All right, guys, welcome to
the Weston Brewing Company,
my name is Mike.
We're kind of a small group
today, so questions, comments,
concerns, raise your hand,
throw something at me.
If I don't know the answer,
I'll make it up.
That's about half the tour
anyway, so money well spent.
Man, I'm kidding,
you guys are rough, jeez.
We're gonna start
with this panorama here,
this is the brewery about
1910, 1911.
The town of Weston went through
several fires,
as did the brewery,
so this is kind of a rebuild,
kind of a hodgepodge of
structures to keep
the facility up and running.
♪
And we are at the, uh--
we're in the lowest cellar
of the Weston Brewing Company.
We purchased the brewery
May of '05.
We had initially had a plan to--
my partner and I am co-owner--
We initially had a plan
to start a smaller
boutique microbrewery
that would service
Kansas City's higher end
restaurants,
we were gonna do custom
signature beers
specific to a particular
high-end restaurant.
About the time we were
firming that up,
my current partner called me
and said, "Hey, by the way,
O'Malley's is for sale,"
which O'Malley's is on the site
of the original
Weston Brewing Company.
I told him he was nuts,
I probably added a few
expletives,
but eight months after that
phone call, we were in
the works of, uh--
in the process of putting
together the finances
to make this happen,
and here we are today,
almost eight years later.
The brewery hadn't been used
for six years.
The guys that had all
the money for the project
kind of took his toys
and went home,
they locked the doors,
and it was literally as if
a virus had come to the brewery
and taken out all the people.
There was still beer
in the tanks, it looked like
it was in process,
so six-year-old beer
in the tanks when we got here.
I did taste it,
it was not good.
It took us almost a year
to refurbish
the brewing system.
Anything that was rubber,
any gaskets, any seals,
lots of the motors,
all sorts of things
had to be completely taken apart
and rebuilt from scratch,
so a little over a year
to get the brewery back
up and running.
All right, so this is
the brew house.
The back wall here,
that's the original back
of the brewery,
so that's 1842.
That runs through the back
of the brewery
into the restaurant
and connects to the lagering
cellars downstairs
which is where we house
the Irish pub today.
So a little bit about
the brewing process...
It might sound kind of silly,
but I think one of the things
that's made us successful
is we were just dumb enough
to take the plunge.
And it's been constant work.
You know, it's sweat equity,
it's blood, sweat, and tears
to keep the place running
and we made a lot of progress.
We've increased our revenue
double digits every year
since we've started.
You know, more than anything,
it's just tenacity,
it's just work, you know,
you got to believe in what
you're doing, and, uh--
and push,
push, push, push, push,
and you're gonna make mistakes,
you know, we're smarter now
than we were eight years ago
and in some ways, I think
that we don't know anything.
The more you know,
the less you know.
It's gonna feel like--
it's gonna feel like
you're failing
a lot of the time,
especially when you're
becoming successful,
it gets more expensive
to do what you do,
so tenacity, I think,
just gotta push,
just gotta drive.
To our left here,
these are two brand-new
45-barrel fermenters
that we purchased.
Delivered yesterday,
we set them up last night.
These are--
these are pretty monumental
in terms of--
in terms of investment,
in terms of where we're
trying to go.
It's kind of, uh--
business like this,
that gets--bit of a gamble,
it's a bit of a risk
in that if we waited
until we really needed
this expansion,
it'd be too late.
You'd be behind the curve,
so part of it's kind of
trying to predict when
you're gonna need this stuff,
when to pull the trigger,
and a lot of times it feels like
you're putting yourself
out there, not really knowing--
knowing where you're going,
but, uh--
you gotta stay ahead
of the curve.
There was a real disconnect
between the restaurant
and the pub, you know,
people knew O'Malley's Pub.
They didn't know
the America Bowman Restaurant.
Or people who knew
the restaurant
didn't know the pub,
so you had two different
collections of clientele.
We've tried to put the whole
facility under the moniker
of the Weston Brewing Company.
We've also added, uh,
the Inn at Weston Landing,
which is the bed and breakfast
next door to the brewery.
We purchased that because
below it is one of the four
original lagering cellars
and when that came on
the market, we felt like
we had to make a push
to grab that
to put the whole facility
back together again.
We've also purchased
the Saint George Hotel
on Main Street.
It's about a two-minute walk
from the pub,
and that's beneficial
for some obvious reasons.
So that was the upper pub.
Down the stairs,
that's the lower pub,
this room we call
the middle pub.
I would explain that
but it takes a very long time.
Man, nothing on that,
you guys are rough.
Jeez.
Believe it or not,
under the stairs, that is
the secret cellar and that's
where we're going next.
We've got really great artwork
for our beer.
We work with a company
called Blacktop.
David Terrill is the artist
that's done the artwork for us.
He's done a great job
of taking certain qualities
of each brand
and spreading it across
the spectrum of brands,
so there's a connection
between all the products.
It's so important
when there's so many beers
on the shelves,
anything that can
differentiate us,
that can tie us together--
You know, you put five beers
together, you're gonna obviously
have more visual presence
than a beer here,
a beer here, a beer here,
and everything looks different.
So branding in terms of visuals,
it is huge.
We have visual elements
in each of our brands
that kind of tie them together.
Some of the ways we treat text,
some of our colors,
some of our antiquing
techniques,
so visually, you can see
the stuff on a shelf
and you're gonna know
that, "Hey, that looks like
it comes from Weston,"
you're probably right.
So hopefully, people are making
that connection.
♪
And you make Steve
do all the labor, I see.
Absolutely.
Steve knows
what's goin' on.
See, Steve's gonna shut this
behind us and guard
the stairs, so--
All right, a couple things
to be mindful of down here,
if it's marked orange,
watch your head.
If it's not marked orange--
Watch your head.
Exactly.
Watch your feet, as well,
it's the original dirt floor,
so one eye up, one eye down.
That'll serve you the best.
♪
Are there any ghosts here?
We've seen some strange
things, yeah.
We've seen some odd things.
Craft beer in general
has really, really grown
year after year.
Most craft breweries
are almost collaborative,
you know, we realize that
it's not necessarily us
against each other.
It's really a fight
for shelf space
against your large domestics.
♪
So we believe--
we believe in hyper-local,
it's a term we've coined
that describe the market area
we want to participate in.
We're not trying
to conquer the world,
there's enough market share
in about a 200-mile radius
to, uh, to keep us as busy
as we could possibly be,
to really push us to the max.
We originally had distributor
contracts in Iowa, Nebraska,
Wisconsin, Minnesota.
We kind of changed our
philosophy on that.
Other breweries are shipping
as far as the coasts,
and that's great,
but you run the risk
of having a local retailer
not be able to get
the product.
We don't want to do that.
We want to dance with
the people that brought us,
basically.
So hyper-local, that's where
that comes from.
Way more than enough
market share to keep us busy.
These tours really drive
our business.
The vast majority of people
that show up for these tours
haven't been here before,
so this is their first exposure,
it's their first time.
There are so many "wow" moments
in the facility itself,
you know, people walk through
that tunnel to the first cellar,
you hear "wow" all the time.
They come down to the lower
cellar for the first time.
We're a bit too well-hidden
to the secrets,
so hopefully, when we have
people that come that have
never been here before,
but come back, they'll
bring friends.
These tasting are free
advertising, really.
The more people we can get
to come to the tours,
the more beer we can get
into mouths,
the more they go out
to supermarkets, liquor stores,
other bars, the more they
purchase our product,
so these tastings really--
really push our business
forward.
Better get the beer
over there.
All right.
♪
A co-production of KCPT.
And Outpost Worldwide,
at home in Kansas City.
♪
Captioned by
