Oral history interview with Oscar Wong, 2019

Richard Cox: So if you can start by please saying and spelling your name?

Oscar Wong: My name is Oscar Wong. O-S-C-A-R W-O-N-G.

Richard Cox: Okay, and today is Tuesday, February 26, 2019, and we are at Highland Brewing Company in Asheville, North Carolina. I'm Richard Cox talking today with Oscar Wong, Founder and Vice President, as part of the Well Crafted North Carolina Project. To start, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself?

Oscar Wong: Well, I'm a very, very fortunate old man, that came up as an island boy in Jamaica. I was born, grew up, left the island when I was 18 to go to college. Went to Notre Dame, with great difficulty because my dad had to save up money, and it was expensive for him. Got a degree in civil engineering, got a 00:01:00Master's in structural engineering. One of my prouder moments, actually, I wrote back to my dad and said, "I'm going on for my Master's, and you're off the hook. I'm on my own, I'm off the payroll."

Oscar Wong: I got that, went to Boston, met my wife to be, after a year and a half of great fun in Boston. Boston's a great town, especially for a new grad. We got married, lived in San Francisco for several years, and moved back to Boston when I got a job offer. The idea ... not in Boston, I moved back to New York.

Richard Cox: New York, okay.

Oscar Wong: Because her parents were still in Massachusetts, so we were on the East Coast to be closer. Started a business, then I went down to Charlotte. After a while my business expanded, then contracted, and it survived in 00:02:00Charlotte, and eventually sold it out. A lot of things happened after that, here I am in the brewing business.

Richard Cox: And here you are.

Oscar Wong: Yeah.

Richard Cox: So what was your business in Charlotte?

Oscar Wong: We actually worked with nuclear waste.

Richard Cox: Oh, wow.

Oscar Wong: And we dealt with the utilities, and with the DOE. We designed, built, and operated nuclear waste processing facilities.

Richard Cox: That's impressive.

Oscar Wong: Well, my personal strength was in the engineering of the safety of the structures. But, they weren't building new plants.

Richard Cox: Right.

Oscar Wong: The next problem was going to be the waste, so we invested a lot of money, and we became the French licensee for taking care of low level waste. First, we took the liquids, the water, they flushed everything down. It was about maybe five percent radioactive salts that were gathered in the cleaning process. The usual approach was to mix it with concrete. So let's say you have a 00:03:00hundred pounds of water, you mix it with concrete, asphalt and everything, concrete, and you end up with 150 pounds of block to bury.

Oscar Wong: Well the French had a process where they evaporated the water, sent it back to reuse by the plant. The five percent of solids that were in it, that were radioactive, were mixed with another five percent of asphalt. So now you have 10 pounds of waste, fixed in a hard matrix that was then contained and buried in a concrete cask. So effectively, what you end up burying was about a tenth of what you do with the old concrete way.

Oscar Wong: The unfortunate part about that, the ironic part about it, the 00:04:00French took an American process that we didn't want and we thought was not good enough, perfected it, and we had to pay money to ship it back and use it here.

Richard Cox: Yeah, there's an irony to that, yeah.

Oscar Wong: There's a lot of that, by the way, many cases of that.

Richard Cox: I'm sure, yeah. So given that you were an engineer working in Charlotte on nuclear waste, how did you start becoming interested in the brewing industry?

Oscar Wong: Well, I've always loved beer. As a young 10 year old, I got my first beer from my dad. In the Chinese system, you would cook on Sundays, and you'd have a whole wide range of things: fried prawns, roast pork, roast duck. All those were considered hot foods. Not spicy necessarily, but they're high cholesterol foods. Soups and vegetables were cool foods, but he didn't think there would be enough cool things, like rice or vegetables or soup to balance 00:05:00it. So us kids would get two ounces of beer, or hard cider. It's a Chinese Dao, hot ... yin and yang stuff. I loved it. My siblings didn't, couldn't tolerate it.

Richard Cox: Do you remember what the beer was?

Oscar Wong: Red Stripe.

Richard Cox: Red Stripe. I know Red Stripe.

Oscar Wong: I grew up with it.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Oscar Wong: Yeah.

Richard Cox: That's awesome.

Oscar Wong: And that's where it started, so I've always enjoyed beer. And over the years, after I sold my engineering business, and I was home for four years, I was introduced to an award-winning brewer, who wanted to start a brewery. By that time my wife was quite excited. I can quote what she said.

Richard Cox: Please.

Oscar Wong: "Oh my god, I can't think of something better for you to do." Mind you, she would have said the same thing no matter what it was.

Richard Cox: Okay.

Oscar Wong: I had been home for four years.

Richard Cox: Whatever gets you to go out the front door.

Oscar Wong: Yeah, exactly.

Richard Cox: So okay. So you sold your business. You've always been interested 00:06:00in beer. So at this point, you meet a brewer, so you're in Charlotte. What led you to move to Asheville to start your brewery?

Oscar Wong: Well, while we lived in Charlotte, we actually came up here quite a bit. And in fact, bought a mountain cabin and had been living in both places for two years by the time I met this fella. Our intent was to retire up here eventually. In our discussions, he initially wanted to start it in Charlotte. And my reaction was, "Well, tell you what. If you set it up in Asheville, I'll partner with you. If you want to do it in Charlotte, find somebody else." Because I'm coming up here, long-term, I'm going to be here. He said sure, okay. So we ended up doing it up here.

Oscar Wong: A couple reasons for that. It turns out that we have great water.

Richard Cox: Yes.

Oscar Wong: Excellent water. And for a small, backwoods town, it had a surprising number of ... Wine Spectator Award restaurants. There weren't a lot of restaurants, but just the couple that they had got Wine Spectator Awards, which was intriguing to me. And besides, it was just going to be convenient to be here anyway.

Richard Cox: Sure, exactly.

Oscar Wong: And we set it up.

Richard Cox: And that was '94.

Oscar Wong: '94.

Richard Cox: Right.

Oscar Wong: Yeah.

Richard Cox: And why did you pick ... famously now, Barley's Taproom and Pizzeria?

Oscar Wong: Yes.

Richard Cox: It was a basement, right?

Oscar Wong: Yep. At the time, the idea was to be a joint business with the Barley's folks.

Richard Cox: Okay.

Oscar Wong: It didn't make sense to me because these were two totally different business models. They were a retail operation, we were going to be a 00:08:00manufacturing operation. It turns out that the people that we rented from was Jay Stewart, who has since passed away, was very instrumental in getting this whole deal set together. So we thought, okay, we'll separate the two. The retail will be upstairs on the street level, and we'll be in the basement. A lot of people assumed that our beer would just ride up on the elevator. Not so. Because of the laws, we had to sell it to a distributor, ship it to the distributor, who in turn brought it back. It was all controls. Taxes.

Richard Cox: Yeah. And that time period probably even more controlled than it is today.

Oscar Wong: Oh, absolutely.

Richard Cox: Yeah. So Highland was the first post-prohibition brewery to open in Asheville?

Oscar Wong: First legal one.

Richard Cox: Right. First legal one to open.

Oscar Wong: Yeah.

Richard Cox: So if we're comparing Asheville, which you actually just touched on, in '94 when you got here, to today, because like you said, there were a few 00:09:00restaurants, the brew scene, it was you.

Oscar Wong: It didn't exist.

Richard Cox: Yeah, so if you were to compare Asheville then to now, what would you ... how would you sort of encapsulate that?

Oscar Wong: In a simple matter, when I mentioned to my friends in Charlotte that I was going to Asheville, the response invariably was, "What are you doing going to Nashville?"

Richard Cox: Sure.

Oscar Wong: Within two years, nobody made that mistake anymore. Asheville was coming along. However, it went from a boarded up, sleepy mountain town, to a nationally recognized hot spot. That's a far cry from what it was.

Richard Cox: Right. And in a short period of time, relatively speaking.

Oscar Wong: Relatively short. And it seemed to escalate in the last ten years, way more than the first ... you know.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Oscar Wong: Every five year period, it seems to grow crazier.

Richard Cox: Yeah, it really does. Why did you pick the name Highland?

Oscar Wong: The Scots-Irish settled this area way back in the 1700s, the late 1700s, yeah. It's to honor the Highland, Scots-Irish that settled the area. I thought it would be appropriate because ... yeah. So we had a Scottish look and a motif. The branding, everything was Scotty, and mountains.

Richard Cox: Which only changed recently, actually.

Oscar Wong: Yeah, my daughter came in and thought, you know ... we moved on. People ... I can't tell you how many people thought, "Is the owner a Scotsman?"

Richard Cox: Oh, true.

Oscar Wong: Or, "You make Scottish beer?" None of which was true, and since we have moved on from making essentially British style ales to a broader palate of 00:11:00beers. We thought we need to upgrade our image to reflect that.

Richard Cox: Right. That makes perfect sense. Touching onto that, you're talking about some of the misconceptions, with thinking it was Scotch and that sort of thing. How would you describe Highland to people who would be unaware of Highland and what it does, how would you describe the brewery to people?

Oscar Wong: Today, it is an innovative, pioneering, first in the area ... kind of eclectic in a way, because of what we do. Well, we listen to our customers, that's a big part of it. If our customers ... for instance, about 10 years ago, we wanted to get a west coast IPA in place, and our current brewer at the time just couldn't bring himself to make a west coast style IPA because he thought it 00:12:00was unbalanced. I thought, well, that's in the eye of the beholder, you know? Tastes change. We ended up hiring somebody who could take us in the next level, and we've continued to do that.

Oscar Wong: So I would say, Highland is an innovative, customer-driven, but quality conscious, absolutely first, safety and quality are paramount.

Richard Cox: Absolutely. So you also mentioned the word eclectic. So what would you say, you know?

Oscar Wong: Well, let me just say that we're ... well, first of all, you got a Chinese guy with a Scottish style brewery, it was kind of a mixture. We have ... give you an example of how many women we have. Our president, our controller, 00:13:00quality assurance manager, and now our packaging manager, marketing manager, all women. At one point, one of our senior guys who had been with us for quite a while said, "I can understand Leah being in charge, I understand Liza being controller, but we're getting all these men just, I'm starting to see a pattern here." I cracked up, I just said, you know what, I understand.

Richard Cox: What do you do? Right.

Oscar Wong: But my position is that it's a balance. We want the best person. Plus, as I said to the guy, you guys will always be responsible for getting things done. Because I have a way of looking at things where, guys get things done. We are project oriented, we're task driven. Women will see that, but look at a wider view.

Oscar Wong: If I could give you a little allegory, it would be, in a military 00:14:00thing you'd say, "Okay, take that hill." Once we've talked about it, I forget about it. I know we'll take the hill. Now there might be a lot of bodies in taking that hill. The women involved would say, "Is that the hill to take?" And I've brought that up to the guys, and they'll all accept it, hmm. Yeah, you're right. We're geared towards going on the hunt, getting that kill, and bringing it back. The women have to look at a broader view. And as much as we feel like we're constrained in our wanting to play, we need that balance. And we have that here, I'd say in spades, big time.

Richard Cox: Oh yeah. And just based on what you just said, comparing it to other breweries, the same-

Oscar Wong: And in all reality, the guys are not intimidated by it. They're ... 00:15:00it works well.

Richard Cox: Yeah. That's awesome. What would you say ... this might be a weird one, but what do you say would be the main mission of Highland as a brewery, or as a business, more broadly?

Oscar Wong: Our mission is more ... is to position ourselves for beer, and business, and people, and the place. That's how we look at it. Those are the four cornerstones of what drives us. I would say, my daughter and I are in consort with this, but the people come first, the staff, because we take care of them, they'll take care of the business.

Richard Cox: Absolutely.

Oscar Wong: The people who are our customers, they drive what we do, when we do it. But internally, because of our focus on our staff, safety is number one. And 00:16:00the focus on our customers, quality is right up there with it, so safety and quality.

Richard Cox: Absolutely.

Oscar Wong: I'd say our basic principles are quality, integrity, and respect. Respect is kind of the most subjective one. And we talked about earlier about being a jerk and all that. We don't tolerate being a jerk in here.

Richard Cox: Good, yeah.

Oscar Wong: We can disagree, but we don't appreciate you being disagreeable about it. And that's what is a big driving force about here. We listen to each other as much as possible. We communicate a lot, and even then it's never enough. Why is that? People will hear you, they'll listen to you, it doesn't register. It's part of the human condition. So we drive that constantly. But 00:17:00always, in a respectful manner.

Richard Cox: Great, yeah. Going back to the early history of Highland again, especially given you were the first brewery in this area, legal brewery in this area, was there any specific challenges you remember in opening Highland?

Oscar Wong: To begin with.

Richard Cox: Yeah, yeah.

Oscar Wong: The licensing for the local people was a chore because they hadn't had a brewery. We ran into troubles with the electrical, mechanical, structural, fire safety. Every issue was a problem because this is a brewery, we hadn't done a brewery before. There were so many issues related to how things were relative to each other, located, how they operated, what ... because they didn't know 00:18:00breweries, they had to learn at our expense. So we took a lot of time going through that. So that's one aspect. So that's the building of the brewery.

Oscar Wong: Getting license. Getting it from the feds was not nearly as difficult. Because we had to prove that we knew what we were doing, there was a technical and financial and historical background check on everybody. And once you met those, sure. Have at it.

Richard Cox: It's done. Yeah. We've heard similar stories from other cities or towns where they were the first, the licensing issue. One place actually even was like ... the local town was trying to figure out how to license them, and they were like, well, it's sort of like a bakery, so they went through the process they would for a bakery, the town, to get the brewery open. Yeah, I think that licensing issue is a very common thread in the conversations we're having.

Oscar Wong: We ran into it many years later, when we wanted to expand and considered going to Black Mountain. We had a location, we had a plan, we had everything. They started asking questions like, how does it smell? I said, "Well, why don't you check with downtown? We're in right Downtown Asheville. And the smell you get, like a bakery, is a lovely smell, or a malt smell." Okay. So one thing after another. 15 months later, the price of concrete, gypsum, everything went through the roof because China at the time, in the early 2000s were buying everything up. And it wasn't viable. So we backed out.

Oscar Wong: Well since then, they're bending over backwards to try to get people ... and they have ... the next brewery that came in, red carpet treatment, walk in.

Richard Cox: Yeah, it's almost like a brewery is what is used now to start a neighborhood or small town, or revitalization anymore.

Oscar Wong: Exactly.

Richard Cox: Which is what you all then did in Asheville, perhaps.

Oscar Wong: Yep.

Richard Cox: This is going to sort of be a comparison contrast question. How would you describe your average week in the early years, and then maybe compare that to what you're doing today.

Oscar Wong: Oh, that's easy.

Richard Cox: Good.

Oscar Wong: In the early days, we were scrambling with the regulatory folks, the financial folks, the technical folks, and trying to convince people to buy our beer. In fact, I got a story about that coming up. Today ... well, Leah's still very busy with a lot of things. But we both are ... especially with the community, there's a ... I'd say more than half my time is really dealing with non-profits, volunteer work, whereas, Leah's is quite a bit too. She's on a lot 00:21:00of boards. And so, the difference is that we're at a size that allows us to spend our time. In the early days, we did some of that, but we had to concentrate on getting the business off the ground.

Richard Cox: You had to sell the beer.

Oscar Wong: Exactly. In fact, in selling the beer, our first approach was to get it in a small little keg, the tiny ones, three and a half gallons or thereabout. Have it in the trunk, bunch of your little pump things. And drive around, and walk in, "We're a new brewery, and we'd like you to taste our beer, are you interested?" "Oh, yeah, sure." We'd go back out to the car, fill up a couple cups, come in, and have them taste it. And that's the way we made ourselves known. Let me say that then, and now, that was highly illegal.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Oscar Wong: The statute of limitations have passed, so I can talk about that now.

Richard Cox: Yeah, that's great. And what would have been your other options then?

Oscar Wong: Yeah, we didn't have bottles, we just had kegs. And we couldn't get the people to taste it otherwise. First of all, the seller, the retailer, we didn't have permits to drink. We weren't permitted to carry beer around and handing it out. It was so illegal on so many fronts.

Richard Cox: Both you all and the industry in North Carolina were so young then, it's like, there were so many laws that were just ... brewing and breweries hadn't even been thought of in their creation, so it's ...

Oscar Wong: That's '94, so just a few years prior, we had people like Uli Bennewitz with Weeping Radish, and Spring Garden, which became Red Oak.

Richard Cox: Right.

Oscar Wong: Things like that. They were around.

Richard Cox: Yeah. We're sort of running around this one as well. So when you weren't opening the brewery, were there any resources you had to draw upon when you were opening it, like for help?

Oscar Wong: You mean, resources for ...

Richard Cox: I would say in opening then growing the brewery, especially opening, you were all ... trying the best way to put it. Was there anyone to turn to, or any resources you had to look-

Oscar Wong: My partner was an award-winning brewer.

Richard Cox: Okay, well, which helps.

Oscar Wong: Which helped. When a mutual friend introduced us, I was able to come up with some financial help. Business experience, and some engineering background, because I'd sold my business. Then the banks, I had a good relationship with the banks, so they loaned us some money, but we put a lot of our life savings into it. It took us eight years to break even, by the way.

Richard Cox: Right, wow.

Oscar Wong: My wife used to think I was a smart guy from the engineering days. I remember her saying, "You know, I can see you're having a lot of fun, but I don't know how much fun you can afford." I said to our daughter at the time, I talked to her and said, "Leah this is ... we're building a business, we got to do it right, we don't do second rate stuff because it will reflect back on us. I'm sorry I'm chewing up your inheritance like crazy."

Richard Cox: I mean, eight years in starting a small business, that's not unheard of.

Oscar Wong: It's not unheard of, it's a little on the long side.

Richard Cox: Is it? Okay.

Oscar Wong: A lot of them is more three to five, they'll at least break even. In fact, the recommendation from our accountant and attorney was you need to just 00:25:00... why don't you just walk, he said, "this is not going to make it." At the pace you're going, you're going to wipe you out. I said, "No, we got a good product, I think this is going to come around."

Richard Cox: And, yeah, it did. Was there a point other than when the profit turned, where you were like, this is going to happen?

Oscar Wong: I think after we balanced, and I said, okay. I never did pull money out of ... I've been a top payer, top paid person in this company. And to this day, I'm now number seven. It's not been what drives me. Leah's doing the same thing, she's not a top paid and shouldn't be.

Richard Cox: Right.

Oscar Wong: We have the ownership, and it means. So the profits we made, we plowed into a lot, back into the business.

Richard Cox: It sounds like you have a great combination of both business experience and the passion, which sometimes aren't in the same person, and it pays off.

Oscar Wong: Which is ... you're absolutely right. A lot of times I've seen people say, "Okay, I've got a bunch of money. I want to get into it." And they're going to make their money overnight. Well, you know what, I don't believe in that. And people who do that are doing it for the wrong reason. Either the business is going to be a bad model, or the people in between suffer for it. It's just no way to do it.

Richard Cox: Yeah, that's going to happen. We talked a little about the laws. I have a specific reason for asking this question, but was Highland Brewing a participant, or watching the Pop the Cap movement in 2003 to 2005? Or raising the-

Oscar Wong: Well, let me say that the first time I came across that, Sean was a 00:27:00... he had just graduated from Duke, and he was in Durham at one of those beer festivals. And he said, "Come sign up for the Pop the Cap." So I walk over, and I'm talking to the ... hmm. Well, I'll sign up for that. I don't think I'll see it in my lifetime, but I got to give you a lot of credit for that. Ever since, we've been in touch. We supported it in many ways.

Oscar Wong: One case, in which we hired a lobbyist, and I remember going to a barbecue, was kind of low down, just beer and barbecue, back in a construction area right outside Raleigh. I said, you know what? All these legislators, they get taken to these fancy hotels, and fancy dinners, and all that. I said, "they 00:28:00come from small town. That's just ... they get wined and dined and all that. But if you really want to get them in a comfort zone so they talk, and they'll listen to you, this is what you do." And sure enough, it got passed.

Richard Cox: The reason I wanted to be sure to ask you that question was, in talking to Sean, I was asking him, after Pop the Cap passed, what was your first beer? And it was one of your beers at Top of the Hill in Chapel Hill. And he's like, "To this day, I don't know how Oscar got that beer out as quickly as he did, but there it was."

Oscar Wong: No, it's easy.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Oscar Wong: It's easy. You can tell him when you see him next.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Oscar Wong: In anticipation of the law passing, we brewed.

Richard Cox: That's what he assumed.

Oscar Wong: We did.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Oscar Wong: We lost our buns on it because as we waited for it to be approved, 00:29:00the staff and me were sucking on it pretty hard.

Richard Cox: I can't remember ... do you remember what the beer was?

Oscar Wong: Yeah. I think it was Tasgall.

Richard Cox: Oh, yeah.

Oscar Wong: Basically, it was called Tasgall Ale because it's a Norse mythology, it means "Cauldron of the Gods."

Richard Cox: That's awesome. That's a great-

Oscar Wong: We used to make them [crosstalk 00:29:36].

Richard Cox: No, that's great. It's just a nice circle there, that's great.

Oscar Wong: Next time you see him tell him. We didn't do anything illegal.

Richard Cox: No, no.

Oscar Wong: We brewed it, we weren't selling it. We were drinking it.

Richard Cox: And then suddenly you could sell it, so there you are.

Oscar Wong: As soon as we could sell it, we bottled it and ran with it.

Richard Cox: So that was Sean's first above six percent beer he had.

Oscar Wong: Another thing is that our ... the relationship that we have with all the regulatory people we feel is strong because we don't cut corners, we don't ask for forgiveness, we seek permission. A lot of my competitor friends don't think that way.

Richard Cox: No.

Oscar Wong: To their detriment. It's a pain in the neck, but if the law says this, these people are obligated to follow it. The ABC folks pointed out to us, "We think that particular law is stupid, too. But the way you got to do it is, you get the legislator to change it, and then we can follow it." I tell you what, we had a great relationship so that when ... you know we have license number one I think? That's not just the beer we're talking about, a license on the higher level.

Richard Cox: And because of that, so think back to the ... after those first 00:31:00eight years, you have a profit. How would you actually chart the growth of Highland over the years to this point?

Oscar Wong: Okay. Once we broke even, we started bottling with a small system that didn't work after about a year and a half or two, it just didn't make it. We bought a used big bottling system, shoe-horned it into a basement downtown, and then we would actually ... on the days that we bottled, we'd brew all the stuff in the brewery on the packaging side, out into the alley.

Richard Cox: Right, this is still Barley's? In the basement of Barley's?

Oscar Wong: We brewed in the basement of Barley's. We packaged next door.

Richard Cox: Okay, okay.

Oscar Wong: The other basement. So we had two basements.

Richard Cox: You had two basements, okay.

Oscar Wong: Yeah. The second basement came years after.

Richard Cox: Okay, right, okay.

Oscar Wong: That's when we brought the bottling system in. And in order to get 00:32:00the beer over, we bored a hole through the wall, 14 inch thick cast concrete from 1920.

Richard Cox: Wow.

Oscar Wong: It was the hardest thing. I personally, with the drill that I rented, until one day ... we couldn't do it all in one shot, we did it over several days. 14 inches. You could go for four hours and get three inches in.

Richard Cox: Wow.

Oscar Wong: I mean, so-

Richard Cox: That's ... yeah.

Oscar Wong: Finally I got a call from Jimmy Rinz who owns ... he owned Barley's, and he said, "Oscar, when you do that, would you quit by 11:00 AM?" It would shake the building. It was right between us ... it would absolutely rattle the building.

Richard Cox: Oh my god.

Oscar Wong: It was so hard. I just put everything I had into it. Anyway, we broke through. And we run the thing through, and the beer comes, and we'd pack. 00:33:00We move it out, at the end of the day, after we did four pallets of bottles.

Richard Cox: Right.

Oscar Wong: And they were on the truck, and I'd drive the truck over to the distributorship, and we'd move all the stuff back into the brewery at the end of the day. So the supplies, or things that didn't matter if it got hot, or rained on or whatever. It was pretty rough.

Richard Cox: Yeah, I'm imagining you had a pipe running between these two basements basically, and through the alley.

Oscar Wong: Through the wall.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Oscar Wong: It had to come through the wall. Yeah.

Richard Cox: Wow, that's amazing. How did you get to this point, where we are now?

Oscar Wong: We were getting about 65 hundred barrels done a year.

Richard Cox: Oh, wow.

Oscar Wong: That was the maximum. We had a warehouse about eight miles down the road. So, all the packaging, the grain, all the materials would get delivered 00:34:00down there. Now, as we needed it, we'd drive the truck, load it up, and bring it back. It was very, very inefficient. But it was all we could do, what we could afford.

Richard Cox: Right.

Oscar Wong: We got to the point where we maxed out what we could do, and we wanted to move to another location to build it, but a little concerned that ... One of the problems with breweries when they go to the next step, from the start, is more dangerous than when they start. Because when you make that move, it needs to be of a big enough move to make it worthwhile. Let's say you're doing a hundred units. You can't prepare a place that does 120 units, it has to be 200 or 300 potentially. I said, "Well, let's see, how do we do this?" We went 00:35:00out and got Frederick Brewing up in Maryland to brew for us.

Richard Cox: Oh.

Oscar Wong: We looked all over. We wanted something closer, we kept going further and further in order to find something that we were happy with. We ended up going to Maryland. We contracted with them, with the understanding, we told them, "We are going to build up in ... I don't know how long it will take, but our intent is to build up." To convince ourselves that the market was there. We always did the kegs, all kegs were always done here. We selected some bottles for them to do. So they did ... we did 65 hundred, they did about 3,000-3500. Bumped up against a total of 10,000 bottles a year. Which proved to us that we could make a move.

Oscar Wong: So a year and a half into it ... we told them, okay, the next four 00:36:00brews over the next two months will be the final. Okay. And we shipped it in. So when we started up here in '06, in October of '06, we started brewing. And it was January of '07 that the last shipment came in of Maryland. We were able to just pick and run with it.

Oscar Wong: We rented, or leased a small portion of this building. And it turned out that in the first year, we broke even here. Which, because we had the volume level at 10,000, which is like unheard of.

Richard Cox: Yeah, you have to figure out your economies of scale, or been able to ahead of time, which yeah, that's-

Oscar Wong: Well the fact that they were able to bring us up to 10,000, now the market is there, it was the comfort that okay, we can go in now. So the first 00:37:00few tanks we had along here was ... on the other side was ... My wife walked in and she said, "What are you thinking?" I mean, here's a 24,000 square foot of space and it's like a big warehouse, cavern, high ceiling. Now we're pushing in, you know.

Richard Cox: About how many barrels a year are you cranking out now here?

Oscar Wong: This year we're expecting to do about, pushing 50.

Richard Cox: That's amazing, that's awesome.

Oscar Wong: Yeah. We're the largest family owned north-southeast based company now. SweetWater's bigger. A lot of them are bigger, but they're all sold out to other ...

Richard Cox: Which is a whole different story, right.

Oscar Wong: That's a whole different story.

Richard Cox: Yeah, exactly. One thing you've been talking about a lot is involvement in the local community, and advocacy. That's something it sounds like both you and Highland have been doing for years. So can you talk a little 00:38:00bit about both what you see as the ... basically what do you see is the role of Highland, including yourself in that, in supporting the local community and important community causes?

Oscar Wong: My personal upbringing is that you are active in the community you're in, whether it's your neighborhood, the town, whatever, it's just part of what I grew up with in my family, in my high school, college, it's just part of what we do. It is expected. Wherever we live, we've participated in whatever local operations there are, whether it's a church, the neighborhood, it doesn't matter, we're active. I feel ... we've been proud of Asheville from the very beginning, and we wanted Asheville to be proud of us.

Oscar Wong: We feel that we're going back to the first principles where ... The 00:39:00brewery, or the pub, local pub, was a collection of the neighborhood. It's where people got a chance to meet, talk. Because you didn't have newspapers, media, social media, that was where you gathered, and that's where you found out whether John really was sleeping with Mary, you know?

Richard Cox: Right. Yeah.

Oscar Wong: That's what's driven this renaissance in all these little towns all over the country, where we feel "hey." Now wine is a little different. Wine is kind of a snooty aspect where, the further away it comes from, the better it is.

Richard Cox: Right.

Oscar Wong: Whereas with beer, the local part is a thing of pride.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Oscar Wong: That's where people collect.

Richard Cox: Yeah, and I think some people are just ... the phrase I've heard some people use is, breweries and taprooms have become a third space for people. 00:40:00So you've got their home, their work, and then the brewery is that third space, that is exactly what you're talking about, where you collaborate and find out who's doing what with whom. So yeah, it ties in together there.

Richard Cox: What are some of the causes you all support?

Oscar Wong: We've supported so many. Let me just run through the initial ones. Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy, we believe in helping to keep the ecology well because the rain comes from the top of the mountain and comes down. If that's not in good shape, you don't get good water. So the rivers the water's in, okay? Next is the ... they're all associated with that, the environmental related. Then there's the people related, the Manna Food Bank. There's Helpmate, 00:41:00which is we're dealing with battered women. So social issues, environmental issues, ecological issues. We have basic major ones, but we give ... we have a whole list.

Oscar Wong: We're kind of rethinking how we do that because there's no bad causes, but we want to be more effective in the ones that we support. It was just in the last week while I was away, that they hired somebody who is going to coordinate that, and my daughter and she, and the marketing people are deciding on which five, meet with those people, and really partner with them.

Oscar Wong: We had a little ... just the other day, somebody came up with the idea, and said, "How about a cat/kitten day?" The local pet whatever, I don't 00:42:00know what they're called, that group, they charge five dollars for people to come in and they have a few kittens and some cats, and you get to just play with them, with the idea that at some point you might want to go back and adopt. Well, it just blew up on social media. On Friday, the place was just crawling with ... The nonprofit ... we also donated one dollar for each beer that people bought. So the five dollars, and ... This was the first time ever, just a couple hits on social media, and they came up with over $3,000 in one night.

Richard Cox: That's amazing.

Oscar Wong: So that's the type of thing we do with so many nonprofits. Besides the five main ones that we'll deal with, every nonprofit that asks for use of 00:43:00the facility for an event, if we can accommodate the certain day, we give them a big break, and they have a good venue.

Richard Cox: Yeah, that's great.

Oscar Wong: That's how we help out.

Richard Cox: No, that's great. Let's talk about Leah for a minute.

Oscar Wong: Yeah.

Richard Cox: She finally joined Highland in 2011 and became President in 2015?

Oscar Wong: And now she's Board Chair too.

Richard Cox: And now she's Board Chair too. So what was that process like for I guess both you and her, as the transition's been happening as you ...

Oscar Wong: Two years into the business, she approached me, and she really wanted to work at Highland because her friends were saying, "Your dad owns a brewery, that's so cool." And she figured, "Hey, I like going to the bars, and I can sell. I'll sell the beer, I'll be good at it." I said, "Well, no, I think 00:44:00you better move on and just do your own thing." She was very gracious about it. I don't know what she'd say today, if she'd admit that she was disappointed and a little ticked off as a matter of fact, I don't know. You could ask her.

Oscar Wong: Fast forward, years later. She kind of kept in touch, and I had her on the board, as a board member, just because I wanted her to be aware of what we were doing. Fast forward many years. I said, "Leah, it's about time. I'd like for you to consider coming on board." She said, "But Dad, you can't afford me." Which was absolutely true. Let me tell you how true that is.

Richard Cox: Okay.

Oscar Wong: Six, seven years now, she's been in business. She's making half of what she was making when she came on board.

Richard Cox: Oh, wow, yeah.

Oscar Wong: She started with a third and she's now up to half.

Richard Cox: Oh, okay. Wow.

Oscar Wong: But she's ... grab ahold of it and ... One of the things that was great is that she did her own thing, was successful, it proved herself. I'm not surprised, I knew she would do well, but she needed to prove to herself that she could do her thing. Now she's just taken it under her wing. She explained to me one day, she said, "You know, you always said just make it your own. I didn't know what the hell you're talking about." But now that she's put her stamp on it with the brand refresh, and it's been hugely successful. I think she ... that comfort level has grown quite a bit.

Oscar Wong: So she's, again ... all along, she put me off for almost two years to become President, almost two years. And finally I said, "Okay, my birthday is 00:46:00in October. That's a good one, I'll be 75." Well, okay. Comes almost that time and she said, "Why don't we just make it January first?" That's not a bad idea, it's a good transition. Okay, good. In the December board meeting, it was on the agenda, and I didn't tell her about it. I said okay. I wanted it to be in writing. Says, all right. Everybody on the board says, oh yeah, good idea. January first she become president.

Oscar Wong: Couple years later, I said, "You know, you're doing most of the prep for the board meetings." I said, "I'm out there running around with the volunteer stuff, I think you ought to just be ..." "I don't know, I don't know if I'm ready." You're never ready, you just go and do it, you'll be fine. And she jumped on it. She tends to prepare more ... she's like her mother. She 00:47:00always feels like she's not prepared enough. I said, "I always just wing it." Did you read it? Yeah, meant to. I don't know. As a business man, island background where I just, don't worry, be happy mon.

Richard Cox: It's a different mindset, right?

Oscar Wong: It is.

Richard Cox: But she has started moving forward and making it her own now.

Oscar Wong: Oh, she has. The first thing she did was get a tartan. When she first came on, okay, Scottish, okay. We have a tartan that's a Highland Brewing tartan, registered in Edinburgh. I have a tie, I have a kilt.

Richard Cox: Awesome.

Oscar Wong: She had a kilt made. I have a funny story about that too.

Richard Cox: Okay.

Oscar Wong: She ordered the kilt, sent in measurements. They wrote back to her 00:48:00and said, "Would you measure your dad again? Something doesn't seem right." So we measured again. And then she said, "Oh, by the way, although he's that height, the kilt seems short, but it's because he's got short legs." So, it's good. The measurements are fine.

Richard Cox: They're okay. But it worked out, you have your kilt.

Oscar Wong: Yeah. We bought a whole bunch of expensive ... you know those things are very expensive, but ... we used it as a banner, we use our ... but then ... Fast forward a couple years, said we've outgrown it. Which is fine. We have tartan cloth, we brought them all down. We left one in Edinburgh initially and just had them shipped. But it's 10939, number 109 ... you go in there, there's 00:49:00the special tartan.

Richard Cox: That's awesome.

Oscar Wong: Yeah.

Richard Cox: That's great.

Oscar Wong: So it's historical now. She jumped on doing a few things that didn't hold up, but that doesn't matter.

Richard Cox: It's a learning process, no matter what stage it is.

Oscar Wong: Exactly. And now it's fine.

Richard Cox: Exactly, yeah. I think you said before, your current role at Highland is primarily you're doing a lot of community engagement and community outreach work, correct?

Oscar Wong: Yeah, I would say at least half.

Richard Cox: What's the other half?

Oscar Wong: I do things that she doesn't want to do.

Richard Cox: Fair enough. Right hand man.

Oscar Wong: I work on things. And then we talk and discuss a lot because although ... she can handle it, and she has good instincts, I think there's a kind of a comfort to be able to just bounce things off.

Richard Cox: Oh, yeah. Right.

Oscar Wong: Instead of "okay, here you go, I'm out of here." It's more like I'm out in the background, just available.

Richard Cox: Yeah, it's like what you were saying earlier about, you know, working with everyone and getting everyone's input, as long as you're not a jerk, and pulling together a team.

Oscar Wong: Oh yeah, yeah.

Richard Cox: Yeah, that's great.

Oscar Wong: I'm so proud of her. I think of it as a great working relationship.

Richard Cox: Awesome.

Oscar Wong: Which is not always the case with the second generation.

Richard Cox: Even, it feels like you had a ... at least internally, a secession planned for your business, is sometimes rare in this industry, it seems like where, when the founder's retiring, or wants to move onto something else, there's a lot of chaos, and "what's going to happen?" Or selling the brewery was always the plan.

Oscar Wong: Yeah. If she wasn't interested, I would have said, okay, next thing is either sell it outright, or to the staff or whatever.

Richard Cox: Right, yeah. Given all of that, how do you see Highland growing in the future?

Oscar Wong: I think we're both in sync at the moment with what she's thinking, 00:51:00which is what I feel like. Growth in and of itself is not a goal. Excellence, and growth in excellence, safety, the branding, to stand for something that's worthwhile is most important. I think we need to grow, not necessarily big growth. We could hold steady for quite a while, slight growth, that's okay. But we wanted to be considered a classy operation on all fronts, in terms of how we treat the people that work here, the kind of product we produce, the kind of marketing, the kind of image, the kind of connection with the community. And for her, community involvement is a key element, like it is for me. We're in sync on that.

Oscar Wong: The future? Becoming more and more a southeast icon. We have no interest in spreading out. Because it's so clear that reaching out of field, it doesn't work. Those days are over. The times for Sierra Nevada, and those ... In fact, some of them have tried it, Green Flash, the Chutes, they're backing off. It just doesn't work.

Richard Cox: It's a completely different environment from when they started with that plan.

Oscar Wong: Yes.

Richard Cox: Exactly. Which actually is a nice segue way into how do you feel the brewing scene at large has changed, or in the Asheville area, since you first went into business?

Oscar Wong: Oh my gosh.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Oscar Wong: There wasn't one when we started, and now it's kind of ... I would 00:53:00say overstocked. But there's still new ones coming on board, still coming on board. If they have a special niche, they'll be fine. A big part of it is that if you sell most of your beer on premise where you make it, then you don't have the retailer and the distributor margin, then you get the whole margin right to the consumer. It gives you a lot of leeway. We've never done that until we came here. I would say most towns see brewing as a community element that can give something for people to ... It's not highfalutin like wine is, and it's a very broad based beverage of choice.

Richard Cox: Right. Yeah. Tying into that, what would you say it's like to work in the craft brewing industry today?

Oscar Wong: Back in the early '90s when it started, it was kind of pioneering, no idea, trying to convince people that, although this is not Budweiser, Miller, or Coors, it's not really homemade swill, it's really drinkable. It took a while. And then, oh my god, that's bitter. It just, there's a lot of tastes that continued to change. Now, keep in mind there's 90%? Let me think. Over 80% of the beer is the big breweries still. Craft is not necessarily that big. Now we'll continue to make inroads, but I would say it's slowed down quite a bit. Now, the competition among the craft breweries have become really intense.

Oscar Wong: I didn't expect to find the big guys, number two, three, and eleven 00:55:00largest in the country to show up in our backyard. We were the 500 pound gorilla until they showed up. We had to up our game. We got ahead of the game here, that's true. We're still in the state and in the southeast, largest independently owned. That's not what we set out to do, we just did our thing.

Richard Cox: It's organic, right.

Oscar Wong: Right, exactly. That's how we feel comfortable, in organic growth. But we've had to up our game.

Richard Cox: Sure. You've been here since 1994, you've built trust in the community as well.

Oscar Wong: Yep.

Richard Cox: Which plays into it, I would think. Again, building on this, building these brewing industry questions, do you see any trends in the industry over the next five years, where you think things might be headed?

Oscar Wong: I would say, first of all, there will be some shakeout, there'll be continuing growth in numbers of breweries, but there will also be ... it'll be like restaurants. They keep opening up all the time, but a lot of them close. It's not because they don't have a good product or good service, it just gets saturated. They'll hit kind of a balance where those coming in, and those going out is kind of stabilized, as far as overall numbers.

Richard Cox: Sure.

Oscar Wong: Innovation in beer is going to continue. In fact, I'm proud of the fact that we're part of an industry that affected the beer in the rest of the world.

Richard Cox: Right. Right, exactly.

Oscar Wong: I remember they used to say, "You Americans, you don't know how to make beer." Now they're turned around and we've been innovative in beer styles and everything.

Richard Cox: That's actually something Uli was telling us, saying to us as well, 00:57:00he'd go back to Europe and he'd start seeing craft breweries showing up, doing New England IPAs in their own way, and it's like the float there ... it was really interesting to him as well. Yeah. What role do you feel breweries such as Highland have been playing in changes in Asheville over the years?

Oscar Wong: I think the changes have been significant. Keep in mind, there's a collaborative aspect. The brewing scene has grown in consort with the restaurant scene, the tourism, the hotels, the activities. It's all part of that ... what do you call it? Critical mass, where something gets going enough and kind of builds on itself. I think I feel like beer has played a big role in it.

Richard Cox: Yeah, in Asheville specifically.

Oscar Wong: Yeah, we became Beer City, USA.

Richard Cox: Exactly.

Oscar Wong: All right?

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Oscar Wong: Now did we deserve it? Not really, but we had some very enthusiastic folks that voted. Well, and Portland has never forgotten it. Because they thought they were a sure in.

Richard Cox: That's a problem right there.

Oscar Wong: Yeah, they thought they were a sure in. When we were declared to winner the first time out, it was a shock. And they were bitter about it, to this day they're ...

Richard Cox: Well and then Asheville won what, five years in a row, I think?

Oscar Wong: Well actually, I think they did it four times.

Richard Cox: Four, okay.

Oscar Wong: No, wait a minute, maybe you're right about five because the first, and the third or fourth, we were outright winners. We were tied a couple times.

Richard Cox: Oh, okay.

Oscar Wong: And then the last one, Founders, out of Michigan, Grand Rapids got it.

Richard Cox: Grand Rapids got it.

Oscar Wong: Then, by that time, Charlie Papazian, who came up with the idea, "Okay, we've been there done that, we're established." So we're kind of like, we can claim it.

Richard Cox: Yeah, there you are, exactly. Thinking about the local beer community, is there anything you would see as unique about southern beer, and North Carolina beer specifically, if it were compared to other regions or areas?

Oscar Wong: I think North Carolina beers are more broad-based than most. I believe that is partly due to the fact that the legislature was very forward-thinking about shifting gears, and in fact, Georgia, and South Carolina, and the rest of them are still struggling to say, okay, what kind of rules do we have? North Carolina is a little bit more open, and it allowed people to jump 01:00:00in. When you have a whole bunch of people jumping in, in order for them to survive, they got to come up with something a little different. So I think it's more broad-based.

Oscar Wong: Future, I think after this crazy Pop the Cap, and stouts, and vigorous kick your teeth in type of beer, they're going to go back. Our Pilsner, for instance, got a 96 rating nationally by Beer Connoisseur, and it's only one of the four beers in the country that are that height. Most anybody would love getting over 90. We got 96.

Oscar Wong: Ironically, when we first started, it wasn't a big seller, and we had to re-buy the yeast ... if you don't continue to make it, you got to start over. You can't keep the yeast viable. Well, we actually thought, the cost, and 01:01:00the volume isn't there. We said, we have to buy new yeast every time, and then next thing you know is, let's just back off on it. Well, it started to pick up. Our formulation is all German, and it's genuine, it's not faked. We're proud of it. It's now taking off.

Richard Cox: We're going to talk about you a little bit more now. Your story ... you're Chinese from Jamaica, who started a family business in engineering, moved onto another business, Highland, which has been very important in the area, have passed it onto your daughter. Do you have any particular thoughts about how you would think that your story ... because your story which is very American, do you think that your personal experiences have informed your work with Highland a 01:02:00lot? It's kind of a messy question, but it's really about the immigrant experience in a way.

Oscar Wong: I'm unabashed, pro-American, pro-freedom. One of the things that we have here that changes everything everywhere else, is a sense of freedom. We are free to fail. In much of the rest of the world, you're not free to try. Big difference. I believe that the American system is more akin to nature, in this way. In nature, new stuff ... nature's trying new things all the time. Got a lot of dead ends. Things like sickle cell anemia is really an answer to malaria. People that have sickle cell anemia are immune to malaria. Cystic fibrosis, it's an answer to a problem, but with a dead end.

Oscar Wong: Well, American capitalism is that way. There are a lot of dead ends, but there's a lot of innovation, you're free to give it a shot. When people will spend a lifetime trying to figure out how to improve a flush in a toilet because if you're successful, you're set. This is an amazing, innovative cauldron that the rest of the world sucks on all the time. I remember in high school, I used to get Popular Mechanics, which is an American magazine. I used to get Time Magazine. I marveled at the ... I loved the back sections. There's little gadgets to answer all kinds of stuff. Regardless. It just amazed me.

Oscar Wong: And then when I came up and I spent holiday time in South Dakota. 01:04:00These guys came from a farm, going to college, we're home from college. They'd get up at 6:30, 6:00, work the farm while they were home for two weeks, and then they'd join us at 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon, and go raise hell in the bars. They could fix anything. It's just amazing.

Richard Cox: It is amazing. You also participated in a panel discussion at the Smithsonian in November of 2017?

Oscar Wong: Yeah, with Uli, and Bow out of Richmond, and what's her name out of ... she's not an immigrant, but she's tied in with some black operations in South Africa. Out of Harlem.

Richard Cox: And that was specifically about-

Oscar Wong: The immigrant.

Richard Cox: The immigrant experience in-

Oscar Wong: Experience, yeah.

Richard Cox: What was the panel like?

Oscar Wong: Uli stole the show. He's very erudite and smooth.

Richard Cox: Off the cuff.

Oscar Wong: He speaks intelligibly about things easily. Has a great story to tell. I was absolutely honored to be on it. It just ... big time to be included in that group. What does it mean? I'm part of the Smithsonian History of Beer.

Richard Cox: Right. Well, I mean, it is the history of beer. You know, I mean-

Oscar Wong: And I'm in it.

Richard Cox: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Central in ... yeah, exactly. The fun and sometimes hard questions, what's your favorite beer from a North Carolina brewery other than Highland?

Oscar Wong: Favorite other than Highland. Oh, let's see now. I would say the ... it's a local ... it's ... the Wedge makes some ... you know, Carl Melissas, I 01:06:00don't think he does all that great on a six percent, for some reason if you get it past seven to eight percent, he's on his game.

Richard Cox: Some people do high octane.

Oscar Wong: Yeah. He's got that dialed in.

Richard Cox: Yeah, that's great. What would you say ... I bet I know the answer to this one. What would you say is Highland's flagship or signature beer? Not necessarily your favorite, but when people think Highland.

Oscar Wong: Gaelic. Gaelic.

Richard Cox: It's Gaelic, yeah.

Oscar Wong: It was Celtic initially.

Richard Cox: Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah.

Oscar Wong: But within a year of our starting up, I got this letter from Bert Grand in Oregon said, hey, we got the rights to this name. I thought, "how can you have the rights?" Anyway.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Oscar Wong: So give me six months, we'll get rid of our stuff, and they said fine. So we scrambled around. Celtic is more often referred to the people, and 01:07:00Gaelic to the language.

Richard Cox: Gaelic's a much more unique name anyway. I think it's got a ring.

Oscar Wong: Yeah.

Richard Cox: Which brings us to, what's your favorite Highland beer? If you could ...

Oscar Wong: My regular standard favorite is Oatmeal Porter. It just kind of is a balanced thing that fits my palate. The kids know it too. I try all the different ones, or I try to try all the different ones. But there's so many.

Richard Cox: Changes often, yeah.

Oscar Wong: There's one up there that I still haven't hit yet, is the ... a bourbon barrel ... forget, imperial ... 14.8%.

Richard Cox: That'll be-

Oscar Wong: Right at the limit.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Oscar Wong: Now, everybody that's tasted it said it does not taste anywhere near 14.8, it's very smooth.

Richard Cox: That's dangerous.

Oscar Wong: Yeah, that's exactly right. That's why I haven't had it yet.

Richard Cox: I can't blame you too much.