What’s happening in your Brewery: February 18^th, 2015

Momentum is BUILDING at your local Co-op Brewery – so much so, we need to update you again!  

All 1005 of you!

What's new:

Over the past few weeks, the Build team has called and met with several General Contractor candidates.  We need a General contractor to fulfill several key needs:

• 1 - The GC has a regular set of contractors that he works with, and they will oversee to do the "trades" work: Electrical, Plumbing and Mechanical
• 2- It's their name on our building permit, so the Landlord and the City are reassured that SOMEONE knows what the heck they are doing!
• 3 - They will manage the order of tasks, and execution, by the tradesmen, and all the volunteer labor (we will manage Volunteers - he will tell us what he needs and when)
• 4 - They will be responsible for us passing inspections and getting our COO (Certificate of Occupancy)!

After meeting with the last couple finalists, and getting their estimates and getting a feeling for their work styles and how well they might work in the 'controlled democratic chaos' that is a COOPERATIVE - we selected Mark Silver to be our guy.  May I present: Mark!

Well, yeah, he kinda likes beer too - so our priorities are aligned!

Mark comes with a pretty decent pedigree.  He helped build out Elliott Bay Brewing's Burien and Lake City locations (which are gorgeous - have you been?), and has also done work for TnT Taqueria, HiLife and Endoline Joe's in Fauntlerory.  So he's been to this rodeo before.  😉

What else?  Well, let me tell you about a road trip we took...

We visited 3 "manufacturers" in the Portland area, the west coast Mecca of Brewhouse suppliers.  While I can't reveal all the details just yet, I can tell you that this trip solidified our support of USA manufacturers.  Yep, Made in the USA counts for something - literally.  The quality, the pride of workmanship, and the support of their product is head & shoulders above anything that the best intended importers can do.  We saw this firsthand.

After returning home, we were pretty much settled on one manufacturer in particular, and we spent the weekend calling his references (as well as a couple he didn't provide).  We were impressed with what we found out.    to be continued... 

Hey!  Again, here's this one last thing – you may have noticed that we are even closer to reaching our Capital Fundraising goal!  But to be honest, this Made in USA stuff IS more expensive than the overseas stuff (quality, you know?).  If you haven’t yet, we’d love to have your participation to push us over the finish line – and possibly beyond!  If you have any questions about investing in your Brewery Co-op, please do not hesitate to ask our finance guys at finance@flyingbike.coop, or even myself: davidw@flyingbike.coop.

And thank you for all that you do for #MemberDrivenBeer!