Pull on your good jeans. Find a shirt with a collar. Grab a beer. It’s time for a serious, official brewery meeting.
We had one of our first official brewery meetings yesterday. Since we are the owners of our LLC we don’t have a lot of “official” meetings.
For our official meeting, we took four growlers of Piney River brew up to Grellner Sales and Service, a distributing company in Rolla, for a meeting with Rodney Edwards. The folks at Grellner were recommended to us by the owners of the Public House in Rolla, and our local package store, The Pit Stop in Houston, has also worked with them for many years. Grellner is a family owned business that was started by Rodney’s grandfather in the 1940s.
There’s something to be said about a meeting that involve tasting and enjoying lots of beers. After sampling all of our beers (Rodney kept the growler of porter to finish off at home), we even pulled out some of the craft beers that Grellner distributes to compare and contrast our Pale Ale and IPA.
Grellner, which began as a trucking company, has been in beverage distribution for over 50 years. They have handled large beer companies and currently distribute MillerCoors products. Their biggest craft beer is Boulevard out of Kansas City, and they also handle Big Sky Brewing out of Missoula, Montana. They were handling O’Fallon until they stopped producing beer, and as of May 19, 2011, they are the first distributor in the in the US to handle Piney River Brewing Company.
Greller’s distribution territory covers much of the Ozark region from South Central Missouri to West Central Missouri. Grellner does not cover all of the state, but Rodney has expressed willingness to introduce us to other distributors throughout the state as the demand grows. So it’s okay to go ahead and ask your favorite pub, package store or restaurant when they are going to have Piney River brew available.
Rodney signs the contract.
Brian signs the contract.
A post-signing toast.
It’s been a heckuva week for us at Piney River Brewing Company. On Wednesday morning, we found out that our SBA loan was approved. On Thursday evening we signed a contract with our first distributor. This morning we woke up to find out that we were listed by The Daily Meal as one of the “10 Top Nanobreweries”. (Our friends at Hess and Bat Creek in Bowling Green also made the list.) Check it out:
http://www.thedailymeal.com/small-wonders-10-top-nanobreweries-slideshow-7
Brian and I have been in the working world for many years, but it wasn’t until the past few months that we woke up every morning wondering what sort of wild, new thing was going to happen that day. Owning a brewery is definitely not overrated!
