For brewery owners, becoming less necessary to the day-to-day operation can be one of the hardest signs of growth to recognize.
At Guggman Haus in Indianapolis, that transition has taken years. As the business has grown, the Guggenberger and Gorman families have worked to build processes, develop managers and invest in equipment that gives their team more autonomy … and gives the owners (Derek & Courtney Guggenberger and Abby and Ryan Gorman) more freedom to step away from the business.
Courtney Guggenberger said that evolution has also changed the way she views leadership.
“It’s getting them [employees and managers] to the point where they’re way more knowledgeable about it than I even am, in a way that they own it, and they feel the autonomy of it, and then I’m here to support with whatever they need,” she said.
That shift does not happen simply because a brewery hires managers. Guggenberger said some leaders have had to learn how to become effective managers themselves, while other positions have required finding the right people for the job.
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“It takes a while to get there,” she said. “And we’d be lying if we didn’t say we were learning all the time.”
That learning process has allowed the owners to gradually move away from being the answer to every question. Abby said having the right people in the right positions has become particularly important as the business has matured.
“And a lot of that is, like I already said, but I’ll shout out our team, our management team, and knowing that, like, the right people are in the right places, doing the right jobs,” she said.
For Guggman Haus, that development also extends into the brewery itself.
Derek Guggenberger said the larger brewhouse and increased automation were not purchased simply to reduce the number of people needed to produce beer. Instead, the goal was to remove repetitive work and give the team time to focus on higher-value responsibilities.
“It was OK, this frees up more time for spending less time brewing,” he said. “Now we can spend more time on research and development or fine tune these other processes, or whatever else.”
That approach has also changed the structure of the production team’s work. Rather than having employees perform the same task every day, automation and scheduling flexibility allow them to rotate through brewing, transfers, tank cleaning and packaging.
“It gives us more flexibility to each person can do something a little bit different each day, if they want to,” Derek said.
That flexibility has a benefit beyond employee variety. It also makes the business less dependent on a rigid schedule.
Derek pointed to the brewery’s production upgrades as an example. Before the larger brewhouse, missing even a day or two of brewing could create problems because the schedule was so fixed. With more capacity and flexibility, the owners can plan production around time away from the brewery.
Courtney said that ability to step away has become increasingly important after years of building the business.
“Coming into this new year, it’s felt the best it has yet,” she said in a recent interview with BREWER. “And so we do. I mean, we love to travel, and it has not happened much. Obviously we did that to ourselves in opening this place, but it’s important.”
The lesson for other brewery owners is less about simply delegating tasks and more about building a business in which delegation is actually possible. That means developing people who can own areas of the operation, creating processes that do not depend on one person’s memory or presence, and using capital investments to eliminate repetitive work rather than simply chasing additional production.
For Gugman Haus, the ultimate return on those investments is not just more beer or more production capacity. It is a business where the owners can trust the team, the team has room to grow, and the brewery can continue operating when the people who started it are somewhere else.
