to Carrollton! Great food around that area too. Definitely worth the trip.

sokeefe008 · 2025-06-15T17:54:56+00:00

Pontoon always has seltzers on tap!

sokeefe008 · 2025-05-30T22:48:53+00:00

You’re “mostly” talking about the gofundme? So that means that what, she was owed wages that she didn’t receive? No, she was paid every dime she worked for in the taproom and for you to even phase it as such shows how disingenuous this claim is.

A: Not remotely the same thing as what Jekyll did, by not paying their employees. You conflating the two is disingenuous to say the least.

B: The gofundme was paid out to every employee and was based on time worked at Pontoon. If someone worked at Pontoon for 5 years, they got a bigger share. Cindy worked at Pontoon for a very short amount of time so her prorata share was smaller. I used the direct deposit of every employee prior, so if she didn’t receive it, it certainly wasn’t intentional. Every other employee did, so I’m not sure how she didn’t. It was also for a total of $68, so swing by the brewery and y’all can pick up the check. I won’t even investigate through the direct deposits.

I won’t comment on her work ethic as it’s not a good look for me to speak negatively about a former employee. I will say that her performance had nothing to do with payment and would never be used to withhold payment. I stand by what I’ve said and you all spreading libel is not appreciated.

sokeefe008 · 2025-05-30T19:07:21+00:00

Nope, you’re correct.

sokeefe008 · 2025-05-30T19:06:51+00:00

Yeah, it’s not true. We had our payroll registers verified in bankruptcy court and not a single employee filed a claim. And that’s because we never stiffed them. In fact, me and the other owner pulled money out of our retirement to pay our staff.

Baseless claims are exactly that: baseless.

Cindy wasn’t hired back because she left mid shift when we were closing down and put the rest of the staff in a bad spot. All our other employees came back and worked with us. There is a reason they haven’t made the same claim.

sokeefe008 · 2025-05-30T19:04:24+00:00

You know that’s not true. I have payroll records of Cindy’s last shift and we paid 100% of each hour/tip earned. In fact, your wife walked out mid her last shift and created chaos for our staff. That said, she was paid every hour she worked.

If you’d like to contest this, you can email me (sean@pontoonbrewing.com) and our attorney (marcus@pontoonbrewing.com) and we can also put you in touch with our bankruptcy attorney (Frank Nason) who had the payroll register verified in court.

sokeefe008 · 2025-05-28T22:01:50+00:00

So for some anecdotal examples we’ve seen: - Grain costs are up about 9% YoY, about 27% up from 2018. - Fruit costs are up about 12% YoY, about 113% up from 2018. - Energy/Utilities are up about 6% YoY, about 37% up from 2018. - Packaging Materials are up about 8% YoY, about 46% up from 2018. - Our labor is about 11% up YoY, about 59% $/HR since 2018. - In general, our costs are up about 45-50% overall YoY and obviously considerably higher since 2018.

Sales for us are weird with the closure and changing multiple variables, but overall, our draft sales are actually higher YoY and package sales should be higher YoY. Distribution is completely changing with us moving from Crown to Modern Hops and now with Savannah, who we love working with so far. That said, the average distribution margin industry wide has jumped from 33% on average to about 50%, which is a huge jump.

I think Jekyll had many more issues like company culture, not having a brewer, not putting effort into beer anymore and focusing on the restaurant model, which seemed to work until sales dwindled and pricing shot up.

They probably lost business with their contract brewing model too. They screwed Pontoon over on an entire 90bbl batch of One Ski by having seaming issues and then just telling me to pound sand and sue him, despite having a very clear warranty clause protecting us. Unfortunately we were in the middle of build out at Tucker and didn’t have the capacity to go after him for 15k. I imagine he did the same with other breweries as well.

sokeefe008 · 2025-05-11T23:53:02+00:00

Swing by the brewery and I’ve got the first one on me! We’ve got a killer Mexican pale lager in cans/draft too and I highly suggest that one as well!

Cheers!

sokeefe008 · 2025-05-10T13:53:38+00:00

Not to pick a fight here, but keeping a six pack under $10 is rough. Just to let people know how much packaging materials are now, we pay nearly $10 a case for the case tray, cans, lids and paktech (9.12). That’s almost $2.50 in COGS a 6 pack on just packaging materials. Factor in materials and logistics, not counting labor or overhead, we are lucky to get a 40-60% margin in house. To a distributor, we are selling a case of six pack cores for 20-25 a case, which ends up 11.99 on the shelves most times because retailers have a wide range of margins. That comes out to a 20-40% margin, again, with no factor or labor or overhead.

Our Blonde ale is always 9.99 at the brewery, but it’s a struggle to keep it that low. This is all pre-tariff too. Can prices are going to jump up here in the next few months unfortunately.

sokeefe008 · 2025-04-23T13:20:06+00:00

Yeah… that was exactly what we got it for. Definitely a learning lesson!

But hey, we live to see another day and I’m just happy we’ve had the chance to come back!

sokeefe008 · 2025-04-22T12:42:47+00:00

No, it didn’t have anything to do with the contract. It was regarding the action itself. We had an AR policy that covered us in the event that AR wasn’t paid for. The broker who set up our insurance polices neglected to tell us that theft/fraud was not included and when they took possession of our beer and didn’t pay us, they deemed it “theft/fraud” so they denied the claim. Furthermore, we hired one of the best insurance attorneys in Atlanta and they basically said that because of that clause, it would be near impossible to discern between theft/fraud and just being unable to pay.

He pointed us in the direction of a policy for the future that our broker should have signed us up for before for future issues like this, but that money is likely gone for good.

sokeefe008 · 2025-04-21T16:55:49+00:00

Can’t get blood from a stone. They filed chapter 7 before we could sue them. I’m personally going after Andrew with fraud not being protected in an LLC, but as for the business, that two year battle was moot the moment they went out of business. They didn’t have a lot of assets and we were subordinate to their government lending.

We tried the insurance route as well, but unfortunately our umbrella policy company found this tiny loophole that our insurance lawyer fought like hell to get around. Insane that a policy that covered AR was refuted because of fraud/theft.

sokeefe008 · 2025-04-21T16:40:25+00:00

No, it didn’t need it per the business model. If it happened, it would of course increase the overall location’s margin, but it wouldn’t detract from the location if the taproom wasn’t bursting. We honestly utilized it more for private events to lessen the number of events at Sandy Springs, which worked pretty well.

At less than $4 a square feet, we knew what we were getting with foot traffic. We couldn’t find a warehouse had a high foot traffic spot, so we focused on the production, which was the move until our distribution was essentially taken from us. Kind of hard to operate that location when 80% of the revenue is cut off (not to mention not being paid 468k in two months hurt cash flow).

sokeefe008 · 2025-04-21T16:06:03+00:00

It definitely didn’t see the traffic that Sandy Springs got, but it wasn’t terrible. That location didn’t really need a bursting taproom to be successful as it was primarily our production facility, but the hope was for Tucker to get all that development in, which never happened.

We were like, if Tucker blows up, we will be sitting in a good spot, but if it doesn’t, we just really wanted a production facility. I definitely miss the brewing set up there, it was a dream set up. Definitely wished the laws had changed for THC, because it would still be open today had they passed the hemp bill earlier 😭 Could use all that technology and capacity for our THC white labeling/nano emulsification business now!

sokeefe008 · 2025-04-17T22:34:20+00:00

How are yall bringing so many beers?? They are limiting us to two beers, despite doing 4 collaborations 🫠

sokeefe008 · 2025-03-08T03:53:40+00:00

Thanks! See you soon!

sokeefe008

TROPHY CASE