As a brewery, becoming a “part of the community” starts as an instinctive exercise in saying yes. Yes to fundraisers. Yes to silent auctions. Yes to sponsorships. Yes to every request that lands in the inbox.
For TailGate Brewery founder Wes Keegan, that approach eventually became unsustainable.
“So early years, it was like yes to everything,” Keegan said. “But, it is impossible to save the world.”
Keegan said a pivotal shift in his thinking came from an old interview with Bill Gates, who discussed the realities of entrepreneurship and philanthropy. The takeaway, Keegan said, was that building a sustainable business had to come first before meaningful impact could follow.
“I’m trying to help everybody, but I’m not paying myself, and that’s a fact,” Keegan said of TailGate’s earlier years. “I just paid myself $0 forever. So it’s like, I gotta be able to pay rent myself and buy myself groceries if I want to help anybody ever.”
That realization led TailGate to rethink how it approached community involvement, not by disengaging, but by narrowing its focus.
“What we learned was we’re spending so much of our bandwidth that we don’t have to try to satisfy everybody,” Keegan said.
Instead of spreading support across dozens of causes, TailGate concentrated its efforts around a small number of organizations where the brewery believed it could make a measurable difference. Keegan said one of the company’s first priorities became investing directly in employees and local hiring.
“Number one was paying our community,” he said. “Paying people from our community, doing things like fundraisers and charity events, people that lived in our community, they really cared about that, and they appreciated that.”
That philosophy eventually evolved into a more disciplined community strategy centered on long-term partnerships. TailGate focused heavily on work with the Nashville Humane Association, including a beer called Adoption Ale, where 100% of proceeds support the organization.
“We just did our fourth year doing this,” Keegan said in late 2025. “We’ve raised over $300,000, and that’s just for the Nashville Humane. That’s real money.”
The brewery also spent years partnering with the Nashville Zoo through collaborative beer releases tied to featured conservation initiatives.
For Keegan, the lesson was that concentrated effort generated stronger community relationships than broad but shallow participation.
“People would hit us up, and we’d say, ‘Hey, we do two things here. We invest in our team, No. 1, and then we work with these two organizations, and here’s why and here’s how,’” he said.
That clarity also helped TailGate create boundaries … something many brewery owners struggle with as community requests increase alongside growth.
At the same time, Keegan emphasized that focused giving does not mean ignoring moments of urgent community need.
When an apartment complex fire displaced residents in Nashville, TailGate stepped in as a temporary donation collection center because no centralized relief facility existed at the time.
“We became the drop center for the Red Cross, which was a nightmare,” Keegan said. “But the community appreciated it.”
The brewery responded similarly after the 2020 tornado that tore through East Nashville and devastated businesses and neighborhoods shortly before COVID shutdowns began. With hospitality workers suddenly unemployed, TailGate opened its doors to displaced workers.
“I said, ‘Hey, if you’re looking for work, I will hire you at exactly what you’re being paid, or what we pay for the same job,’” Keegan said.
He said some of those employees still work for the brewery today.
Even during the uncertainty of pandemic shutdowns, Keegan said the brewery attempted to maintain as much staffing continuity as possible while remaining realistic about operational pressures.
“We’re going to play by the rules here, but our intent is to be open,” he said. “You want to go do something else, we’re not going to hold you to it.”
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For other owners, TailGate’s experience highlights a tension many growing companies encounter: balancing authentic community involvement with the realities of cash flow, staffing and operational sustainability. Keegan argued that trying to become everything to everyone can ultimately weaken both the business and the impact it hopes to create.
“There are those opportunities that come up where it’s like, you’ve got to raise your hand sometimes,” Keegan said. “You’ve got to help when people need it.”
But he added that breweries also have to protect the business itself if they want their impact to last.
“We do make sure that we can still pay our rent too,” Keegan said. “That’s a tough balance to tow.”
