Oral history interview with Tim Schaller, 2021

Richard Cox : To start, could you please say and spell your name?

Tim Schaller: My name is Tim Schaller, T-I-M S-C-H-A-L-L-E-R.

Richard Cox : Okay and today is Tuesday, June 22nd, 2021. I'm Richard Cox talking today with Tim Schaller, owner of Wedge Brewing Company in Asheville as a part of the Well Crafted NC Project. To start, could you please tell us a little bit about yourself?

Tim Schaller: Well, I moved here from New York in '95. When I was in New York, I had a health food store that I'm still proud of because it's an independent and it's 45-years-old and still there. I have nothing to do with it, but it's the fact that it's still there I like.

Tim Schaller: I was a carpenter contractor when I was there. I worked on old oiling houses and such and so Sag Harbor is in Moby Dick, it's a great old town 00:01:00but it's now part of the Hamptons. It was the un-Hampton and I suffered through that for about five years and I came here to be part of the problem.

Richard Cox : What brought you here?

Tim Schaller: I was one of those go to Colorado, go to Washington State, go to lots of places and I was with a friend that was doing a color puncture workshop, which probably speaks a lot about Asheville and I found an old building in Montford, which is a historic district that was part of Highland Hospital and fell in love with the building and bought it to renovate it, thinking I would just go back and forth and do the project but for anybody that was here in that time, that's when Hector [Diaz] had Salsa's [restaurant] just started and Hale was there.

Tim Schaller: That was pretty unique and more unique than now. I just kept coming back and forth and realized I was working there and living here and so 00:02:00I'm still here.

Richard Cox : Yeah. How did you become interested in the brewing industry?

Tim Schaller: My pad answer is it was 18 to drink in New York. Therefore, you could get into bars at 16 or 17. I also worked in the deli. I realized that they sold Harp and Lowenbrau. When you snuck beer out the back, you could drink better beer. Then I'm trying to figure out what year Anchor Steam actually got to the East Coast, but that, for me was the first craft beer that got east.

Tim Schaller: I was always an intrigued with it and probably, for the industry when I moved here in '95, Oscar [Wong] had started in '94 at Barley's and Be Here Now was across the street, which was amazing music venue and stuff. That was like, okay, it can be done. You know?

Tim Schaller: Then when in 2004 Green Man opened Dirty Jacks, so you could drink 00:03:00in the brewery, so you could physically see it.

Richard Cox : Right.

Tim Schaller: More and more, I'm a serial entrepreneur. I've done lots of things. I always try to want to know how they work. How does that system work? Just watching it, I realized I could probably do this.

Richard Cox : What led you for interest in the industry to actually starting Wedge in 2008?

Tim Schaller: Right. I think that the whole process started in 2006.

Richard Cox : Okay.

Tim Schaller: It was really still at Dirty Jack's. John Payne, who owned the Wedge studios building at the time and a lot of local people were drinking there and John was trying to fill up his building. John's whole deal with the building was meet an artist, find out what they did and then talk about rent.

Tim Schaller: He was trying to get [unclear] in the upstairs space was one of 00:04:00the reasons and just the whole idea intrigued him also. He had a lot of space, so we just kept talking. My thing with projects is you can chase the dream and until you have to put up the money.

Tim Schaller: My feeling is you have to have the intention that you're going to do it. At some point, you might go, "That's stupid. I'm not doing it." If you go the other way around, you can't do it.

Richard Cox : Right.

Tim Schaller: In 2006 and seven, you could still get equity out of buildings. I could take my building that I turned into a healing center and rent it out and all this kind of stuff and get money out of it. They gave me money and I asked Carl, "What will the system cost?" Because I was a total novice at this whole deal. He came back to me with this. "Well, it's going to be", he gave me the price and it was real cheap by comparison to now.

Tim Schaller: The whole deal was it has to be now because this is the system. It's not a generic system. That led to going to Jacksonville, Florida buying the system, taking apart the system, swinging it out over the, whatever the river is there, St John's river and putting it in trucks. It had been shipped from a specific mechanical to there in four tractor trailers.

Tim Schaller: I got it back up in three by knowing how to load the trucks better than they did. Then we owned a system and we had a place to rent, but I still wasn't convinced because it's the system I knew was worth in part, I could get my money back. We just kept going. At some point in there, we were just, "Okay, this is going to actually work."

Richard Cox : Yeah.

Tim Schaller: That's the, the beginning.

Richard Cox : That's great. You selected the River Arts District for the location and Wedge studio space as your initial location. What led you to select?

Tim Schaller: I think was I was more selected.

Richard Cox : Okay.

Tim Schaller: Because if you knew John, he had an ulterior motive in a good way and he's actually on pictures around the wall right there. It worked for him. I fell in love with the building, the living in New York. I had a rent control apartment in Little Italy or on the edge of Little Italy and the edge of Soho.

Tim Schaller: Soho, in those early days was amazing. It was that same kind of feeling. The building was full of artists. The area was full of artists and not a whole lot else. It was dirty gritty and there's nothing not to like.

Tim Schaller: Once I got there, I said, "Okay, this was a playground." I thought we were opening an old man's bar, generic, it could be women and we'd have a few people there and a lot of trucks going out and all of a sudden people showed up.

Richard Cox : Which is great. You already talked about just the grit of it as being something you enjoyed. Is there anything you really loved about that building itself?

Tim Schaller: Well, I love old buildings. We're in the other one now and this one, I came in knowing what it was. That one, I really didn't know the history so much the space we were in. I mean, I learned some of it because when the space we were in had these numbers on the wall and when I investigated that, it's where they hung the hogs. Then I realized by being outside, that there was railroad tracks that weren't there anymore, that rolled up to the building.

Tim Schaller: For me, that building the history unfolded a lot more as I was there.

Richard Cox : Right.

Tim Schaller: Rather than just be there. I mean, it's a great old building, so you don't make them anymore. I've always liked that.

Richard Cox : Yeah. You mentioned that they hung the hogs in this building, so this was a tannery, I think you mentioned.

Tim Schaller: Well, no. The hogs were really, it had probably the skins from those hogs ended up here.

Richard Cox : Okay.

Tim Schaller: They hung them there, but what was happening, the farmers would bring stuff to that. It was Farmers' Federation. It was a cooperative. It was actually John Eggers, who is our legislature right now. It's his wife's family that started that section of that building.

Tim Schaller: The first section was started by, do you know who Gospel Jerry [Sternberg] is? He writes the column for the Mountain Express? His grandfather, that building's in two sections and he built the first section.

Richard Cox : Okay.

Tim Schaller: There was two different industries in there.

Richard Cox : Oh wow.

Tim Schaller: The hogs and vegetables and chickens and everything else came in and came out.

Richard Cox : Oh, awesome. Can you speak a little bit to the process of the renovation of the building, how long it took and what were some of the ways that you maintained the character of the space?

Tim Schaller: Well, I used to work on old whaling houses and renovation is the correct word, not restoration because nobody wants their bathrooms taken out of their house and have an outhouse outside. For that one, I think keeping the the spirit was more. John had already had the building for a while and if you look at that building all over the place, there's stuff that he did, like the the patio outside has his fence on it.

Tim Schaller: It was more his feeling than the original feeling of the building, though he didn't change the feeling of the building, but he added to it.

Richard Cox : Right.

Tim Schaller: I feel like we that's what we did. People want to call it steam punk, but that's not good enough for the what's going on there.

Richard Cox : Yeah. Right.

Tim Schaller: When we started doing outside seating, which was necessary, because people were sitting on rocks wherever they were. We took whatever metal 00:10:00we could find and tried to make tables. One day we were welding four legs to a table and John came along and said, "That'll work", but everything's an opportunity.

Tim Schaller: That's more of what we've tried to stick to, or I've tried to stick to is rather than rush through it, will you be proud of this later?

Richard Cox : Yeah. Got it. It sounds like your history as a carpenter is playing in a lot, just from what you said.

Tim Schaller: Yeah. I know how to do stuff. I don't know how to weld, but I know people, tell them what to do,

Richard Cox : Which is important.

Tim Schaller: Right.

Richard Cox : Did you, along the way, work with any preservation societies?

Tim Schaller: Nope.

Richard Cox : Just you?

Tim Schaller: Yep. No, I did a lot of renovations in Montford and so I have a different take on the preservation society here. I'll go no further.

Richard Cox : That's a fair answer.

Tim Schaller: Not the Preservation society, they're good. No, it's a different governmental thing and I'm not anti-government.

Richard Cox : Absolutely. How did you think about the space as you were creating it? Did you have a particular goal for the feeling or vibe of the space?

Tim Schaller: Probably almost just answered that, but really, my thing is just each moment you can follow what should happen next in a way, if you can go back to it. Yeah, to not tremendously change it and to lean into what you've got. If you've been in the bar, there's a big window that looks at the patio, that window wasn't there.

Tim Schaller: We physically cut that out and put steel in there, but hopefully it still looks like it was already there. To try to do that.

Richard Cox : Yeah. It sounds like one of your goals was actually honor the history of the space itself while you're working on it.

Tim Schaller: Yeah.

Richard Cox : Were there any particular challenges you faced when your first opening Wedge?

Tim Schaller: Well, the first one is money. You think you have enough money. I 00:12:00had enough money to buy a system. Luckily, Dirty Jacks had a good crew of people that hung out there and because Carl had been the brewer, they were going to follow him there anyway. It was fairly easy to raise some money. That was challenging. The legal parts, I give credit to Doug Riley at Asheville Brewing, because I didn't know Mike [Rangel] yet.

Tim Schaller: Like I say, I feel like I can always figure out systems, but sometimes it's better to ask somebody who's been through it and he was totally forthcoming. The biggest challenge is on the dock over there, there's a roof that you sit under. The railroad owns everything up to the building, including the dock.

Richard Cox : Okay.

Tim Schaller: To get that dock, I had to work out a lease with the railroad, which was fairly difficult so that I could build the roof. In order to 00:13:00physically do the roof, I had to take down all these wires and all this crap that had been there forever. I leaned a ladder up against it, fell, crushed this wrist, crushed a vertebrae.

Tim Schaller: For six months, I was walking around a plastic shell and a T-shirt, sweating and nasty. That was a challenge.

Richard Cox : And trying to open a business. Wow.

Tim Schaller: And try to sell beer, walking around town, not being able to lift anything.

Richard Cox : Yeah, wow.

Tim Schaller: With a growler and pour, buy my beer looking like some kind of geek.

Richard Cox : But you got it done.

Tim Schaller: Right.

Richard Cox : Since you opened that initial location at the Arts district, how has Wedge grown since that time?

Tim Schaller: Well, I mean over there, it grew every year, just the numbers got bigger. I had to work out enough bathrooms for people using the old freight elevator and stuff like that. That part, it was good, healthy growth, which 00:14:00allows us to just make beer and not worry about it. The money was coming in and not really have to think much, but this opportunity came around '17. That was the next growth thing.

Tim Schaller: Having a second location and realizing the real estate values here had made it harder to do events and the need for events allowed us to do a place with events over there. You can squeeze in 40 people inside. That was the growth was to come over here.

Richard Cox : Okay. What would you say your role as an owner is?

Tim Schaller: Presently?

Richard Cox : Yeah. What do you do, right? Yeah.

Tim Schaller: The godfather of mentor acquiesce. No, I have a really brilliant general manager now. Luis is wonderful. I've learned basically to allow somebody 00:15:00to be in control, you have to get out of the way. He came in with a staff that wasn't my staff. You could physically feel it. You'd tell them to do something, they'd look over, "Is that what we're doing?"

Tim Schaller: I've had to learn that pivot.

Richard Cox : Yeah. Was it difficult?

Tim Schaller: We meet sometimes. He holds his ground. I'm like, "All right."

Richard Cox : Good. Was it difficult letting that little bit of control?

Tim Schaller: Oh yeah.

Richard Cox : You built it.

Tim Schaller: Yeah. Well, I like control. I think I know what is best. Maturity comes late at life.

Richard Cox : Yes. How would you describe your average week? You can compare then to now if you like.

Tim Schaller: I'm here five to six days a week, but it doesn't have to be. I can 00:16:00go home and take a nap in the middle of the day. I'm going to be 75 in a month. It's like, okay, I'm learning to do that.

Richard Cox : Yeah.

Tim Schaller: Trying to figure out to fit in, where can I add something to it, even if it's weeding the garden. It's a good thing to do. Yeah, I do a lot, but it doesn't have to be up front.

Richard Cox : Right. Great. What was Asheville like when you first opened Wedge?

Tim Schaller: In 2008, I was trying to look at the numbers actually for that. Asheville has really only grown like 10% since then, but it's a whole lot different. It's just a whole lot more intense, a lot busier. Most of my time was down here, not downtown.

Richard Cox : Okay. Right.

Tim Schaller: That was real community local. It was really that feeling all the time. I did have to talk to bartenders a lot about just because we were local 00:17:00doesn't mean that a person who you don't know who you're calling a tourist, isn't somebody who's a nice person.

Tim Schaller: There was a real good balance of people that found their way down here and people that were local or are local.

Richard Cox : Right. How would you describe Wedge Brewing to people who are unaware of the brewery?

Tim Schaller: Come down and check it out and get your own feeling. Actually, so I was just at the Old Marshall Jail [Hotel] and spent Sunday night there, because Josh, who did that, was one of our original bartenders. I own part of the Wedge building now. He's one of my tenants. He had a place there before me and sitting in there, drinking beer late. People come in there and they know they like it. They just don't know why.

Tim Schaller: Really it is about coming down there and getting your own feel for it.

Richard Cox : Yeah.

Tim Schaller: I can brag about, we have great beer, so it's enough reason to 00:18:00come down. I do see some people that come in and like they were told it was really cool. They can't figure it out like, okay, next.

Richard Cox : Other than great beer, what do you see as the main mission or theme of Wedge?

Tim Schaller: It's to respect the artist, community that accepted us here and actually behind me is Julie On Brewster's. She's a tenant in the Wedge building and we have this little, during the pandemic in that window over there, we did this little shadow box show of her art. We come in every day, open the window and you can see her art from the outside when you couldn't come inside and through Venmo, she's selling her art.

Tim Schaller: Then I'll do shows in that room in there and also just appreciating the community, support the community. It's probably a later 00:19:00question, but my thing with even starting an old man's bar, I really like coffee shops and bars because you can sit and have a conversation.

Richard Cox : Right.

Tim Schaller: I think that at the Wedge, it's been intergenerational, people can come there and everybody's there. You can have honest conversation. I do think a lot comes out of that.

Richard Cox : Right. Yeah, and art, and I think you just sort of gotten to this where the arts district at South Slope, for example, is a completely different neighborhood with a different vibe all together.

Tim Schaller: Yeah. South Slope was named and created to be that way. River Arts District was named by the artists. I didn't always get a get along with Jonas Gerard but he would always say, "Don't say RAD, say River Arts District", because people from out of town would come to the RAD and know it's the arts 00:20:00district, that happens to be by the dirty river.

Richard Cox : Right. How would you describe your locations and spaces?

Tim Schaller: Well, they're both the same industrial. Here, it's obviously the graffiti was here before us. Unique is probably the word, but that's easy for anybody to do. Back to what I was saying, you really have to come here to experience it, but I'm pretty proud of the creation. That's all.

Richard Cox : Yeah.

Tim Schaller: We do pay homage to John maybe more than some. It's just staying in the feeling of what this place was and is, and it's tricky because you can try to do things right and is it marketing or is it just, this is what you want to do?

Richard Cox : Right.

Tim Schaller: I'm always like, "All right, do it right. And it works out."

Richard Cox : Yeah. So, 2020 was a year of challenges for the brewing industry due to COVID 19 pandemic. How did you all approach these challenges? Do you see the decision that you've made affecting the business model in the future?

Tim Schaller: Right. That's a long question.

Richard Cox : It is a long question.

Tim Schaller: I think the first part was shock. Literally, I was right here when we made the decision. Okay, we've got to close. The classic was, I had a phone that had a crack on it, right? At the beginning, because they didn't tell us it was airborne, everybody was wiping everything. Because all of my bartenders need to take care of me, so they took the isopropyl and wiped my phone. My phone was destroyed.

Tim Schaller: Then I was at a place where I couldn't go to Verizon and get a new phone. It was kind of great. It was like six weeks of no phone, but it wasn't. I had to communicate with the government and get PPP and blah, blah blah.

Tim Schaller: That six weeks was wonderful. My wife is a poet. I had this funky place in our house that this will be a great writing studio. It's like, "No, this is a place you should rip out." Six weeks later it was a writing studio. That part was wonderful.

Tim Schaller: Then we came up for air and we just figured out how to sell out that window, figured out how to deliver real fast. We had a small crew that really pivoted wonderfully and just kept adapting and adapting. We had some people who didn't like it and didn't like the change. We've had a few personality changes, which it's a bad joke, but why divorce is expensive because it's worth it.

Tim Schaller: We lost a couple of people and moved on. We've done a lot of 00:23:00changes, a lot of pivoting and we've gotten to a really good place, what we're doing now. It's also because Luis, he was already here. He stepped up big time. He's a numbers person. I'm really like, as much as I can hold here as I get older, it's like, I just can't hold all that.

Tim Schaller: Spreadsheets, all that we never did that. Really we've adapted to, okay, what do we need? The interesting issue of the moment is we went from 60% from 12 months or whatever it was to April, this is compared to '19 to about 105 or 110%. If you're running the business smarter, which we were, you're making less beer. Now it's like, where's the beer?

Richard Cox : Oh, right.

Tim Schaller: Now, the new challenge is to crank up brewing.

Richard Cox : Which you have luckily done in the past, right?

Tim Schaller: Yeah. We will actually buy in some to tanks and all that stuff too.

Richard Cox : Great. What role do you feel breweries, such as Wedge have played in the changes in Asheville?

Tim Schaller: Well, I was president of the ABA when Beer City came in and when Ken Grossman came in and when New Belgium came in. It was a lot of, obviously, tourists and economic growth from that. The early times, I feel like I said, already, a place for people to meet and intermingle and talk about what they want Asheville to be and all that.

Tim Schaller: Obviously, it's increased the tourism for good or bad. It's definitely increased it. How we adapt to that is important going forward, but yeah.

Richard Cox : Great. What are some examples of the types of community engagement work that you all have done?

Tim Schaller: We've done it forever? Mike Sule, who has Asheville on Bikes was 00:25:00also an early bartender. We were lucky enough to have every one of the Asheville on Bikes thing for a while. Actually, we took him away from Andy [Dahm] at French Broad. He's no longer with them, but he's still my friend. We've worked with Greenworks. We've worked with the River Keeper.

Tim Schaller: Actually, I'm on the board of BizWorks. They use this place here. We've done all the fundraisers for just economics, which is getting more important here. We've always had the space to do it and now we have that room to do it and it actually works out because it brings people. It's not a detriment but it feels great.

Richard Cox : Yeah. Other than the addition of more tanks, how do you see Wedge growing in the future?

Tim Schaller: Well, we've just announced a couple of weeks ago, we're going down to the arcade, which is Grove arcade. It may be that's the way to go. The idea of doing a lot of canning and trying to get them in grocery stores has never been appealing to me and financially, it's a different world. Some people can do it well, but I do think it's going to take the haves and have-nots a little bit. When I even thought about it, I looked at, okay, you sell to Charlotte. Well Asheville is selling to Charlotte, but Richmond selling to Charlotte, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Tim Schaller: The distributors will give you money or lend you money at a low rate, but then definitely might go out with the next pretty girl that comes around and all of a sudden, you're sitting.

Tim Schaller: It doesn't matter. I don't like it, but somebody wants to do it and they buy it and do it that's okay. It may be we find other appropriate 00:27:00places to go to. We're good at selling retail beer. We've sold to a lot of restaurants right in the beginning. My job was to go out and find accounts because I thought that's what we were doing.

Tim Schaller: Then at some point, I had to go back and apologize to a lot of people when we pulled it back in. Jimmy Rinse might not mind it, but I was selling there and I sat down with him and said, "Look, we're not going to sell very much wholesale anymore. I can make four or $5 a pint to, whatever we're getting from you."

Tim Schaller: I said, you've, "You've started me going" because at that time, Barleys was the king maker. If you get there. I knew his wife before I knew Jimmy [Rentz, owner of Barley's Taproom & Pizzeria] and it's like, I met him at Lowe's. He said, "When you're ready, come down", blah, blah, blah. I said, "We had four taps". I told Jimmy, "Okay, we're going to stop. I will send you Iron 00:28:00Rail because that's what you sell. He said, "No, four taps are nothing". I said, "I'm going to tell you again". He said the same thing. I said, "Thank you."

Richard Cox : Yeah.

Tim Schaller: We know how to do retail but Jimmy did help us get going. Nine Miles, we still sell to them because our marketing thing has been, if you sell a beer and whoever's serving you might tell you about the brewery. Then they come down here.

Tim Schaller: That's what I think the arcade will be also. Sell it to them, let them know if a tourist comes in and there just haven't been out of town yet. Here's a reason to go down there.

Richard Cox : Right.

Tim Schaller: There will be other opportunities like that, but we're not in a rush. If they come around all right.

Richard Cox : Great. Do you have any particular reflections when you look back at the years of Wedge?

Tim Schaller: Yeah. That I'm really lucky now and I mean that. In the moment, 00:29:00you do it and then all of a sudden, it's like, you got to community, you got friends. The fact that you're interviewing me is quite absurd. You know what I mean?

Tim Schaller: I used to be a carpenter in my mind was the same. I knew lots of really smart stuff, but you wouldn't have interviewed me. That's crazy. It's given me another sense of purpose, you know? I started it when I was 60.

Richard Cox : Yeah, it's a story of adulthood.

Tim Schaller: I just played golf with a friend of mine who I've known from New York for 40 years and he's not working. He's not so smart no more. They slow down.

Richard Cox : What is it like to work in the craft brewing industry today?

Tim Schaller: Well, compared to when we started, it was much smaller when Sierra 00:30:00[Nevada Brewing Company] came in, there was eight of us or nine of us, I guess, with Craggie [Brewing Company]. They flew us out to Chico and all that. It was a plane ride with friends and a pretty amazing couple of weeks with friends. It's a much bigger group now. It's a lot more business than it was before.

Tim Schaller: I'm glad to be in it. We've had to pivot and make beers that like, "We don't make those kind of beers". Oh yes we do. We listen to the patrons and all that kind of stuff. It's different, but it's still good. It's not compared to a lot of things. I couldn't be banging nails at 75. Thank you very much.

Richard Cox : Where do you see the brewing industry going in the next three to 00:31:00five years?

Tim Schaller: Yeah, it's interesting. I feel like we replaced, like I say, my drinking in New York at 18, it was old man's bars and things I like, so breweries have obviously replaced that everywhere. Now, it's even to a larger scale, even replacing the Magnolia that used to be downtown and the big bars are suddenly breweries.

Tim Schaller: I don't know. We're doing an alcohol seltzer, but we're using herbs and stuff from a local farmer rather than just put a grapefruit in there. I do think taking that all in will be part of it, manufacturing the product. Will everybody survive or will they be bought up by somebody or just go away?

Tim Schaller: Hopefully there's still the Zebulons of the world out there, the 00:32:00small, really creative places. Like Mike [Karnowski] is ... he wanted to root for us in the beginning and he went to Green Man, because we didn't have space. I hope that still exists because I know there's some people that really know that they're going to grow and that's what they want to do. I don't know.

Richard Cox : Yeah.

Tim Schaller: I don't have to worry about it either.

Richard Cox : No, no. Is, is there anything you see unique about North Carolina beer?

Tim Schaller: I think that probably it's new, you know what I mean? The whole industry here, the Southern beer is new.

Richard Cox : Right.

Tim Schaller: I think it's still finding its way. I think there's a lot of trial and error doing stuff, trying to find an identity. I don't think that we have an identity yet. Carl was definitely the radio shack of brewers. He could take a known entity and copy it. There was nothing really unique about the beers that 00:33:00we made, maybe the Iron Rail being the hybrid of a real English with a lot more strength to it and a little bit of West Coast, that kind of blending.

Tim Schaller: I don't think we're there yet. I think that's what's unique about it, that we're making a lot and, and in a real new phase of it.

Richard Cox : Right. Do you have a favorite beer from North Carolina brewery, other than Wedge?

Tim Schaller: Yes.

Richard Cox : Do you?

Tim Schaller: I do.

Richard Cox : Okay.

Tim Schaller: Sierra Pale.

Richard Cox : Sierra Pale.

Tim Schaller: I know it's a cheap answer.

Richard Cox : It is not a cheap answer.

Tim Schaller: I like Zillicoah lagers. I don't get down there much. They make good, clean beer. I'm a lager drinker.

Richard Cox : Yeah. What would you say Wedge is? I think you have already said this, but what would you say is Wedge's flagship or signature beer?

Tim Schaller: It's Iron Rail. I mean, we've won the best IPA in Asheville for eight or nine years and all that stuff. It is interesting because it used to be 00:34:0060%. It's probably 30%, because we have more variety and you have more people from out of town and so it's not dominant, but we can sell it to any restaurant and all that stuff.

Richard Cox : Yeah. What's your favorite beer from Wedge?

Tim Schaller: Julian Price Pilsner.

Richard Cox : Tell me about it.

Tim Schaller: Well, I'll tell you about Julian Price first.

Richard Cox : Perfect. Let's start there.

Tim Schaller: Asheville would not be Asheville without Julian Price. Julian Price, there's a spot on the Blue Ridge Parkway named after his grandfather, not him. He was the hippie grandson, and went to California, heading for the coast, stopped here and stayed here.

Tim Schaller: He gave Hector my friend, Hector Diaz, money on a napkin. I'm on the BizWorks board and credit committee because he basically started that micro enterprise. My reason for being on the credit committee is the Hector factor. If 00:35:00you know, Hector, would he be given money now? If the Hector that walked in then, so to have that spirit. So he gave money. Malaprops wouldn't be there. RiverLink wouldn't be there. There wouldn't be an Orange Peel. It goes down the line on all the things and these were early creations.

Tim Schaller: We named the beer after him, just like we named the pale after John Payne, just like we named Bacoate's Cream Ale because Matt Bacoate ran a black business in the Wedge building in the sixties and it was the largest African American-run business in south at the time.

Tim Schaller: Naming things after history, as the bartenders have to learn and tell you the story. It's also that Pilsner is a very clean, crisp ale. pFriem's 00:36:00[Family Brewers] makes one out in Hood, Oregon that's comparable, but other than that, it none exists.

Richard Cox : That's great.

Tim Schaller: Not that I'm proud of it.

Richard Cox : It sounds like it's a beer that brings together your love of history and your love of clean lagers and beers.

Tim Schaller: Right.

Richard Cox : Awesome. That's all I've got. Is there anything you'd like to add?

Tim Schaller: I don't know. No, I don't think so.

Richard Cox : Okay. Great.

Tim Schaller: We didn't talk about this building.

Richard Cox : Tell me about this building, foundation.

Tim Schaller: We're sitting in the foundation location, which we started four years ago and this building was the largest tannery in the United States in the thirties. It hit a fire, a flood and then the depression. That's probably enough. This one we could think about the renovation. It was an expensive renovation, but the tanks right there are where the vats were. It's easier to 00:37:00tell the story. The building was totally distressed and yeah, it's a wonderful location. The garden outside is really wonderful. Matt Sprouse, who's a landscape guy and actually, he does a lot of commercial sites. He had gotten to do the back of the house visit, what's the thing in New York, the Highland? The thing that's the train trestle tour. Do you know? You don't know? Okay.

Richard Cox : None of us can think of it. There's a group of history people here and none of us can pull this together.

Tim Schaller: It's the tour that you can take that's a walk around the edge of the city, a highline.

Richard Cox : Highline.

Tim Schaller: Is that right? Anyway, he did that. When renovated this building, 00:38:00a lot of the floors were taken out. If you go outside, you'll see that there's all this stacked up concrete or urbanite. That's the seating. I'm, I'm really proud of this renovation and my brain doesn't pull up what the real name of that place was. You can edit that.

Richard Cox : Oh, we'll get it, don't worry.

Tim Schaller: That's it. Is there anything else you need?

Richard Cox : No, I think it was great. Thank you so much for your time.

Tim Schaller: Okay.

Richard Cox : I appreciate it.

Tim Schaller: Okay.