Oral history interview with Eric Peck, 2022

Erin Lawrimore:

To start, can we have you say and spell your name?

Eric Peck:

My name is Eric Peck. I spell it E-R-I-C P-E-C-K.

Erin Lawrimore:

Awesome. My name-

Eric Peck:

Yes. Nailed it.

Erin Lawrimore:

You got it right.

Eric Peck:

One for one.

Erin Lawrimore:

My name is Erin Lawrimore. I'm here at Radar Brewing Company in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Today is Thursday, October the 20th, 2022. We are here with Eric Peck. Eric, to start off, can you give us a little bit about your background? Where are you from, and what was the long road that got you here?

Eric Peck:

I'm from New York. Out of high school. I moved to the city to pursue acting. I went to school for acting. I went to Marymount Manhattan College in the city. 00:01:00Got my bachelor's there. After that, just tried to make a go of it as an actor. In doing that, you do a lot of bartending. You do a lot of bartending. You do a lot of catering, just a lot of service work and odd jobs and stuff like that. A friend that I went to school with had started, the very end of college or a little bit after, had started working at Brooklyn Brewery. Brooklyn Brewery, at the time, just the tap room business wasn't open very often. It was open Friday, Saturday, Sunday. We didn't have huge crowds or anything. Nobody, as tourists, went out to the outer boroughs. You would just stay in Manhattan. Nobody went out to the outer boroughs. It was just a spot out in the middle of nowhere, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, but there were a lot of hipsters. There were a lot of artists there. They supported, on a small scale, the tap room there, at least 00:02:00those three days a week.

Anyhow, he started to bartend there, and then got other people. As jobs opened up, as bartending shifts opened up, he got some of his other friends from school to start bartending over there. Then he started giving tours over there. Eventually, moved into the marketing department. His name was Brian Dochney. Eventually, moved into the marketing department for a little bit. For me, I started working random bartending shifts over there. Beertending is a great entry level job because you don't have to have a knowledge base really to be able to do it. You grow with the knowledge base, and you figure out how to pour beers. You figure out how to change kegs, and you figure out how to talk about beer.

Slowly, Brooklyn, over time, over the time I was there, it got more into, along with everybody else .... This would've been ... I started college 2001, 00:03:00graduated 2005, started working at Brooklyn about 2005 or 2006. Over the time I was there ... and I ended up being there for eight years ... education in beer started to really become a thing. It was just something that we did, and not every place had a tap room. But all of a sudden, as more and more breweries started to open up, it was a big deal, when I was there, when the US reached 3000 breweries. It was this huge milestone. "Oh, my God. There are 3000 breweries in the US." As more breweries opened up, everybody had tap rooms as a part of their business model in a way that they didn't necessarily when I first started working in the industry.

Anyway, it started out with some random bartending gigs and then graduated from that to bartending more often, then to giving tours, then to becoming a tasting room manager there. Then we would do some small batch tours. We did off-premise events in and around New York. It just grew slowly as I was trying to do 00:04:00something else. The cool thing about Brooklyn is that we all had similar backgrounds, where one of the founders, Steve Hindy, was a foreign war correspondent, and a bunch of people that worked at the company, they were performing artists, and musicians, and photographers, and visual artists. There was just a very artistic culture within the company, people having other passions that they were pursuing while also finding this enjoyment working in the craft beer industry that also inherently had this creative energy to it, this creative force to it. Garrett Oliver, another one, brewmaster there, was an NYU film student. Just naturally that was a part of the company there. That's my 00:05:00background. That's how I got into it.

Then my wife, who's from here in Winston-Salem, we had our first daughter in New York. She was a year and a half when we decided it was just time for us to move out of the city. A job opened up at School of the Arts in the dance costume shop, and that's what she is in. She's in costuming. We moved from New York, down here. At the same time that we moved down here, Foothills was opening up a tasting room at their production site. They hired me to open up that tasting room. I was there for about five years. I met my partner, Aaron Wall, there. He left when I was still there, to go from Foothills to Wicked Weed. With another good friend of his, they decided to open up their own place. They were going to open up Radar Brewing Company. The one thing that was missing between the two of them was experience in running a tap room and the front of house side of things, 00:06:00or the retail side of things, or the sales side of things. So I got brought onto the team. Then we opened up Radar in ... I ended up leaving Foothills in 2019, I think, the very beginning of 2019. Then we opened up Radar at the very beginning of 2020, January of 2020.

Erin Lawrimore:

We'll get back to the excitement of 2020.

Eric Peck:

So good. So fun. Character-building year.

Erin Lawrimore:

Exactly.

Eric Peck:

For sure. Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore:

Let's talk a little bit more about Foothills though, the work that went into opening the tasting room. That was the Kimwell facility?

Eric Peck:

Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore:

What were some of the biggest challenges that you faced with that job?

Eric Peck:

It was interesting because, especially having ... At that point, I had already worked in the beer industry for eight or nine years. One of the biggest challenges was coming from that culture and that experience, to Winston, because 00:07:00at the time, Winston didn't have brewery tap room culture. They had the Foothills Pub downtown, so there were definitely people that were getting more familiar with craft beer. But then there was Small Batch that also felt like a brew pub, and there was Hoots that that felt like a bar, felt more like a local bar than a brewery. There was no big brewery production tap room culture in Winston yet.

When we opened up, a lot of people didn't know what we did out at this tasting room. You know what I mean? "What do you do? Do you only taste things out there or can I have a beer out there? Can I hang out, out there?" The challenge was being in an industrial park, out on the outskirts of Winston, so it wasn't downtown. We had to create ourselves or mold ourselves as a draw. Doing special events and doing all these activities was really important to get people out, 00:08:00doing things with the community. Partnering up with different people within the community, on events and stuff like that was really important. That became a big part of what I did out there was event coordination, so going above and beyond just bar operations. It had to be event coordination.

We were always kind of kindred spirits with Juggheads who open up on Country Club, maybe a month before we opened up, because that was the first craft beer spot in Winston, the first real beer-focused spot. Apart from some of the brew pubs that were here, that was the first real beer-focused spot in Winston, the only craft beer bar in Winston. We always felt like we were kindred spirits because working with food trucks and having some of the outdoor tailgating games and corn hole boards and all these things that are such a part of the formula now. Between the Foothills Tasting Room at Kimwell and Juggheads, that was the 00:09:00first, in 2015, that Winston really had.

Erin Lawrimore:

You talked about the importance of community engagement and events. Can you talk about some of the early collaborations that you had in that way at-

Eric Peck:

There are ones, because once you're a brewery, we're very public companies, we're very social companies, we're very community-facing companies. So there were a lot of people that came to us. Foothills obviously had, before opening up the tasting room, they had a long history and had built up established relationships within Winston. Everybody knew Foothills. As the word slowly got out that we had this tasting room that was big and wide open and we had space that nobody else had to be able to do anything that you wanted to out there, events-wise, experience-wise, we started to get a lot of people from the community to get in touch with us. It was cool because they're relationships 00:10:00that you just couldn't possibly seek out on your own. You would never think that some of these people within the community would end up being great partners when it came to events.

There was one. Now, I can't remember the name of it. It's like Second Street School, something like that. But it's basically a school that gives people a second chance at education and GED programs and stuff like that. People that have dropped out of other schools, this school will take those kids in and give them all the support that they need to be able to graduate. We would do fundraising events for them out there. We would work with Ronald McDonald House, with family-oriented events out there, a portion of the proceeds going to some of these groups and doing a lot of stuff for families. There wasn't a lot to do for families in Winston. Having a big wide open space like that, we did a lot of 00:11:00family-oriented events with bounce houses and face painters and vendors and whatever all set up.

Out there, that was the first time that Winston had brewery yoga. We had a yoga instructor, Deanna Dzybon with Yoga(mmunity), approach us having seen it at other places, saying, "I want to do yoga here for $10 bucks. You get a drink. We'll do an hour of yoga." We would have 90 people every Saturday morning doing yoga out there. The most we ever had was like 144 people. That was the first. Doing these craft vendor events was a first. We would have 120 vendors out there with seasonal event elements. That was Kristin Scholand was somebody that had originally gotten in touch with us to be able to do ... There was a Facebook group, Winston Buy, Sell, Trade, and they wanted to do this Winston-Salem buy, 00:12:00sell, trade in real life event. What started out as more of a community garage sale ended up turning into this craft vendor event, a seasonal event with all these different seasonal event elements.

One year for a winter event, I had created this fake sledding hill. People could sled down this hill. We had snowballs and stuff like that all set up. For the summer events, we would have live music outdoors and splash water-based inflatables and slides and stuff like that. That was another cool one, and Winston hadn't had something like that really before.

Just some of the partnerships are just surprising. We did a craft beer dodge ball tournament. We had some breweries and we had some other business owners, and we built this arena for just people to play dodge ball with each other, and also to have public teams too so you were interacting with the people behind 00:13:00your favorite breweries in a different way, a unique way. But it was so much space out there that you could do really anything that you ever wanted, could ever imagine.

Erin Lawrimore:

You've mentioned a few times that the tasting room was the first of its kind in Winston. Was there anything in particular that you faced in terms of the tap room environment or even the customer service side of things, in terms of training others, that you had to do then that you don't think you would have to do now, or that would be done differently now, given how the culture's changed?

Eric Peck:

Yeah, I think just the expectations in the passionate work that goes behind operating a tap room. It's a lot of work. You have to do a lot of stuff that you don't have to do at a typical bar. At a typical bar, you're slinging drinks. It's a small space, smaller space that you need to clean and maintain at the end of the day. For us, that sense of hustle that we were going to do more than you 00:14:00were going to have to do as a typical bartender, but it was going to be a lot of fun and we were all going to do it together, this communal sense of type two fun where it was going to be hard work, but it was going to be worth it at the end, I think that was a learning curve because we were doing it for the first time.

We would do corn hole tournaments where we would set up four sets of corn hole boards and we would have a bunch of people out in some of these other activities. They were extra proactive work that we were doing, but we were giving something extra to the community. We had more people out, at the end of the day. Everybody made more money, at the end of the day. So that was a learning curve like, how do we do that? Or what changing expectations do we need to have from simply serving a beer, to creating all these experiences that 00:15:00surround it, that we had to do then, and we had to build up then, and we had to talk about then, and we had to work together on? Myself and then our staff, we had to work together on it to grow and see what people were comfortable with in a way that would be different now because the expectation would be set, "This is the formula." This is what everybody does to a certain extent. We all do bingo and trivia and yoga and have outdoor tailgating games and all this other stuff.

Erin Lawrimore:

It was an opportunity to create a mold as opposed to figure out how to fit into a mold. But that's also an interesting segue into another question, which is essentially, who all did you look to for inspiration when you were opening that there? If wasn't that culture here, were there others either nationally or across the state that you looked to as inspiration for some of the work you were doing?

Eric Peck:

Yeah. There were some things that we had done at Brooklyn, but again, the 00:16:00further back you go in time, the more different the culture is and the more simple the operation is. The operations of brewery tap rooms have gotten a lot more complicated than they were when they first started out. There were some things that we had done at Brooklyn that we pulled some information from, but when it came to operations, we were pretty basic at Brooklyn. Tours were really important there, and tours could be really important at Foothills because they had this massive 46,000 square foot space. They have a 50 barrel brew house. They have some 400 barrel fermentors. It's impressive to see. So tours could be important there, too. The thing with Brooklyn and tours over there is you would spend less time talking about the process of making beer and more the story behind it, because the story was so great. You have mafia involvement and all this stuff. Just such a good story.

Erin Lawrimore:

Jamie didn't have any mafia involvement?

Eric Peck:

No, not that I know of. If he does, he's been very hush hush about it.

Yeah. There was some inspiration pulled from some of the stuff that we did at Brooklyn. We were obviously able to take a knowledge set of how to give a brewery tour and have that be a part of the experience pretty quickly at Foothills. Then other than that, doing some Google searching and just ... There was stuff that some other people were doing. I want to say it was Crank Arm out in Raleigh had done the Beer Olympic kind of stuff. Some of that stuff, some of that fun stuff was definitely established in the state at certain places. But other than that, it was really us looking at opportunities, whether it was holidays or whether it was special months or anything, and just saying, "How do we make this day that we all share, this holiday or whatever, how do we make 00:18:00this a part of our experience here?" Some of this stuff was random. We had an animal house style food fight and toga party. Some of this stuff was just like, "I think this would make for a really fun experience. We should just do this." It wasn't inspired by a day or a holiday or anything like that.

We were very good. We got into a good habit of getting the team together. The team would've been myself. Then after a few years, I had an assistant manager. Then we had our bartending staff. But we were good about getting that team together, getting the biggest whiteboard that we possibly could, and saying, "What event ideas do we have? What opportunities do we have to give people a different experience, a fun experience, something entertaining, something interactive?" Just brought it up on the whiteboard and big brainstorming bubbles, and then narrowing it down, or doing some more vertical thinking on any 00:19:00one of those ideas and going from there.

I think one of the smarter things that we did out there was make it more of a team-driven endeavor, any of these events and activities and experiences, getting everybody together. In the end, it was going to be great for everybody, because you have the marketing effect of getting people out there for the first time. You have, obviously, a big sales impact with what you're doing. It fits into building up repeat business when you're offering people new experiences or different ways to grow their relationship with you. Everybody won out, at the end of the day, I think, Foothills, our staff, our customers. Having it be more of a team endeavor, I think, made sense too.

Erin Lawrimore:

You mentioned the sales impact of the marketing side. I'm curious as to if there 00:20:00was any ... I guess, challenges might not be the right word, but challenges I'll use ... when it came to working with what already at that point was an established brand, but in a new way. Foothills was known when the tasting room was open. Did you come into any kind of headbutting when it came to expectations versus trying new things?

Eric Peck:

A little bit. It was also the opposite, too. For me, I was, to a certain extent, off in the abyss of not having direction. It was whatever you want to do, you're going to do it. At some point I asked, "How do you define a successful tap room 00:21:00at Foothills?" You know what I mean? "What does a successful tap room look like for you?" The response was, "Make $10,000 a week." I said, "Okay." Apart from that, when it came to the how and when it came to, again, our customer relationships, and when it came to trying to hit financial goals, and when it came to trying to figure out what people would not only expect, but what they would be surprised by and while being surprised by it, really appreciate that new experience, that was a directionless thing. It wasn't headbutting, but it was also you were going to have to go it alone. You know what I mean? Or you were going to have to lead the tap room team just on your own. You were going to have to create direction. You were going to have to be proactive. You were going to have to define your own work.

It was a good lesson for me, because I'd never been in such a void like that before, in really having to define my own work, define my own purpose, define the tap room's purpose in regards to the bigger picture of the company. I think it was a good fit for me, because I do think about things in that way. I do think about things with a sense of purpose first. I've developed an ability to create goals and to assess how I did versus how I expected to do, and do it differently next time or tweak it for next time.

When it came to headbutting, I think there was ... One of the things that happened was a lingering restaurant culture, wanting to keep things the way that 00:23:00they were comfortable with and in a way that's totally different from brewery production, tap room culture. When it came to some of those issues, I didn't have anybody over me within the company except for ownership. There was me managing the tap room, and then there was the management team at the pub. Every now and again, there were just conversations that were had or things that came up that caused a little bit of opposition or some conversations that were a little more challenging. Because that restaurant culture, at a lot of places, it's just not the happy, vibrant, lifelike culture that you can find and that you can attain at a brewery tap room, because operationally, apart from the activities and events that you do, it's much more narrow. It's much simpler. When people walk into a brewery tap room, they're surprising-

Eric Peck:

Simpler. When people walk into a brewery taproom, they're surprisingly in a much better mood than when they walk into a restaurant. There are a lot of people that walk into a restaurant as customers that are in very grumpy moods and it's just a totally different vibe. So anyhow, I mean, there was some butting in the heads out there. Some of it had to do with marketing needs or boundaries because this was a first thing for Foothills, it was a second location. And so in the emergence of social media, how do you handle a second location? That was all...

It's a problem now that would be much more easy to navigate, easier to navigate, but then it was still something that was pretty new. And so it was like, "From a digital marketing perspective, how do we handle a second location? How do we promote something that's happening at a brewery taproom and something that could 00:25:00be brand-driven or say something about the brand, reinforce the brand to somebody in Georgia who would never come to the taproom?" You know what I mean? And so it's like, "What information is going to go where to who as a regional brewery with two on-premise locations, both in the same town?" So yeah, I mean, it was just a process to figure it out.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah.

Eric Peck:

And so from the taproom perspective and the very local perspective, you want one thing when it comes to marketing and communications and things like that. But then as a brand, as company that distributes beer to six states at the time, you have a totally different perspective. And every now and again, those perspectives were different and you just had to work on trying to figure it out and try to get however you could to be able to get a win-win out of it because 00:26:00both perspectives are important, you know what I mean? There's sales here locally for the taproom, but then there's also in building up the brand, your goal there is to also sell six packs to somebody at a gas station in South Carolina. So yeah, I mean, just different goals. But in the end I think we made it work and as more places had issues like that, some of the social media stuff offered more tools to be able to handle some of those issues too a lot easier.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah. Can you elaborate a little bit on how exactly you overcame some of those challenges with taproom marketing? How you worked out the social media end of things, for instance.

Eric Peck:

We had a marketing director there, Ray Goodrich. And so there was me in doing 00:27:00some of these things, these experiences and things like that at the taproom and wanting to create an experience at the taproom, but also with my time at Brooklyn Brewery, I understood what a brand was and how marketing is everything. And with everything that you do, you're defining who you are as a company. That's true for everybody that works there. And so there were the two of us and those were the main drivers of what the experience was going to be and how that experience was going to be a part of the brand. So what I had done was create a mission statement. I had written up what I thought an ideal taproom was and what its purpose was and I shared that with him, and I'm sure I shared it with 00:28:00ownership at some point. And Facebook had created this... I can't remember what they called it.

Basically, like a parent-child relationship between social media pages. And so you could have the Foothills brand page and create content on that Foothills brand page and then selectively send some of that content to the Tasting Room page, so now we had two different pages. They ended up making three different pages because they also had the pub page, which is marketing itself as a restaurant. That's its main competition, not even so much the other bars in town, but the other restaurants in town, they want to be able to sell you food there. And so there was a Foothills brand page, a 4th Street Brewpub page, and then it was a Tasting Room page and some of the content from the brand page went to both, but then we were also selectively able to talk about and to pitch just 00:29:00taproom culture and the events that we were doing just in the Tasting Room for the people that were in the triad area and nobody else. So that was a big undertaking and that took another third-party company creating that kind of parent-child relationship when it came to Foothills.

So that was a big thing for us to do. And then we started to have weekly meetings. We had weekly meetings with ownership marketing and myself, but then we would also have on a pretty regular basis, meetings between just Ray and I, so marketing in the taproom. And then we also just got into an email habit of having somebody like me in creating events, also creating copy for things like 00:30:00event pages or even some photographs for event pages. And so then in that way I wasn't trying to explain to somebody else, "This is what the event is, this is what the elements are, this is what we're trying to do," or whatever. Somebody that had strong communication skills as a taproom manager could also more efficiently just write that stuff and send that to marketing and just have that be what was sent out on social media. So yeah, as far as specifics, the parent-child thing on social media was a big one, the regular weekly meetings were a big one. And then other than that, it was just creating healthy habits of communication between both people.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah. Well, thinking back to when you first started at Foothills versus now, how have you seen that taproom culture change here in Winston-Salem?

Eric Peck:

I've seen it become much more of a regular thing. There's a lot more brewery hopping and people go from one place to another. Where with the taproom that we had out there, we would have people out there and they would stay for a while and they would drink a lot. If we were doing things like cornhole tournaments, there's some people out there that can throw some beers away. But they weren't going to go anywhere else, it was just going to be that was the one spot and that was it. So now that we were the seventh brewery open up downtown and now there are eight, there's a lot more one and done kind of experiences at each of the breweries on a typical day, apart from a special event or some activity that you're doing or whatever.

So on a Saturday, most people are wide open, maybe some people book live music at night. But on Saturdays, what we see is people going from Fiddlin' Fish to Wise Man, to here, to Incendiary to the Hoots Satellite bar or whatever kind of to do with this loop. And so some of the taproom culture has changed, but it's also changed the city of Winston-Salem culture where you have a lot more walking 00:32:00here, and that walking culture gives you more of a sense of life and vibrancy and activity, and it just feels a lot better when you have that walking culture in a city. So that's something that's changed with the breweries, that's something that's changed with the city. And other than that, the formula has become a formula. You know what I mean?

What was a strategy for somebody has become a formula. And so now the challenge is, how do you do something different than what everybody else is doing if you have eight breweries in town and they're all doing bingo and trivia and yoga and live music and doing some stuff for the community? How do you offer something different? And so that's the boat that we're in now, where taproom culture has changed is going from something that people didn't know what to expect when they went out there, and then grew to be much more focused on large scale special 00:33:00events and community events, to a formula that just everybody is doing. And so now that the challenge is doing something different.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah. There's set expectations now versus no expectations.

Eric Peck:

Right. Right.

Erin Lawrimore:

So let's talk about how we got here to Radar.

Eric Peck:

Yeah.

Erin Lawrimore:

You mentioned Aaron going to Wicked Weed and you were still at Foothills. How did the two of you come back together to even talk about opening this place?

Eric Peck:

So Aaron at Wicked Weed wanted to finally pull the trigger on starting his own brewery and he did what he did to be able to learn commercial brewing. There are a lot of people who go from the home brew scale to commercial brewing never having worked at a commercial brewery and it shows a lot. There is a learning process to be able to doing it commercially. And there's a lot of people that have had their own breweries for a while, that if you looked at their SOPs, you 00:34:00would say, "That's probably not the way you should do that, or that's probably not the way you should do that." So Aaron took the time to be able to learn how to brew commercially at Natty Greene's, then at Foothills, then at Wicked Weeds. And especially between Foothills and Wicked Weed, they're two totally different identities. Two totally different ethos, two totally different ways of approaching stuff. And it's at both places such valuable commercial brewing experience. Especially because they are so different.

And so Aaron in Asheville finally wanted to pull the trigger, open up his own place, felt like he had built up the knowledge base to be able to handle commercial brewing at his own place. And so he had been working on that and then his other good friend Aaron Sizemore, he worked at Natty Greene's for a little 00:35:00bit but had been more thinking about what a space could be or how the business could look like. And so the two of them in deciding that they were going to finally open up their own place, they started to look at locations. And then Aaron Wall knowing me from Foothills and feeling like that was the missing piece between the two of them, was that business knowledge, was that retail knowledge, was that taproom knowledge, that front of house knowledge, had got me in to lure me away from Foothills and be a tapper manager for them.

And we looked at some locations and the plan was to open up a spot in Greensboro. And at the time I was pretty comfortable at Foothills. If I was going to leave, I was probably going to leave to do something different, I was probably going to leave to leave the beer industry. And so looking at locations, 00:36:00said if I was going to do it, I would like to be on the ownership team. That would be the next step for me, is not to move from being a taproom manager from a regional brewery to a taproom manager for a very small hyper local brewery, but to be a part of an ownership team and to learn all the things that I don't know when it comes to ownership, things that I wish I didn't know now.

So we were looking at locations and then at some point Aaron and Aaron had decided on this location that we're in now and the conversation as far as introducing me to the ownership team onto the ownership team, so instead of two, it was going to be three, progressed too. And one night where we were out at a bar, we talked about some final issues, shook on it, and then after that the ball kept rolling, making it official. We all signed the paperwork and I became 00:37:00a part of the ownership team after the location was set on and the lease was signed here.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah. That said, was the aesthetics of the place already established when you came on or did you have a strong hand in that? Because I think the taproom definitely has a vibe that's different from a lot of other breweries.

Eric Peck:

Yeah, so the condition of the building was the very beginning of the upfit, but then our other partner, Aaron Sizemore, went to school for graphic design and he is the one that really decided on the majority of the design elements. And so the goal with that was to have something different, was to have something modern, was to have something minimal. All three of us definitely like mid-century modern design, and minimalism from a design standpoint is a super 00:38:00pop thing now, which is funny because we have such digitally busy worlds that we've made the real world around us, we're starting to make it a lot more simple and a lot less cluttered and a lot more minimal. And so what we all felt like this was a space that we're offering to Winston that it doesn't currently have, which was more of a modern design space.

You're going into an older commercial or industrial building, you're going into some of these old manufacturing sites of these old storage buildings or whatever, and instead of just keeping it as that, we wanted to introduce something that felt like it was brand new into this old building. We didn't want you to walk into a brewery and just feel like you were walking into this old space that's always been here, we wanted you to feel like you were walking into 00:39:00something new. But yeah, as far as the design elements, the majority of them were Aaron Sizemore and then from there, it's just been...

After we opened up, we worked on the outdoor area together because we opened up without our outdoor area finished. So that was something that we worked on together. And then from that, we've had certain things we've had to change or maintain and Aaron Sizemore isn't on the ownership team anymore and so now it's Aaron and I making those decisions for what we do next, how we continue to add things to the space that falls in line with the original goal of having it be something minimal and modern and clean and Nordic, to a certain extent. And it feels good to walk into the space.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah.

Eric Peck:

As far as things that we've added, the Art-o-mat machine is a new one and that's really cool. Some of the curtains that we've added for the private event space 00:40:00that Aaron and I did back there, that's some of the stuff that we've put up, and some of these very modern looking, minimal TVs and things. But just keeping in line with a space that feels refreshing to walk into, that feels clean to walk.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah. Well, and I think that connects nicely with my next question, which is how would you describe Radar, the brewery, the mission, to someone completely unaware of this place?

Eric Peck:

I mean, from a branding perspective and also going along with the name too, a big thing that Radar represents is this idea of exploration and discovery. That's one of the main uses of the technology. So we definitely want to be about that, we want to be about exploration and discovery. We want to do different things. We want to continue to evolve or be a part of the conversation of what 00:41:00beer can be. And part of that is also rediscovering the past too and the things that have come before us that have led to us getting to where we are now. And, I mean, we love just straight up traditional pilsners, but then we also love Italian pilsners and we love India Pale Lagers and things like that. And when it comes to fall time, and we even do it through throughout the year, just a simple biscuity bready amber lager. We love doing that stuff all the time too.

But there's a lot of stuff that we've also done. We've done a mango lassi inspired hazy IPA with mango and crushed cream cardamom and milk sugar. And so I want to do a lot of that stuff and push the boundaries of what beer can be. And then as the space itself, we want it to be a space that has a very clean, 00:42:00uncluttered, very relaxing vibe for people to socialize within. And I don't think that we complicate what it is that we do foundationally, we're a place for food and beverage and a space for people to gather and socialize and unwind and relax. And so a big part of the design of the space allows that third part to happen. We want you to be able to come here, relax and socialize and be comfortable and unwind. The world is very stressful and it's very tough and there's a lot of stuff out there that just drains you mentally and emotionally and we definitely feel like it's the purpose of ours to provide a space and experience in something like beer to socialize over to alleviate that as much as we can.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah. One question that just popped in my mind. Can you talk a little bit about 00:43:00here at Radar, how you connect the production side of things with the taproom side of things? How do those two speak to each other?

Eric Peck:

So since we're so small and very much like many other breweries right now, we're so hyper local, our focus is this taproom for the most part and the people here in Winston, that the sales and distribution side of what we do for that is it gets the beer that we are making for our customers here at the taproom. And there were a few things that we had in cans, there were a few Lowe's Foods sets and stuff like that and we need to make sure that we put specific beers in for that facing at that store. But the vast majority of what we do, it's all driven by what our customers need or want here at the taproom and so when it comes to that conversation between the taproom and production, it's just a conversation 00:44:00between Aaron and I.

It makes it really easy to be able to say, "This is where we're at right now with the inventory that we have. These are the kinds of customers that we have, the kind of archetypes that we have." And there are the people that want just regular beer or they want just dry lagers and stuff like that, we have something for them. We have the adventurous beer drinker that's always looking for something different and always looking for the next trend, so we always have one or two beers for them. We have people that don't like anything that has any kind of bitterness to it or as little bitterness as possible and so we have one or two beers for them. We have sour fans, so we have one or two beers for them.

And so it's really thinking about the broad range of our customers first, looking at the inventory that we have, making projections for where we're going to be a month or two months from now, and then having the production schedule be 00:45:00laid out based off of that and making sure that we have variety on draft for anybody. And there's stuff that is important to us too. We like Belgian styles, we like fermentation being a main driver of flavor. And so that's a part of our identity that we want to make sure that we have beers on draft for too, things that are more fermentation profile driven. So yeah, I mean, it's an easy conversation between two people. We do get some feedback sometimes from staff as far as people have been asking for a certain thing or a certain style or came across this really cool fruit and I've never seen it in a beer.

Right now we have this golden berry sour on now. And the golden berries, it's like this mix between a grapefruit and a tangerine. And so bringing that to us saying, "It'd be cool if we did something with golden berries, it's this really cool tart fruit." And we ended up doing this golden berry sour. And that was 00:46:00something the original seed of that came from one of our bartenders. Yeah, I mean it's just that process. We're talking about those people, those general archetypes of what we have for them and expectations they would have coming in and seeing that draft list, us saying what do we have an inventory and when do we expect certain things we have to run out, and then creating the production schedule and plugging that into the projections.

And this is all done by hand. There are programs out there that can definitely help you do it. We just do it all by hand to be able to make sure that month to month we continue to have the kind of variety that we want and to be able to supply a wide variety of beers to people that come in here. Because one of the common complaints is I go to a place and there are six IPAs on draft and there's nothing else. We don't want to have that be the experience and so it's amazing 00:47:00here how driven production is by the needs or wants or what we want to be able to provide to our taproom customers.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah. And I could be wrong, but I would assume that's not how it was at Foothills where they have established...

Eric Peck:

Right. Right.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah. So here at Radar, instead of just counting the tap handles behind you, I will flat out ask, how many beers do you typically have on tap at any given moment?

Eric Peck:

At any given time it's usually 10 to 15 beers on draft. And the cool thing about the smaller system that we have is that we get to have more iterations with each recipe or that we get to have more variety that we can put on draft because we have a lesser volume of each of those different beers. And then the beers just stay a lot fresher, which is good for especially...

Eric Peck:

Fresher, which is good for especially certain styles. The beer is just a lot more fresh because they're not focusing on big batch efficiency with each of these recipes. It's about doing that. And that's going to be around four, three weeks. So that's going to be around for four weeks and that's going to be gone. And that's going to be replaced by something else or a new batch of that same thing, but it'll continue to be fresh. And so yeah, usually 10 to 15 beers and we have maybe around five beers in cans.

And we want to be able to grow not only the beers that we have on draft but in increasing production capacity, we could lay more stuff down into barrels or we could put some stuff in specialty bottles that we could also serve here on the premises. And that would increase the amount of options that we have. And that's been something that we're kind of thinking about or trying to work on, is increasing capacity a little bit to be able to do some of those other different formats, which would also allow us to have more variety as part of the 00:49:00experience here.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah. Well, thinking of the beers that you have now, do you have kind of a standard beer that comes back repeatedly that you see almost as a flagship or at least a customer favorite?

Eric Peck:

Yeah, so that wasn't necessarily the goal starting out. But I remember at some point reading in the New Brewer, it was talking about some of those issues. And this would've been a year or two ago. And it was asking everybody, "Do you do core beers or do you rotate things all the time?" And a lot of people said it's just a mix of both because there are people that want to walk into a place and to be able to have the same experience. When I go to a restaurant every other month and it's like a treat. You're looking forward to going there. It's like I'm going there for that specific thing. And that's true for coffee shops, and that's true for other types of businesses. It's definitely true for the beer industry where it's like, at the end of the day, I just want to be able to go to 00:50:00that spot and I want to be able to have Reflection IPA.

And so that wasn't really the goal for us. But definitely became something that we're more focused on now and have done with certain beers leading up to now. So the Reflection IPA is more of a flagship been for us. That won gold at the 2020 North Carolina Brewers Cup for the American IPA category. It's a great West Coast IPA in a sea of all these hazy, sweeter, low-bitterness of IPAs, things that really fall out of what you would consider to be the IPA category. It's nice to be able to have something that is more citrus, piney, good bitter punch to it, some caramel malts in there. And so that's become a flagship beer for us in a way that other things are becoming more of a core beer for us. The Italian pilsner that we do, In Stereo Italian Pilsner, is when we have it on draft, usually our best seller right up there with our Reflection IPA.

People love it. We love it. It's a great beer, super refreshing. It's a nice break from IPAs, and so that's kind of another one. But the majority of the beers that we have, they rotate. And it's about the purpose of that beer on a draft menu. And the purpose of the beer being the person coming into a tap room always looking for this style. You know what I mean? So there's the person that goes into a taproom and all I want to drink are the stouts and the porters and the malty beers. You know what I mean? So just making sure that with the beers that rotate, that are more one-off or whatever, that they're just falling within that purpose.

Erin Lawrimore:

So we will now go back to the elephant we put a pin in back in earlier and talk about 2020 and the joys of opening in January of 2020. First, let's talk about 00:52:00the good part, the opening part. Those first couple of months. Can you talk about what was it like here when you first opened?

Eric Peck:

So we had a great opening day. Winston definitely came out in supported us. Winston is very supportive when it comes to the beer industry. And so we had a great first day. It was crazy. Our staff did really well. I would say that as far as taproom operations goes, we did not have the hiccups that most places would have. We were pretty good. We were ready to go, we dialed in and that's without having faucets that have individual tap handles for each beer. So our staff definitely had the work cut out for them as far as figuring out which beer was on which faucet. And yeah, we had a line going out the door. This was a 00:53:00Saturday, had a line going out the door for nine straight hours. And after that had a strong January, but then you start to get into some of the slower months out of the year.

And so February was still good, it was a little bit slower and there was all this stuff being talked about as far as the disease that was going around, a virus that was going around. And then once we got to early March, we had kind of a two week heads up where it looked like stuff was getting really bad. And there were rumors that things were going to be shut down. And so it was on or right before... I guess it was right before because I think it was March 15th here, like right before St. Patrick's Day, that we got the word in the middle of the day, like three or four o'clock that the shutdown was going to happen. And then 00:54:00from there we probably took a day... So leading up to that point, it was good for what would be the slower months out of the year anyhow.

So then getting into mid-March, we took a day where it was, "We're just going to go ahead and take a day. And we're going to cry a little bit. We're going to go home and we're going to just stay under the covers for a day." And then coming back and really just making a list. We know what the circumstances are, we know what the challenges are, so what are all the things that we can do to living expenses on one list? What are all the things that we could do to maximize revenue on another list? And it was funny because you had no idea how long it was going to last. You know what I mean? To a certain extent in your mind you're thinking, this is how we're going to navigate the next two to four weeks. You know what I mean? Maybe it's going to be a month, so this is how we're going to navigate the next month.

This is what we're going to do. So we look for opportunities. The opportunities for us were to really finish and flesh out our outdoor seating area because in 00:55:00January and February that kind of got put on the back burner a little bit. And now that we were going to be getting into warmer months, we had to focus on that. We got this downtime, no customers are going to be here indoors. We're going to finish the outdoor area and we're going to do everything that we can for off premise. And so we got the crowler machine, which we didn't open up with. We lined up crowler cans, which was kind of difficult at the time cause everybody was buying them and all this stuff was on back order. And then we started up with Tap Hopper, the mobile canning company that a lot of people around here use out of Greensboro and we're going to put some stuff in cans, we're going to pick up retail accounts.

And we just shot out simultaneously in all those different directions and home delivery. And we were going to offer at the tap room with limited hours for beer to go and nobody wants to do it. But we laid all of our staff off and just kind 00:56:00of went from there, like I said, shooting out in all those different directions with those opportunities and just made the best of it. So stuff was good. And then we were looking forward to that in better weather and people being able to hang out outside. And then that happened. And it was a total switch to really an off-premise only kind of model, which we weren't built for. That wasn't the original plan. We have this smaller system, it was going to be more or less tap room only. Eventually pick up some small handful of retail accounts. And so just kind of made a switch looking at all of the possible solutions and then going after as many as we could.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah. Well and then when you finally were able to reopen, there are all sorts of challenges that come with that, particularly in the tap room. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about that and some of the ways that y'all changed or adapted to 00:57:00the new needs?

Eric Peck:

So we came back, we had a smaller system in, for me experience working in a tap room and bartending and stuff like that. I mean, I was going seven days a week and as we brought people back, I mean even when customers were allowed to come back, we just stayed with me doing seven days a week on my own for a little bit before we brought our first bartender back. And I think brought her back in a part-time capacity too. So brought one person back and we had all the COVID protocols and we were still doing some of the stuff. We were straddling the COVID kind of operations and having people back where we were still doing home delivery, but that really started to drop off. The demand for it really started 00:58:00to drop off. We still had these retail accounts and we're trying to maintain that as best we could and get them the stuff that they needed.

And then with the COVID protocols, it was definitely stressful for everybody because you had two very different opposing camps, you know what I mean? Where for us, we didn't want to get sick because we didn't want to have to close. And there were a lot of people that had to close for two weeks and missed out on that revenue for two weeks and was like, we can't afford to do that. And so for us, we definitely tried to be as safe as we could. We tried to be safe around each other, we tried to be safe working around each other in the space and spacing out. And then with customers, we as the craft beer industry within the state, we had agreed that we were going to do what the CDC or the health 00:59:00department recommendations were because we were allowed to stay open when a lot of other bars and restaurants had to close.

And as part of that agreement, it was promised by the Brewer's Guild to some of the policy makers that we were going to be really good about these policies. We were going to enforce them with customers and stuff like that. And so we did that and that definitely at every place caused... It just caused people's mental health or relaxation to fray because you had customers coming in that didn't want to do it. That took out their frustration over policies on people that didn't create the policies.

And so people behind the bar, any kind of servers in restaurants when they were allowed to open up or anybody else, I think really started to have their nerves 01:00:00frayed dealing with people that were looking to take out frustration with them when it had nothing to do with them. They were just trying to go forward as best they could as we were getting back to trying to get back to normal. So yeah, I mean once we were finally able to bring people back, it was at a certain percentage of overall capacity and then it was still with wearing masks and things and it was just, I think kind of a trying period for everybody.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah. Well one thing you did mention that y'all focused on when you weren't able to open is the outdoor space. How did the outdoor space factor in once you were able to reopen?

Eric Peck:

Yeah, I mean it was huge because you also had a lot of people that wanted to be able to go out but didn't feel comfortable going out. The only place that they were going to go out was outdoors. And so, you couldn't find a patio heater 01:01:00anywhere because everybody bought a million patio heaters and we just got furniture spaced out there, gave people heat throughout the colder months and tried to make it as comfortable a place as we could for people to be outdoors. But that was to a certain extent for a while. That was the only place that people were going to feel comfortable being if they were going to go out at all.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah. Well, thinking about now and moving forward, what kind of short term goals do you have for Radar and for the tap room and for what's happening here?

Eric Peck:

I mean, one of the short term goals that we have is because it was so crazy, you open up, you have this new business and so you're getting your feet wet with operations and your processes with a new business. And then you go from that to 01:02:00COVID and then coming out of COVID, you're slowly bringing stuff back and not revenues still isn't to where you thought it was going to be. And you're also really gun shy too when it comes to making investments. So when it comes to making purchases, because you never know when you're going to get into a situation where even if there wasn't a policy that decreased revenue, that there would be something that could happen that people stay home because, and so you get a little gun shy when it comes to taking risks now for the business, are investing into the business because of that experience.

So that's just been a constant process to get out of the COVID mentality, to be able to do what we need to do for the business and take some healthy risks and stuff like that. And so some of the short term goals are really finishing the space and really finishing branding within the space. Some of our short term 01:03:00goals is really building up our merch deck. Again, because you go so long with such a big inventory that even taking your cash assets and investing that into an inventory assets, it's like, "Oh, I don't know if I really want to do that. That cash is very nice to have."

And so building up the merch deck again and one of our short term goals is putting more people in place to be able to run operations, day to day stuff, urgent stuff, weekly stuff. Because again, when it comes to building back up the team, we're super gun shy where every single salary feels like a huge risk. And so for us, the short term goal is to still get out of that mentality. Start to put some people in place, flesh out the rest of the space from a branding standpoint, from an experience standpoint, from a furniture standpoint, a 01:04:00lighting standpoint. And to be able to build up more of the standard experience, foundational experience of coming to a brewery again with things like merchandise and stuff like that.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah. I also want to talk a little bit about some of the collaborations and events that you have here now. Obviously most of them had to pause during the COVID period, but can you talk a little bit about some of the community connections that you work on here?

Eric Peck:

We haven't done anywhere near as much of that stuff as we can or anywhere near as much of that as I would like to because the team is stretched so thin, you know what I mean? Where you fill the role of tapper manager and sales rep and delivery driver and accountant and HR person and marketing director and social media manager and all this other stuff. And then you're an owner on top of it, which a lot of people don't realize how much time that takes or how many daily, weekly, monthly tasks are involved just being an owner. And so the team is 01:05:00stretched too thin. We're too small to really do the things that we want to do from an event standpoint, experience standpoint, community involvement standpoint, which is why now the short term goal, is to start to build the team back up so that we can do some of that stuff.

But some of the things that we have done so far, we've definitely done some collaboration beers, some with new friends, some with old friends. It's a great thing about being at Foothills, it's such a farm team to the North Carolina craft beer scene, that a lot of people from, "I used to work on Foothills with them and I used to work on Foothills with them. We used to work on Foothills with half the guys at Wiseman now." And so some old friends, some new friends doing some collaboration beers and it's usually us brewing on somebody else's system because it's a bigger system than what we have here.

So that's been fun. And some of the other community events, I mean we've tried to be celebratory when it comes to certain holidays or the New Year's Eve, then 01:06:00rolling in New Year's Day, it's great cause it's New Year's Eve, but then it's also our anniversary because we open up on January 1st, 2020. So that's cool. We've done some of that stuff. But in general, I mean, I guess I would just say it's something that we still have yet to really do in a strong way. And we're looking forward to doing more of that, being more of a part of the community as we start to build up the team to be able to have the time to put that stuff into place.

Erin Lawrimore:

And you've mentioned that you're still rebuilding, but where are you at now in terms of the team? How many?

Eric Peck:

It's a very small team. So we have Aaron and I and Aaron and I the split is production and business. So we have Aaron and I, and we have five members of our bartending staff. Most of them are part-time only, really one full-time bartender. And then we have one full-time Swiss Army knife kind of person that will do very recently started to do some sales and delivery kind of stuff and 01:07:00host some of the activities that we have. And yeah, that's where we're at right now. I don't really think for what we do and what we offer people in the front facing thing that you see when you look at Radar that there's a smaller team out there.

Erin Lawrimore:

And I would think that plays back in with something we talked about earlier, which is the expectations when you come into a tap room with all of those events and things like that. Can you talk a little bit more about the challenges that come with meeting those expectations with a smaller team?

Eric Peck:

Yeah, I mean it's one of those things where you need to really be able to have somebody that you can pass it on to. I've gone through periods here, long 01:08:00periods here where it was me hosting all of this stuff. But everything is an opportunity cost. If you're doing that, it needs to not doing something else. And if you're working within the company in any of these different roles, then you can't work on the company. You just don't have the time. And so for Aaron and I, we have kids too. And that's just an extra challenge. If we didn't have kids, I know my wife and I would be total workaholics. And so it's the only thing that makes us have any sort of balance when it comes to work and personal lives.

And so in having kids and they're nine and six now and wanting to be around for them and they're getting more into activities and things that you want to see them be able to do on the weekends or in the evenings or whatever, it definitely makes that challenging. And so as a small team in trying to figure out some way to have a work life balance and being the last to show up with Radar when it 01:09:00comes to the formula of breweries in the area, there are only so many places that can do trivia on a Tuesday night. There are only so many places that can have a run club each night of the week where you're going to have people show up to at each one. They're not going to run and drink beer to brewery every five nights a week. They're just not going to do it.

And so that, that's been one of the biggest challenges for us is not necessarily the small team, but being the last in town to show up with the formula. And now you really feel like you have to give people something else. It's got to be something different. It's got to be something unique. And you definitely need to build up the team to be able to spend the creative time to put that in place. Because what you do when you have a small team, and we did it, we have done it for two and a half years, is you survive with whatever you look at, however you receive anything coming at you, it's just, I need to put this in a state where 01:10:00it won't burn down, but that's it. I'm not going to grow anything here. Nothing is going to thrive over here.

I just want to make sure that this doesn't die. And then I move on to the next thing. Like, you're not going to die. You're not going to die, you're not going to die. And then I move on to the next thing. So with the small team, it's just the mindset that you get into. It's a survival mindset and you don't take the creative time. And productivity to a certain extent just falls off in general because every time you go to open up your computer, you just dread it. You dread it because there's so much there. There's such a long to-do list. There's so much coordination, there's so much correspondence, there's so much expectation, there's so many asks of you every time you open up your computer or walk in to where you work. And so yeah, as far as a direct challenge with having a small team, it's really that. It's not feeling like you have time enough to be 01:11:00creative or time enough to be proactive or time enough to think about what would thriving look like as opposed to surviving.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It sounds very similar to some of the things that are happening in libraries these days. So thinking broader about the industry as a whole, what do you see as some of the biggest challenges that the industry is facing, either locally, regionally, or nationally?

Eric Peck:

I think one of the big things is how many different breweries are out there. You're getting into this hyper local phase of the industry, and when you're so hyper local and when your revenue is so low, you get to a point where it doesn't make any sense to pay somebody to make it. You know what I mean? It is a volume based business. And if you're going to pay somebody within the state, I don't 01:12:00know if it's the federal level, I think it is the federal level.

Eric Peck:

... the state, I don't know if it's the federal level, I think it is the federal level, but the least that you could pay an overtime exempt employee is $36,000.00. That's the least that you can pay. And I'm sure there are people that are doing things that they're not supposed to do or paying people under what they're supposed to be paying them. But when it comes to $36,000.00 a year to, at a bare minimum, to produce beer that's only for a hyper local tap room, again, you just reach a certain point where the revenue is too low to justify producing it as opposed to just buying it from somebody else and retailing it. And so I think the hyper local thing is going to be a challenge for a lot of places and that's why a lot of places are starting to open up multiple tap rooms, which is an additional challenge when you have tap rooms coming into town from other places competing for the brewery kind of market, even though they're brewing somewhere else and they just have a tap room here that creates some extra challenges.

I do think there's a challenge with the formula and the formula at some point is going to get played out. There are some challenges as far as trends. People really enjoy cocktails and the cocktail game is very strong and it's very creative. And also with things being hyper-local, there's going to be a point where it kind of makes sense to add other streams of revenue to the business overall and I think you're going to see a lot more places. You got away from brew pubs and you just had standalone production brewery tap rooms that were super busy and that were selling $5.00 pints and $6.00 pints, now they're like $7.00 pints. But I think you're going to go back to that where it's like to really be able to do this and to survive, we're going to have to have a kitchen too or we're going to have to do a full bar. We're going to have to do some cocktails too.

And so the staffs of these places that have been these relaxed, fun, energetic, 01:14:00commune minded kind of people behind the bar at a lot of these breweries, it's going to be a lot more challenging because now it's like you're going to have to be a lot more by a bartender and less of a beer tender than you were before. So yeah, it's just changing and it's changing so fast. I think you're going to see a lot more places... Because basically what happened was you had people home brewing and you had people as consumers that were traveling a lot more. In the 70s, they were traveling a lot more, they were experiencing beer culture in other places, beer culture that we didn't have here. And they were starting to get into home brewing and they were starting to home brew English styles and German styles.

And then all of a sudden there were some breweries that started to open up and with the breweries that opened up, some of them had tap rooms, some of them didn't, some of them they opened up as brew pubs and the restaurant first kind 01:15:00of mentality. And then that grew. You had this wing of just really passionate people that had no idea how big this sector of the industry was going to be. They just wanted to be able to compete a little bit with imports, you compete a little bit with imports, you take some of that percentage of the overall market away from imports in New Castle and stuff like that, and it'd kind of be okay. And all of a sudden it just explodes and now there are thousands and thousands of breweries here. You had this generation of the industry where it was all about money and investors where it's like, wow, look at those passionate guys. There's actually money to be made here.

So now we're going to open up all these brew pub chains and it's going to be about the money. It's just going to be ownership teams opening up these places that were less passionate about beer itself, but saw that there was money to be made in it. And then all of a sudden you had this generation of kids looking at the people that were opening up places in the late 70s, early 80s, from an 01:16:00ideological standpoint being inspired by them and saying, I don't care if I make any money off of it. I'm really passionate about this and I think the industry is really creative. It looks like a great place to spend my life in a more relaxed, not corporate kind of atmosphere. And those people now I think are starting to struggle a lot more than they did before to be able to make money. And now they have to think more about what do I need to do to make sure that I can still survive and pay the bills? And that includes different streams of revenue and having more than one tap room.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah.

Eric Peck:

It's like we need to have two or three tap rooms to be able to make this whole thing make sense. And you also have business owners like that, that are more human minded, do have a strong sense of purpose and moral obligation. It makes it so that you'll need to do certain things to be able to take care of the 01:17:00people that work at your company. And nobody within that group of people wants to have success with their business at the expense of the people that work there, right? And people that work there. They need to be able to make more, they do expect more benefits. There are a large amount of people that are retiring within the workforce in the U.S. and so there are a lot more opportunities for some of the people that could have entered the beer industry to enter another industry where they're going to be able to make a lot more in those other industries are saying, you can now be more casual here, or you can work from home here, or you can make way more than you could in the beer industry.

And so I don't know, to sum it up there are a ton of challenges. There are a lot of challenges. Some of them are specific to the beer industry and then some of them were just a part of what's going on with the workforce and with people in general and trends in general and how people are prioritizing the things in 01:18:00their life that they could go after just in 2022.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah.

Eric Peck:

It's kind of both.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah. So if you had your magical way, where would you like to see the industry itself in 10 years?

Eric Peck:

Where would I like to see the industry in 10 years?

Erin Lawrimore:

And I know that particularly after the last couple of years it's hard to even, like you said, sometimes it's survival mode versus...

Eric Peck:

Right. I'd like to have it be in a place, so some of the stuff... I guess the only way to think about it is some of the things that are important to me and it's important to me that people can work for a brewery and do well financially, so that would be a big one. Whether it's collective bargaining with benefits and 01:19:00stuff like that, so we as the guild or we as the Brewer's Association, we're seeing or thinking about us as whatever it is now, 9,000 breweries, as shoppers for insurance and other benefits to be able to offer employees. That would be a big one. Having pricing set at a certain point where for customers it's still an everyday beverage. I don't like the idea that beer is so expensive that it's not an everyday for everybody drink. That to me, it's not about the recipes, it's not about the styles, it's not about different brewing traditions. I like to shake that stuff up, but I don't like the idea that beer could be something that isn't an everyday for everybody drink. I just don't like that.

So I would like to see pricing at a certain point where it's still an everyday for everybody drink for consumers. I would like beer industry employees to be 01:20:00able to really make a healthy living doing it so they're not stressed out, they're not anxious, they don't feel financially threatened in working within the beer industry. And I would like there still to be a focus on production, in having a tap room, the living room of a brewery, have that be scope enough to have that be a viable business plan because it feels more and more like that's not a viable business plan. And I love the narrow scope of what we do, serving beer, limited amount of wine and cider, and other drinks and stuff like that, but primarily beer and being able to talk about it, and being excited about what's coming up next, and having people behind the bar that is their sole focus and they know so much more about it than just a bartender at a bar.

It's just that specificity, it can lead to higher quality service or engagement when it comes to just beer. I'd like to see the beer industry continue to be able to do that, but it just feels more and more like that's not going to be the way forward for most people.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah. So now we can get to the super fun questions.

Eric Peck:

Uh-huh.

Erin Lawrimore:

So let's talk about your favorite beer. What's your favorite beer here?

Eric Peck:

Man.

Erin Lawrimore:

It doesn't have to be something on tap now. It can be something that has gone away and not come back or has gone away and come back repeatedly.

Eric Peck:

Yeah, I kind of got away from liking specific styles and my journey was the same journey as a lot of other people. When you're talking about late 90s, early 2000s, and Randy Mosher talks about it in Tasting Beer, when a brew pub opens up, the most popular beer is the amber ale, the stuff that has low bitterness, 01:22:00malty, really smooth, easy to drink. And then by the time the life cycle of that brew pub goes on or somebody's relationship with it goes on a little bit, the IPA becomes the most popular and you look for the stuff that's more intense, and more bitter, and everything else. And so I kind of started there and then working at Foothills, being such a big IPA producer kind of changed stuff for me. Training for the Cicerone program or the certified Cicerone exam opened up an appreciation for all styles, opened up an appreciation for bad beers. It was like, oh, this is a very interesting flawed beer, a very interesting bad beer, whatever it is, so got an appreciation for everything.

And so now we have our Reflection IPA, which I think is really good, very good West Coast IPA or whatever you want to call it, more traditional IPA. That's 01:23:00really good. The double IPA that we do, Frequency, that's a version of that I think is really good. I love our Belgian Triple. We do a lot of Belgian styles, but our Belgian Triple, it's one of my favorite styles. We do a really, really good example of it where it's this high ABV beer but it's super dry, really drinkable. There's coriander and sweet orange peel in it and it's just something... a little phenolic to it where sip to sip you just kind of pick up on something different. The hefeweizen that we have right now just is a straight up traditional hefeweizen, I think nailed it, used a different E strain for this current batch and it just has that amazing banana, clove, lemon effervescent kind of vibe to it. And then doing some of the more fun stuff that we do, that Exotic Galaxy Mango Lassi hazy IPA I think is super fun.

And we've done other things that are more food inspired or cocktail inspired. We did a version, just through a Randall on draft where we took our Belgian quad, a smoked Belgian quad, and then ran it through orange peel and maraschino cherries, kind of do a beer version of an old fashioned cocktail. That was amazing. And so yeah, I'd say all those are some of my favorites. I have a lot of favorites. We're so lucky here because, Aaron, with the way that he produces beer, the skill set that he has, and this is what the Germans appreciate, even if they're not doing the most exciting stuff from a recipe standpoint, it's the technical pride and that's what he has. And it's the merger of both, but we're not bound by tradition. We can do anything that we want to do and be inspired by anything we want to be inspired by, but then he has the technical pride to make it flawless and so it's a good pairing between those two things.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah. Well and that may complicate the next question, which is what are some of your favorite beers that aren't from here?

Eric Peck:

I don't drink any. I can't afford to drink beer.

Erin Lawrimore:

When you've got Aaron here making...

Eric Peck:

I know. Some of my favorite beers that aren't beer... From a macro standpoint, Bell's Two Hearted, it's such a consistent, such a solid beer. Solid beer. There's all this malt complexity. It's got this sweet caramel-y orange kind of center to it within that IPA style. It's just a solid, solid beer. So there's stuff like that. I love, like within the state, it's a very exciting beer state, there's so many people doing stuff with different fruits, herbs, spices, vegetables, so the stuff that Fonta Flora does, the stuff that Haw River does, 01:26:00two of the more just solid, exciting, when you drink it's like, oh that's special. I need to take a time out and think about that sip for a second kind of beer. So almost anything that Fonta Flora and Haw River put out I think is really good and really fun. And again, us here being fans of fermentation flavors, it's a big part of what they do.

I mean it's fun for beer to grow, even staying as a beer for everybody at a price for everybody, to have it still have this heightened sense of terroirs kind of cool. So they're really good. I'm a huge fan of all the stuff that Brooklyn does. Whenever I go back to New York, I get their stuff. Some of the collaborations that they do, they've done Belgian Inspired beers, aged on apple lees from some UK cidery and stuff like that. It's just so interesting, so good. Wicked Weed has definitely done... had done more tea beers, and cocktail 01:27:00inspired beers, and things like that, so the stuff that they were doing was fun. I'm trying to think what else. We had this beer from a San Diego brewery, somebody brought us in a can and it was Ube Milkshake IPA and had this intense purple color, had the little bit of the flavor of ube in there, but I think there was a strong coconut addition in there, but just a very cool, out there beer and people doing stuff that's inspired by different traditions food wise and not beer wise.

So being inspired by Asian culinary traditions in beer, that stuff is just fascinating to me. There are different people that are doing stuff with that. 01:28:00Brewery Bhavana out of Raleigh, their stuff is amazing. That's an amazing place to... It's an amazing space to be in. They kind of do whatever they want to do with a bookstore and stuff there and their beers are incredible. A lot of Belgian inspired beers and fermentation flavors there. And then food is incredible. Bhavana is just kind of a complete experience to me.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah. One thing that I wanted to get you to talk a little bit more about that you just mentioned is the Cicerone certification.

Eric Peck:

Mm-hmm.

Erin Lawrimore:

Can you talk a little bit more about the process you went through there, but also how it benefits you in your role now?

Eric Peck:

Yeah, I mean, it was definitely... I think it's to a certain extent standardizing beer knowledge and having us be able to talk about stuff in the same way, I think is helpful. In the studying process, it ended up being, 01:29:00because I kind of started and picked a date for the exam, but didn't really work as hard as I should have on it on the front end. So it was more of an intense three to six months. It was like, oh man, this thing is really coming up now. And I said I was going to do it and scheduled the exam and stuff like that, so more of an intense three to six months. A lot of the written stuff, a lot of the technical stuff, it's just easy for somebody in the beer industry because they're so surrounded by it. And so I didn't have as many challenges with that as I did with the tasting portion or any of the essay questions when you were going to have to write about a certain style or you're going to have to write about something with food pairing or whatever.

That kind of stuff is more challenging for me. But at a brewery, and especially 01:30:00with Brooklyn, the way that taproom was set up, the people that bartended at Brooklyn, apart from a couple of us that was all that we did there and give some tours, they were brewers, they were salespeople, they were the director of operations, they were warehouse people, they were accountants, they were people in the marketing department. So you got, just working with other people behind the bar, you got this wide range of knowledge about the beer industry. And then in doing tours, if anything popped up, you get some question from some home brewer on a tour that you don't know the answer to and they embarrass you in front of like 100 people, you could always go back to a brewer behind the bar when you got back there and say, "Somebody asked me this about the tour. What does that mean? What's going on with that?"

And so that kind of stuff I had just built up over time between Brooklyn and Foothills, and creating the tour for Foothills, and things like that, so that 01:31:00stuff wasn't so bad. And I had started at Foothills even before the Cicerone exam training our other bartenders just for basic knowledge or to be able to do the certified beer server exam. But for the tasting portion, it was just a couple of beers at the end of the night, very focused writing down different thoughts and having the BJCP app on my phone. And doing all that stuff. And then buying spike kits on my own and having people test me with different spike kits and stuff like that. And then eventually I felt pretty comfortable going into the exam. And I did it in Asheville and after I did it, I was like, wow, I did it feel pretty good about it. I think I passed and I don't think I ever want to 01:32:00drink beer again.

I was just kind of done because it made it not fun too and that's a challenge with getting so much into the education of it or some kind of title with it or whatever. It just made it not fun. I really didn't enjoy it. And so I kind of took a break in my enthusiasm for beer at least for a month or two having gone through that. And now what it does for me is as there's this new generation of people in the beer industry that really want to make their mark taking it very seriously, I'm much more relaxed about it, casual about it. I kind of know what I know about it and I can teach other people about it, but I don't have the same pressure when it comes to the purpose of drinking a beer, which is just something for us to have as we socialize together.

You know what I mean? And it can be fun, and it can be experimental, it can be beautiful just on its own. It can be an orchestra, a symphony. It can have a beginning, and middle, and end, but it doesn't have to be this pressure of right and wrong, or good or bad, or traditional or not traditional, or this isn't beer anymore, or anything like that. And I don't like walking into places where it feels like the staff enjoys a knowledge superiority over the customers walking into it. I don't like that. If anything, we just know what we know to be able to help people figure out what they want to drink, to enjoy while they're socializing with their friends and family. That's it. It's as simple as that.

Erin Lawrimore:

Yeah, that makes sense. That's the end of my prepared questions. Is there anything we didn't talk about that you feel we would need to, to understand your full story?

Eric Peck:

That's probably it. That's probably it. I just want to say I appreciate what you 01:34:00guys are doing. I think it's an amazing thing to archive and have as a record, especially with how fast things are changing now. It's easily going to be lost forever. Where we're at right now and having the generations that we have in the beer industry that we have, people that started late 70s, early 80s, throughout the 80s, other generations that have come along, it's kind of the perfect time to get that photograph snapped of at least three different generations of people within the industry. Three very different phases of the industry. So I appreciate it.

Erin Lawrimore:

Well, thank you. I always like to end interviews on someone praising me.

Eric Peck:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Erin Lawrimore:

So I appreciate it.

Eric Peck:

You're welcome. Did I read that right? I think I did, good.

Erin Lawrimore:

Thank you very much.

Eric Peck:

Thank you.