00:00:00EL: Can you please say and spell your name?
CW: Sure. My name is Carol Waggener. It's C-A-R-O-L W-A-G-G-E-N-E-R, and I'm the
founder and head Kegwasher at the Bold Missy Brewery.
EL: There you go.
CW: There you go.
EL: Awesome. Well, today's Thursday, June 14th, 2018, and we're here at Bold
Missy Brewery in Charlotte, North Carolina. Thank you, Carol, for talking with us.
CW: Thank you. It's an honor to be here. It's fun.
EL: Thanks. To start, can you just tell us a little about yourself? Where are
you from, and how did you get to where you are?
CW: I'm originally from Florida. I grew up in Sarasota, and my first job was at
Tropicana Orange Juice. When I would come into work every morning, my boss would
pop up over his cube, and he'd go, "Look out, everybody. Here comes the Bold
00:01:00Missy," so that's where the Bold Missy Brewery nickname came from. From
Tropicana, I had moved around quite a bit. I had a position in Salt Lake City,
and I sat next to the Anheuser-Busch rep. Their company was going through a lot
of transition, so he said, "You know, we've got some jobs back in St. Louis. Do
you have any interest?" I said, "Yeah," so I ended up starting my beer career at
Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis, so I was there for about a year and a half in St.
Louis. Then I was transferred to Phoenix in a sales role, and then I was
transferred to Charlotte in another sales role. That's what brought me to
Charlotte, and Charlotte's probably been the longest place I've ever lived in my
career. I just think it's an incredible city. It's just a great place to be, and
it has an amazing beer scene. I moved to Charlotte, and I had been here about
five years. InBev came in and bought Anheuser-Busch so there was a lot of
reorganization, restructuring, and I was restructured out. I still had this
00:02:00incredible love of beer, but I didn't really know what to do with that. I had
gone to work for another local company called Snyder's-Lance. If you've ever had
a Snyder's pretzel or a Lance cracker, that's us. Now we were recently bought by
Campbell's, so now it's Campbell's Snacks. I had been with them, and I was on a
pub crawl over in South End, and I was sitting at Triple C. I was like, "This is
what I want to do. I want to get back into beer." I've always wanted to be an
entrepreneur, so that started my journey of putting the brewery together. From
there, I knew I needed a lot of education because you can't just say, "Oh, I'm
going to start a brewery and off you go. The bank just doesn't give you money
for that kind of stuff, so I went to Siebel Institute in Chicago. They had a
three-day seminar in Start Your Own Brewery, so I took that, and it just
scratched the surface of what I needed to understand and learn. Throughout the
process, also I just visited as many breweries as I could, understood what I
liked about them, what size I liked, their marketing and how they talk to their
00:03:00consumer and different things like that.
CW: Then I also went to Portland State on a 24-week program, The Business of
Craft Beers. All of those things together helped me build my business plan and
get my financials together and was able to secure an SBA loan from Wells Fargo.
We had the money, and then we found a place. It's not really the rest is
history, but that's the space that we're in now in the brewery. We've been open
for a year. Two weeks ago, we had a one-year celebration.
EL: About how long would you say you went from having that initial this is what
I want to do thought to opening the doors?
CW: Probably four years.
EL: It was about a four-year process?
CW: It was about a four-year journey because you get excited about. You get
fired up, and then when you start looking at the financials of it and where am I
going to get this money to start this because it's extremely capital-intensive,
you make progress. You stall, and then you really have to decide if this is your
00:04:00passion or not, if you're going to go after this.
EL: You've had a diverse work background before deciding to start the brewery,
some related to beer and some not.
CW: Right.
EL: How does the craft brewing entrepreneurial side of things compare to the
other places you've worked or what have you taken from those other places and
been able to apply here?
CW: I guess the experience of the overall beer industry helped me a lot because
I understood from Anheuser-Busch the importance of quality. They pound that into
your head, and they live and breathe it, so you can say what you want to about
them as a company. They are focused on quality. The other thing I learned from
Gussie Busch [August Anheuser Busch, Jr.] is that "Making Friends is our
Business." That was his slogan, and it's a very relationship-driven business, so
you've got to be able to connect with people and connect with them on a very
genuine level, so those are two traits that you have to take into the craft beer
world. You have to focus on quality because it's not just, "Hey. I made this
00:05:00beer. Here you go." It absolutely has to be a well-crafted, delicious beer. Then
the second part is, it's relationships and being very genuine and being able to
connect with people. That's what I love about the craft beer business, as well,
is the ability to connect with people.
EL: Yeah, so are there some specific people that stand out along the path that
you would consider to be your mentors, helping you transition into the craft
beer ownership/entrepreneurial space?
CW: I've had so many mentors. They're tough to rattle off, you know. When I
worked at Anheuser-Busch, I was on the Kroger business for a while. His name was
Bill Peisker, and he would call himself the Beer Genius, but very relationship
oriented, just a terrific guy. I've been very blessed with great mentors along
the way and then in building the business plan, just had some great friends that
00:06:00would read it for me, say "I think you're on track here. I think you're not."
You know, Charlotte is a very big small town, so people are very connected. I
got connected to my attorney, and he connected me with a tax accountant. Then
they connected me with an insurance guy. Even though those roles sound dry and
boring and business-like, they gave me great insights and great support. My
financial advisor was one of the best supporters out there. I said, "You know,
I'm putting my whole life savings into this thing. I know you're here to talk me
out of it." He's like, "No. Let's look it. If this is your passion, and you
think this can work, go for it." I had a really great long list and then you
know, my family and my friends have just been incredibly supportive, too. You
have to have a strong foundation of support in order to do something like this,
for sure.
EL: Definitely. You mentioned that you were in Charlotte before opening. Around
when did you come here to Charlotte?
CW: I came to Charlotte in ... Let's see. I've been here 14 years, I guess, so
00:07:00in 2005.
EL: You've seen an awful lot of changes in terms of the beer scene here.
CW: Oh, I have. Absolutely.
EL: Can you talk a little about that?
CW: Yeah, because when I first got here, you've got your Anheuser-Busch goggles
on. You really do not drink another type of beer. You do not talk about other
types of beer, and you drink Anheuser-Busch products. That's it, so for five
years, I didn't really pay any attention to it because I was so focused on
Budweiser, but then after I got let go, I was obviously a little upset by that,
so I never drank another Anheuser-Busch product again. I didn't drink beer for a
long time, and then I got back into beer because it's a great beverage. That's
what started me drinking more craft beers because everywhere you go, it would be
the mainstream beers. I really tended towards the beers that were the craft
beers. Olde Mecklenburg was one of the ones that had just started out, NoDa
00:08:00obviously and then Triple C. That was pretty much it, but I traveled quite a
bit. Everywhere I traveled, I would go to different breweries. Asheville is
right up the street and took many a brewery tour there and saw the different
models of success and things. That's what got me more into the craft beer side
of it.
EL: You've talked a little about this already but you decided to open or that
you wanted to open a brewery. You've got your name that's your nickname from
work as the name for the brewery, but what do you see as the main mission or
theme of Bold Missy?
CW: When I was working on the business plan, obviously I wanted to spend a lot
of time working on the vision and the mission of the business because I saw this
as a great opportunity to take something and make it very creative and make it
something that other people would be drawn to because when you get into
00:09:00corporate America and you look at somebody's mission statement or their values,
you could probably write it on the back of a napkin. You could say, "Honesty,
integrity, quality," and you're just like, "Uh." I gave a lot of thought to what
I wanted to come with, so the mission is really simple. It's to win the
affection and love of Charlotteans by providing a quality beverage, but then you
get into what our values are. Bring passion and fun with growth profitability.
That's something we want to have all the time is make sure you still have your
passion and fun, but make sure you balance it with the growth and profitability.
Then the other part of it too is reach out and bring it in is a big one. That's
mostly about taking care of your coworkers, taking care of your community and
bringing people in. Those are the things that we try to get through. The thing
that really has been amazing to me that I need to work more into the values is
00:10:00it started off as our marketing theme of honoring famous Bold Missies. This has
really just strung a chord with so many people. We came up with the initial Bold
Missies of Amelia Earhart for Solo Flight. Rocket Ride is for Sally Ride. Git
Yer Gun Golden is for Annie Oakley. Those were just great themes and great
imagery, but people have come to us and said, "Well, you need to name a beer for
this person, or you need to name a beer for that person, or here's who is my
favorite Bold Missy." With the Me Too movement and everything that's been going
on with empowering women, people have looked for me to be very outspoken on what
my views are as far as women's causes and things like that. It's something I
never saw coming. I really didn't. I thought I'd open this great little brewery
and we'd have a great time, and it would be awesome, but now it's like, "Well.
As a Bold Missy, what do you think about this?" It has really taken on a life of
00:11:00its own, and from my perspective of it, I want it to be a positive message. I
don't want to say, "Oh, the man held me down," because a lot of people have
those stories and they're horrible, and you want to appreciate them. My goal is
to move forward from that. Let's highlight the women who are the Bold Missies,
who have done it their way and be inspired by them and move it forward in a
positive way.
EL: Yeah, so how do you go about selecting who you're naming the beer after?
CW: It's funny. I had this little speech that I gave to our staff of four on
Monday, so I'm a big Oprah super SoulSunday watcher. They just roll their eyes
at that. They're, "Oh, what did Oprah say last Sunday?" I'll try to condense it
but my little speech on Monday was when we think about Bold Missies, it was
00:12:00Elizabeth Gilbert and Oprah we're talking about, a hero's journey. The hero's
journey is basically a youngster that's restless and trying to find their way in
the world. Then they get called to the journey, whether they can either say no
to it, or they can say yes to it. Then they go off on the road of trials and
tribulations and they find their mentors. Then at the end, they conquer their
fear, so that's to be the filter for the Bold Missies that we pick because we
were trying to kick around a new Bold Missy for a beer we're going to release in
July. We talked about Betsy Ross because Fourth of July, so I was like, "Well,
did she go on the hero's journey or did she just make flags and call it good?"
Right, so they think I'm nuts but I've probably put way too much thought into it
but our customers come to us with great ideas. We did a contest with our
one-year anniversary, did a spinoff of all our core beers, and we did a contest
to name a beer. One of our guests came up with "Chai-am Malala," which was fantastic.
00:13:00
EL: Oh, that's very cool.
CW: For a Chai Brown, which was fantastic. Our staff comes up with names all the
time and people that inspire them or people that are fun and are easy to
celebrate with. Well, not easy to celebrate. We did a sour, and it was a blond
strawberry sour so we were talking about, "Oh, we love Blondie and her music,"
and stuff like that so we called it the Heart of Glass for the Blondie song.
People get excited. They're like, "Oh, my God. That is a great Bold Missy."
They're so many people. We pull from history, pull from current things, a lot of
different ways to name women but I go back to the heroes journey, even though I
drive everybody crazy with that.
EL: You guys also have really cool and distinctive art to go with each one of
the beers.
CW: Oh, yeah. Absolutely, yeah.
EL: Can you talk a little about that?
CW: Yeah. When I had the vision for the Bold Missy Brewery, I pulled an image
00:14:00off of the Internet and it was like three women. It was mid-century. They were
sitting around in their sunglasses and these hipster things by this pool. I just
thought, "That's kind of cool." I love the mid-century artwork and stuff like
that, so I sent that to a graphic designer. His name is Don Jones, out of
Pittsburgh. He said, "Well, that is really great. What if we did like paperback
novel heroine type things?" He took that and just went off it, and it was
amazing. He helped create some of the names. He helped create the imagery and
then one of his graphic designers also worked on some. Is it George Hamilton?
Who's the Star Wars guy? I think it's George.
EL: Lucas?
CW: George Lucas. He was an artist for George Lucas and helped fill in some of
the coloring and things like that. I was like, "Oh, my God. That's awesome."
Yeah, so the latest one that we worked with, it was really awesome because our
Bold Missy was alive. You know, Amelia Earhart. You can't do anything that looks
00:15:00like anybody in particular because you don't want to get in trouble. It was for
Alison Levine, and Alison Levine is alive and kicking, which is great. I saw
Alison at the Craft Brewers Conference. She was a keynote speaker, so she was
the Captain of the first all women's team to summit Mt. Everest, and she's also
an Adventure Grand Slam person, so she's summited all seven peaks in seven
continents. She's skied to North Pole and skied to the South Pole, and she's
written a bestselling book about leadership. We saw her, inspired. What a great
Bold Missy, so afterwards we caught her. We just approached her and said, "Hey.
We're with the Bold Missy Brewery. We'd love to name a beer for you." She was
super excited. I said, "What kind of beer do you like?" She's like, "Anything
with chocolate," so we did the Chocolate Stout. We stayed in contact via email,
so she named it Conquer the Route chocolate stout. I said, "Do you mind if we use your
likeness on the label with something, one of your polar explorer pictures?" She
00:16:00said, "No. That'd be great." You see the label that we've got. We've got it on
our t-shirts and stuff like that. It's actually her.
EL: Oh, very cool.
CW: Yeah, her image on one of her expeditions. Then we turned it into this
paperback novel kind of look.
EL: Oh, very cool.
CW: It's really cool, so fun.
EL: Has she had a chance to drink any of it?
CW: She came to the launch party, which was fantastic. We sold tickets, and
she's doing a documentary about the first Nepalese women to summit Everest. I
said, "Well do this launch party, and we'll sell tickets. The proceeds will go
to your documentary," so we did that. She came, and she launched the beer. She
did the first pour of the Chocolate Stout. I mean, it's just so incredibly fun,
you know?
EL: Yeah.
CW: It just was great. We just had a ball.
EL: That is awesome.
CW: Yeah, it really was. It was awesome.
EL: That's very cool. To rewind a little back to the planning and opening, can
00:17:00you describe a little where we are in Charlotte and maybe why this is an area
that works well for you or that you selected?
CW: Well, it's funny because in Charlotte, it's really tough to find a building.
It's tough to find the space because it has to have I2 zoning. You want the high
ceilings. You want a good foundation of a floor. You want to have the building
to have the power to support the equipment and all these other different things,
so is a very particular type of building that you want. In most of Charlotte,
the I-2 zoned buildings are in warehouse type neighborhoods, and that's how Olde
Mecklenburg got their start and even down the street, NoDa's, same thing is much
more I-2 zoning. I had looked and looked. The craft beer scene was taking off
over in South End, so I looked all through South End, and I tried to look at
different neighborhoods that I thought would be a good fit. NoDa, my realtor was
like, "There's no way you're going to get into NoDa because of the light rail
00:18:00because the square footage would be too high." Anyway, I was driving around and
saw this building. I was driving around with my brewery consultant. He was town,
and we were looking at buildings and stuff. We saw this homeless guy out front.
He was like relieving himself on the building. My consultant is like, "That's
it. That's the spot." I was like, "Uh, okay." He's like, "No, I'm serious."
Anyway, I came down to look at it, and there were bars on the windows. I have
this image in my mind. I was like, "Really?" I said, "You know, you got to have
a strong vision," but actually my landlord had his cabinet making shop here, so
it had the power. It had the floors. I mean, we gutted the building but it had
everything you really needed. Then found out that the light rail had plans to
come down this way. I was like, "Ah, there's a light rail coming. This is going
to turn. This is going to be a great spot," so that's how we landed here.
EL: Oh, very cool. You touched on some of these already a little but can you
00:19:00talk a little about some of the challenges that you faced opening a new brewery,
specifically related to the brewery?
CW: Yeah. I mean, there's so many challenges that you just don't even see
coming, like, "Oh, I didn't see that coming." I think one of the toughest
challenges honestly is the permits that you have to get and the inspections that
you have to get and all those different things because each of those delay you
by quite a bit. My favorite story is we had one inspector come out. You know, in
Charlotte, they want more green space, so they tell you you have to plant these
trees on your property, and you have to build a sidewalk. My sidewalk that
doesn't go anywhere, but they don't make it easy on you on some of these things.
I had one inspector who came out and came back and failed us because two of our
trees were buried four inches too deep. They had literally gone out there with a
00:20:00trowel and dug it up and measured, so we had to go back out there with shovels
and replant these two trees. That took us another two weeks to get part of our
inspection before you can do the next step. You know, Gwinnett County came in
and they were asking about breweries. I was on a panel about them. I said, "If
you really want to attract breweries, make it easier for them for crying out
loud." I mean, they're there to grow the business. We kind of came in and now
the neighborhood is starting to turn. Breweries are great places to have in
neighborhoods that are looking to be more green and community-friendly and all
those different things, so just a lot of challenges around the city and just
trying to open a brewery and stuff like that. The other thing, too, is there are
so many challenges, just getting the equipment in the front door. You know, it
comes on this big trailer tractor, and you don't think. You think, "Oh, this is
great. I'm going to get my equipment." Then I'm thinking, "Well, how am I going
to get it to stand upright? It's all in the building now. Now I guess I better
00:21:00find a rigger that's going to actually set them up." You know, there's just so
many things. You're like, "Oh, I got my equipment." you're just like, "Oh, yeah.
That's another thousand dollars down the drain." The cost is unbelievable, what
you have to eat. You really need to have a huge bucket of extra money that you
don't plan for, for stuff like that.
EL: Yeah. You mentioned this before we started recording, but you have relatives
who are working here or at least a niece who's working here with you. Has that
been the plan since the beginning to have family?
CW: You know, it was funny.
EL: Or did it just work out perfectly?
CW: A little of both probably. When I started the brewery, I would tell my
friends and family, "I'm going to start a brewery." They're like, "Oh, good for
you. That's great." Then they'd say, "Is she really going to start a brewery?
She's not going to start a brewery, you know. It's ridiculous," and stuff. I
come from a family of engineers, so my dad was an engineer. My brother and
sister are both engineers. Lybbi, my niece's family, same thing, all engineers.
00:22:00We're the ones that are a little more business, a little more creative-minded
and stuff, so I said, "Lybbi. I'm going to open this brewery, and you're going
to come down and help me run it." She's like, "Okay." She's fantastic. She's my
secret weapon millennial. She knows what millennials like. She knows the
Instagram, the social media. We put ridiculously funny things out there, and it
has nothing to do with me. It's all Lybbi and the team that we have is just very
funny and creative and brings a lot of passion and excitement to it. I'm really
blessed that I had a niece that was excited about doing it, so it was nice to
have family, too, to keep an eye on the money.
EL: That usually is helpful to have somebody do that.
CW: Yeah, but I have an amazing team. I'm very blessed with great people.
EL: How many folks do you have on staff now?
CW: Well, our executive leadership team is comprised of five of us, so we've got
myself and then Lybbi, our brewmaster Carli, who you met. Heather is our one
00:23:00sales rep, and then Joe is our other sales rep. Then we have probably about 10
part-time beertenders. We also have a great chef, Sydney, in the kitchen. The
beertenders all have real jobs, and I'm blessed to have them because they all
love to come here because it's such a change of pace from their real jobs, and
they always have so much fun when they're here and stuff. I have a lot of pride
in our team that every time we get reviewed, it always says super friendly
staff, and that's what I'm wanting. You know, sometimes some breweries can be
very intimidating about, "Oh, this is special craft beer," and just take
themselves too seriously. We take our beers seriously but not ourselves, and our
staff is super friendly and likes to try to educate people on whatever they
would like. You can come in here and tell me that you don't drink beer, and by
the time you leave, I will at least gotten you to try some beers and stuff, so
00:24:00it's fun.
EL: You mentioned the chef. Have y'all had a kitchen as part of the ... Has that
always been part of the plan?
CW: Well, no. That was another budget thing. "Oh, let's put a kitchen in. How
much could that possibly be?" Right? "What, a couple thousand bucks? We'll get a
panini machine."
EL: Just stick your crockpot in the corner.
CW: Yeah, a crockpot, a panini machine. The health department is totally fine
with that. Anyway, so I had talked to my brewery consultant. His name is Marc
Martin. He's from Portland, Oregon. This guy is just absolutely ridiculous. He's
just really funny, and he's like, "Oh. I got a great idea for you. I got a great
idea for you." He's like, "Wait till I tell you about your menu." I was like,
"Okay." He strung me along and strung me along, so I'm thinking to myself, "Wow.
It's going to be something really spectacular." He's like, "Hot dogs." I'm like,
"That's it? Hot dogs?" He said, "Yeah, yeah. Hot dogs." I was like, "Well,
00:25:00okay." I didn't want a fryer because you've got to put in a grease trap and all
these different things. I just wanted really something very simple and something
to keep people in the seats longer and to drink more beer. That's where the
money is. Anyway, that's what led us to the kitchen, so we did. I went online
and I searched the top 100 hot dog places across America, and I studied their
menus, and I stole the best hot dogs off the menus. One of them, one of our
bestsellers is called the Hound Dog. It's peanut butter, bacon, and honey. You'd
be like, "No way is that good." We even have on the menu, "Trust us," and that's
our number one selling hotdog. We try to do fun gourmet hot dogs, and we also do
flatbread because they're super easy and they're something I really like to
enjoy. Then we've got great soft pretzels, and we have a gourmet mustard and
beer cheese with it, so it's not like your typical hot dogs or typical snacks.
We try to put our little spin or twist on it and just give something for people
to order and enjoy. We have a lot of people that take our food to go. That's
00:26:00awesome. They like it well enough that they pick it up and take it home. Yeah,
it's been nice.
EL: It sounds like the mentality behind that matches the mentality behind the
beer, of fun.
CW: Absolutely. Fun, yeah.
EL: Can you talk a little about and this is probably an impossible question but
like a typical day around the brewery?
CW: I'm probably a terrible person to ask about that because I don't have a
typical day because I'm still doing my day job and this.
EL: Oh.
CW: I am still trying to keep my lights on at home and my lights on at the
brewery, so I have not let go completely of my day job, so my job consists of
getting up very early and starting to work on things for Campbell's Snacks and
selling to Food Lion is my customer, which is a major customer so I have a
strong obligation to that, and I'm very dedicated to that. Then afterwards, last
00:27:00night I ended up in the kitchen on a kitchen shift. Then a couple weeks ago,
Carli was swamped in the backroom so I was back there with cleaning kegs and
helping transfer beer and kegging beer, and then a couple weeks after that. You
just never know, so there really isn't a typical day. Probably Carli and Lybbi
have more typical days, but my days are just all over the place. When I say day,
I really mean evening and weekends and nights, doing the books, doing the
accounting, paying for the equipment, all these different things. Yeah, so I
don't have it. That's probably why I like it so much here. It's something
different all the time, which is great.
EL: Yeah. What would you say is Bold Missy's signature beer? Do you guys have a
beer that you consider your signature beer?
CW: Well, it's funny because my vision for this was to have well-loved styles of
craft beer, so I've been to so many breweries. I went to one brewery. They brewed with scorpions, or they would make the world's most sour, sour beer, things like
that or the IPA that would just hit you in the face. I was like, "There's really
00:28:00still a market for well-loved, well-made craft beer," so we have a great wheat.
We have a great IPA. We have an amazing brown. We have a golden, and then we get
into our seasonals and the brewer's batch, and that's where we can play around
and have a lot of fun. I would say when everybody is like, "What do you think
your flagship is going to be?" I figured the customers would tell us what the
flagship is going to be, so the flagship is starting to turn into the Find a Way
wheat because it's a really nice Belgian style wheat, and it's brewed with
tangerine peels and tangerine puree, so it just hits the sweet spot of being
just a really drinkable delicious beer. That's probably getting into more of our
mainstream, but some of the beers we monkeyed around a little with some barrels,
so we took our Chocolate Stout and Conquer the Route and put it in a barrel. We
just tapped that for the one-year anniversary, so that was really nice. Carli
00:29:00did a collaboration with some friends of hers from San Diego that were in town,
from a brewery called Thr3e Punks Ale, which is really funny. They're the ones
that helped brew the Kettle Sour. We're just trying to do different things
because in craft beer, it's all about what's new. It'd be like, "Oh, what do you
got? What's new? Okay, well, let's try this and let's try that," so you can't
just say this is our standards, but so far the Find A Way wheat.
EL: Who's the Find A Way Wheat?
CW: That's for Diana Nyad. She swam from Cuba to Florida, and she did it at age 64.
EL: Wow.
CW: Yeah, after she did multiple attempts throughout her life. She had failed
many times from jellyfish and sharks and all kinds of things, so she's an
incredible person.
EL: Definitely. You've mentioned that Bold Missy just recently celebrated its
00:30:00first anniversary, so looking back on your expectations and hopes from a year
prior, when you guys opened, are there any big surprises that stand out to you
or anything that you just didn't anticipate or expect?
CW: Yeah. I mean, I do think the biggest surprise honestly was people wanting to
feel inspired by what we had created. Before we had even opened, we were the
water sponsor at a beer festival. You know, just get our name out there early
and things like that. This one young woman came up to me. It was in February. It
was just after the election, and she came up to me and she goes like, "What are
we going to do for the next four years?" It's like, "I don't know. I'm going to
try to make beer." Obviously, she was asking me this huge question about
politics and what's going to happen with our society and things like that. It's
like, "Okay. I don't know, but let's stay positive here, you know?" That has
hands down been the biggest surprise, like we have a lot of women's groups that
00:31:00come in that love using the Bold Missy as their space for meetings. We have a
lot of women entrepreneurs that come in, same idea. They want to use our space
for that, so that has really been a surprise and a really happy surprise and a
real blessing to be able to provide the space and a beverage that really
resonates with people and to be able to continue that on. You have a platform
that you can celebrate a woman who has accomplished a lot. Not many people get
to just do that, so a real blessing.
EL: Tying off of what you just mentioned with folks, community groups using the
space and coming to the space, community engagement is the thing that a lot of
breweries are engaged in.
CW: Yeah, absolutely.
EL: Can you talk about some of the work that you guys have done?
CW: Yeah, so we started off, and I had stolen this idea. It was called Drink One
Down for Your Town. It was supposed to be a monthly program where we would
select a cause or a charity would select us, and we would do a dollar per pint.
00:32:00We tried to script it, and it fell apart. Now that we've open for quite a while,
it really has turned into definitely something that's more than once a month,
and it's evolved in a lot of different ways. Our sales rep, Heather, had a
friend who's very involved with Long Trails to Happy Tales, or Long Tails to
Happy Trails, something like that, a puppy adoption. We hosted a puppy adoption,
and we gave a dollar per pint to the organization. Two of our folks went home
with puppies that day, so we had a couple new brew dogs out of it. Since then
we've had them back several times to help them adopt puppies. Like over the
weekend, we had Habitat for Humanity came in, same deal, dollar per pint. We
love to support the community in any way we can and are happy to host meetings
or do different things and give some type of donation to the city that has been so
great to us, so that's what we try to do.
00:33:00
EL: Yeah, so looking forward, how are you seeing Bold Missy growing in the
future? Like what are your goals for the next few years?
CW: Yeah. I've been really working on that. I want to try to create a 10-year
vision, like where do we think we're going to be in 10 years and have us all
looking towards that and then back it up three years and then back it up to a
year or even back it up to the quarter and be like, "Okay. What are we trying to
get done with these different ranges of time?" Things like that. You know, the
first year it was all about drinking out of a fire hose. We didn't know if our
menu was going to work. We didn't know if people were going to like the beers
that we were making. We didn't know if we were selling it to the right people.
We didn't know. You're just out there, and you're just going to go for it, and
you're going to try it, so year two is more about processes. It's not sexy but
that's what's going to take us for the long haul is processes. What has worked
for us? What are the different steps that we can implement to get us to the that
00:34:0010 years and what that looks like? That's what we're working on now.
EL: Have you guys, are you mainly doing taproom business, or are you also
canning and distributing?
CW: We're not canning yet. We're doing distribution of kegs in the market. I
would love to start canning, but we also have got to make sure that our product
is perfect before we put it in a can, and we also have to make sure that we
drive the awareness before we put that can on the shelf because God forbid we
put something in that can that's not perfect, and God forbid we put it on the
shelf, and nobody knows who it is and it sits there. The retailer is never going
to give us a second chance on that, so I'm really super excited because I think
our labels and everything will look so great on a can, but we also have to make
sure we have the beer. To be honest, we've had a couple days here and there
where we've run out of beer because we just weren't ready for the ramp-up.
That's also the other really big challenging thing, and everybody will tell you
that is like making sure you have enough product to sell or making sure that if
00:35:00you're not selling product, what can you do to change that?
EL: Yeah, so you mentioned this already but in terms of your being a woman in
the craft brewing industry who also employs a lot of women in the industry, can
you talk a little about some of the challenges but also the benefits for having
largely a female staff? Do you think that there are things that you might have
the leg up on when you're thinking or challenges you might be facing?
CW: Another thing that surprised me was how people on social media that are
anonymous and might have an issue with women-owned business, they have a
platform now to tell you exactly what they think. We had a couple of reviews and
00:36:00a couple of things that came in that just really you know, you've got to have
tough skin to be in the beer business anyway, but that one took me a couple days
to get over. I was just really surprised at that and how in our society today,
people have this platform to be ugly to you, so I've experienced that. I try not
to dwell on it and try to move on from things like that. I would say honestly
it's hard to stand out in the craft beer business right now because there are so
many coming in. There's craft breweries opening every day. Having a female
perspective and being known as a woman-owned brewery does set us apart, so it's
been a big positive for that. We'll also be able to highlight women's
accomplishments and things like that. To have a marketing and a message that
resonates so well helps you stand out, as well, so I would say it's been more of
00:37:00an advantage than a disadvantage.
EL: Yeah. Would you have any specific advice for women looking to enter this industry?
CW: I would say if you're interested, then go for it. It is the most fun you'll
ever have. If you're sitting on a plane and somebody says to you, "What do you
do for a living?" You say, "I work for a brewery." Boom. Everybody gets excited,
and we're talking about it. You get to meet amazing people. You get to do
amazing things. You're never going to be rich, but you're going to have a ball.
I would never let your gender hold you back from getting into this business
because it is really fun, and it's very unique.
EL: Yeah, so what's your favorite part of being part of that craft beer industry?
CW: I just think my favorite part is really having the sense of community. You
know, my favorite part is the culture that we've built. When you're doing your
00:38:00plan, you have a vision of what you want your culture to be, but your culture,
you set the tone. Then you have to have the people embrace it and cultivate it,
so that's the one thing that I just really enjoy is the people that we hire and
that we bring in, our guests and our customers that come in and enjoy it, it's
created a really fun culture, a positive culture, and that's the one thing that
I just love about it.
EL: Definitely, so big picture, how do you think the North Carolina craft beer,
or even the local Charlotte if that's a better way to look at it, scene, where
do you think it's going? Five years down the road, 10 years even?
CW: You know, I think everybody is like, "Oh. Is it saturated?" That's the
million dollar question. "Is it saturated?" Again, people that ask me that, when
00:39:00I was working on it in 2014, and that was when there was eight breweries in
town, and now there is almost 25 or 30 breweries in town? You know, so I will
say that the people of Charlotte will tell us when it's saturated. We could end
up it could be like Portland where they have a 100 within the city limits. I
don't know that we'll get to be that big in Charlotte, but it's obviously
something that the community embraces. When the community says, "Nah," I think
that's it. Then you'll start to see unfortunately probably some of us go off to
do other ventures and things like that.
EL: Yeah, and Charlotte itself has been growing.
CW: Charlotte is growing like a weed. I was just talking to somebody who is
working on filling one of the giant apartment complexes down in uptown. I said,
"Where are the people coming that are renting these places?" I mean, it's a
$1,000 for like 600 square feet to live in. She's like, "Believe me, they are
00:40:00coming. They are coming."
EL: Do you have a favorite beer from the North Carolina brewery other than your
own or even just a favorite beer today?
CW: My favorite beer today, I could probably answer both. My favorite beer today
has been my favorite beer for a long time, and that has to be Bell's Two
Hearted. I just think that is the most well-balanced delicious IPA I've ever
had, and every time I take a drink of it, I smack my lips. I get so excited
about having it, and that's why I also love Rocket Ride, which is our beer,
which is a very well-balanced type, so I think that's awesome. The other beer,
probably I'm trying to think of somebody that has not been impacted by
Anheuser-Busch because I used to love Wicked Weed. I love Sierra Nevada, up in
Asheville. I think they make amazing beers, but probably locally I would say I
always enjoy Triple C's. They always have delicious beers. I went to a newer
00:41:00place in Fort Mill called Amor Artis, really delicious beers, very small batch
beers and stuff like that.
EL: Yeah, very cool.
CW: I like a lot of different types of beers so it's hard to pick one.
EL: That's usually the answer, honestly, that we get when we ask that question.
You enjoy different styles and sometimes you enjoy different styles on different days.
CW: Different days or different times of day.
EL: Yeah, so what about here? Do you have a favorite amongst your own?
CW: Rocket Ride. Hands down, Rocket Ride. That's my baby. I love that beer. I
can't help it.
EL: You're working a full-time job and you're doing this, so you probably don't
have much free time, but in those spare free moments, what do you like to do
when you're not working?
CW: I have an amazing dog named Bruno. He's a dachshund, so I always enjoy
spending time with Bruno, going around the block, chatting with neighbors,
checking in on things. Love to go to the beach, love to go to the mountains. I
love to do a lot of things. My passion is definitely traveling. I love to travel
00:42:00and stuff, so this past year is a little bit of a blur as far as how much time I
actually spent doing those things, but it's been good.
EL: Yeah, definitely. Those were pretty much the questions that I was going to
ask you. Is there anything else that we didn't hit on that you wanted to talk about?
CW: No, I don't think so. It was good.
EL: Awesome.
CW: Yeah, I appreciate your time today.
EL: Well, thank you so much.
CW: You're welcome.
