The Brew Guild Remembered

From 1999 to 2004, a harebrained idea to expose the masses to the true craft, heritage and pleasure of beer hovered over everything I thought, felt and did. I knew there was so much more to beer than the lifeless, yellow lagers most Americans drink. Yet finding good beers (much less retailers who actually understood what they were selling) was a massive scavenger hunt. Beer lovers would follow up on rumors that a certain liquor store had a nice selection, and would in turn pass on their own mysteriously cultivated suggestions. It was fun at times, uncovering that rare gem amidst an otherwise nondescript array, but more often than not, one was simply faced with settling for the same old thing. And that's just the beer - even more difficult to track down were the must-have glasses, books, shirts and other paraphernalia that our spoiled European counterparts take for granted.

I spent the better part of a year putting together my business plan, though up to that point (and largely still to this day), I didn't even really know what a business plan was. I received help from my family, from friends, from their friends and from generous folks all along the way. Brewguild.com was finally debuted in 2000, offering an assortment of beer-related merchandise unavailable anywhere else (in the U.S., that is). The "business" was run from a room in a house Stephanie and I were renting in Chico. The "warehouse" of inventory was the garage. Slowly but surely, things began shifting. The Brew Guild was working, albeit on a very, very small scale. Word got around that some crazy kid was trying to sell the stuff that beer lovers everywhere were always searching for. Of course, there was one glaring exception - actual beer. And so in 2002, a physical storefront was opened.

The location was lousy. The rent was too high, and the surrounding businesses catered more to soccer moms than beer fanatics. Chico is, after all, a college town (and a serious craft beer town, thanks to Sierra Nevada). The college conveniently sits adjacent to the historical downtown - a perfect location for The Brew Guild. But I was told that the city was not allowing more liquor licenses downtown, and being young and naive, I let myself be turned away without a fight. There were numerous other mistakes I made; it took months for me to finally secure a liquor license, and for that time an awkward, semi-empty shop selling beer stuff, but not beer, sat, lending the wrong impression; I had little money for advertising, and on the last day the store was open, I still had customers walk in and say, "I had no idea this place existed!"; I focused too much on the related merchandise, and not enough on the beer itself, so that my beer budget was never what it should have been; I refused to offer unrefrigerated beer (a snobbish move on my part - "live" or unpasteurized beer should be kept cool), yet commercial coolers are expensive, and so again money that could have gone into beer inventory went instead to costly refrigerators... Needless to say, bad choices and inexperience were too much in the face of an otherwise eager and supportive, if small, customer base. I closed the shop at the end of 2004 and sold everything I could to whomever I could (including the website, which now belongs to these guys).

Still, it was a great experience. As far as I or anyone else knew, it was the first and only fine beer shop in California - not a small feat. My customers were genuinely encouraging and loyal, and more than a few became good friends. Local and even national media eventually took notice. Throughout, Stephanie and I, along with countless devoted beer lovers, had an awful lot of fun. I'm disappointed in the mistakes I made, but not that I took the chance in the first place. It was an incredible experience.

-Brandon

Articles and Links:

The Orion

Beer Advocate

Chico News & Review (1)

Chico News & Review (2)

Modern Brewery Age

All About Beer

RateBeer

A look at Brewguild.com courtesy of the Wayback Machine