Country Boy’s Lessons Learned in the Growth Process

Getting to the next level for any business can be difficult. Your growing, expanding and building new facilities. If you’re a first time business owner, like Daniel Harrison (DH) and Country Boy, just like many brewery owners out there, growth can be tough.

“First thing is we’ve got to work closely with our distributors for current wholesalers and bringing on new,” said Harrison, whose Country Boy Brewing will open a new brewing facility in early 2017. “We’ve had to reach out to Kroger, which really likes what we’ve got and where we’re going, and keep them in the loop for when we’ll have more. Also we have to keep up with CVS, Speedway and others.”

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While the brewery is still months away from being complete, and the new Sprinkman Brewing System won’t be in place until later this year, Country Boy has still had to move forward with hiring. “We want to get them up to speed for when the brewery in Georgetown opens,” explained Harrison. “All that planning is taking place now.”

Harrison said that while the new system will be automated, all brewers will have to come to the old manual system to learn before they start at Georgetown. Likewise, with the employees they have now, it’s important to maintain a level of hype.

“There are a lot of meetings going on and the timetables keep adjusting,” said Harrison. “While we may get frustrated, we’ve also got to keep morale high because everyone is excited and we need it to stay that way.”

Now Country Boy is looking to bring on about 10 new employees that will be ready to head to the new Georgetown location (only about 20-30 minutes from the original brewery) once it’s up and running. Once the new brewery is at capacity Harrison said they will look to raise that number to 20.

“It’s always slower and more expensive than you originally think,” said Harrison. “I remember one of our partners, Jeff, asking if we’d be under roof by Christmas 2016. This was around this time last year, and we were looked at like we had three heads. We’ve been talking about this for almost three years, but it just takes so much time.”
A final tip that Harrison tossed out was about financial expectations. “If someone tells you how much something’s going to cost, you might as well go ahead and add 25 percent on top of it.”

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