Fall-elujah!
How have you been? Have you had a pumpkin spice latte already? I don’t drink those things, but Chris does, and he already had two last week so he’s probably beating you. If not, please let him know that he is losing. Although, I’ve got to warn you, that he’ll probably counter that one of his lattes was made from pumpkin seed milk and he had a pumpkin muffin. That was extra special because it’s hard to find them gluten-free, but he succeeded!
It’s been a little while since I wrote one of these and I have lots of business shenanigans to share. But I also took a trip last week that I have to write a little about first just cause it was the most extreme thing I’ve done in years.
It was my 40th birthday last week, and I wanted to do something different, and I was thinking last spring that the few National Parks I’ve been to have been really special and that it’d be awesome to visit more. We found a trekking group people liked on Reddit that does guided tours and provides the tent, sleeping bag, backpack, food, and picks you up from your hotel. OMG it took me weeks to choose where to go. There’s so many amazing parks in this country! Eventually I just Googled which parks are most at risk of burning down (just to help prioritize) and picked Yellowstone. From there, they rate each trek on difficulty, broken down into pack-weight, elevation change, heights exposure, uneven terrain, and distance. We picked a very mellow hike because this is our first one and one that would go through a variety of Yellowstone - geysers, canyons, meadows and forests.
After arriving in Wyoming, I got a text message to check my email right away. They had over booked and wanted Chris and I to do a different trip, one they were just able to reserve campsites for. They highly recommended it because they’d give us our own guide. Pretty cool opportunity, huh? They also said, that although we wouldn’t see Lonestar Geyser, we’d see everything else, just do a loop instead of straight down along the river. It also had a much simpler itinerary, like two miles a day instead of an average of 6.
It was so EPIC!!! But nothing at ALL like the itinerary they sent. Our guide said something like, “I don’t know what they told you, but all the paths are flooded because of beavers, and there’s going to be a lot of miles.” It wasn’t a real trek but a collection of campsites. So, kinda bummed we didn’t see geysers, or canyons, but we did see forests and meadows. And cause the trails were wrecked we were extremely secluded, except when groups of people on horseback came by to kill us. (We’d hop off the trail as fast as we could, and once they came in so hot the horse spooked and I thought it was gonna get Chris.)
In one of the areas where the trail was missing, we had no choice but to walk along a recently fallen tree with branches sticking out as a bridge.
I don’t have a picture, my camera was always tucked safely away until we were stopped for a break, so this is a much more sinister made-up version. It helps my ego.
I only got a few steps until a plunked right in. My heavy 100 liter pack that weighed at least 40 lbs made it so difficult to balance! (Not that my balance is great anyway.) I can swim okay, but damn, the pack really weighed me down and kinda drug me a bit. I survived though. Our guide took my bag across, and I then managed to inch across the log to the other side. Worst part about it was that I had to do the other 5 miles in sloshing boots heavy with water. Blisters, water in my ear, and hurt pride were really the worst of it.
Instead of the two shallow river crossings of our original trek (meaning, no bridge, walk though it) we had 15-20, and a couple were truly terrifying, even the guide looked frightened. I definitely was white knuckling it on the last one, but luckily by then we’d done so many that I’d learned how to dig in my hiking poles and act like a four legged animal. And, this time, our guide had us unbuckle our packs.
Looking it up later, the National Parks does not recommend crossing this. It’s too wide, deep, and definitely not something to do with big backpacks. Well, we did! (Easier than tight-rope walking the damn log anyway.)
As for animals, we saw cute brown squirrels and chipmunks. AND we heard a bear cub as we were walking along a narrow path. Our guide heard it early on and stopped and started making whooping noises to get the mom and cub away from the trail. To my city ears the cub sounded kind of like a goat. This is EXACTLY what we heard.
We were told to keep the bear spray on us ALL the time, except not in the tent, more likely to have an accident with the spray, instead, to keep it right outside the tent door. She told me to sing too when I trekked out to the pit toilet, they don’t like my singing or humming. And no deodorant! You’ll smell like a candy bar. Man, singing to myself late at night made me more afraid, and in the dark, trekking out to pee, I’d see a shadow made by my head lamp and freeze. What was that??! Two nights after leaving one of our campsites, it was closed down due to bear activity.
We saw some incredible waterfalls, and were able to swim at them too.
Honestly, one of the coolest trips ever, I just talked dramatics because those parts are on my mind. I loved waking up in the morning and being there. Now I want to go back because we only saw the southwest corner of Yellowstone. I hope I get to do a lot more backpacking because it was such a fantastic way to experience a place.
OH! And, I was out of cell range the whole time, and when I got back, my phone didn’t register any missed calls or texts, but I know I missed at least one from a group chat both Chris and I are on. So if you called or texted the 3rd-8th, so sorry I missed it.
Okay, on to Cider Business stuff!
Banner Bank Meeting
We had our second meeting with The Banker (my name for our contact), and for this, he had invited a person from the Small Business Association to meet us and see what options she thought there might be. I won’t use her name either, her title is SBA Relationship Manager, I’ll call her Ms. Network.
This meeting was so encouraging! Really what I needed. (When I look over my business plan or pull out one of our bottled ciders, I feel confident in the direction we’re headed, but as soon as I think about the start-up cost and risks involved, it feels really daunting and I start getting really discouraged.) Ms. Network was very positive about our plans and immediately began thinking about different avenues we could take and who she knows who might be able to help us get there.
Grants
Grants for us are going to be difficult to find, and there really isn’t much in the way of grants for women anymore
She knows a lot of people though, and she’ll get us in touch with them, see if they can find anything
There might be something for us because our cider will be organic! (Please, please, please)
Friends and Family
Ms. Network said to go to our friends and family and see if they can invest some money. It would be especially helpful if someone was willing to sign a house as back-up collateral.
We were pretty much like, hold-up, because of course we can accept money as a gift, but we’ve been worried about the legality of friends and family giving us money as investment. (The whole, you must be an accredited investor thing, meaning, be a millionaire in order to be allowed to grow your money in private investments. It’s supposed to protect poor people, but it just happens to also limit their opportunities to get wealthy. I really don’t understand how Robinhood is legal.) She said something like, “well, some rules have changed recently. This is one of those cases where it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.” OH! I love her so much already! She’s my new favorite.
A big thing that we have to do next is structure how much of the business we are willing to sell to investors. So for instance, say our funding needs are $1 million, (it’s actually 1.3 mill but anyway), if a person invests $250K, do they own a quarter of the company? We need to determine what percent we think we are owed for having the idea and doing the job. If that’s 50% it means that the investor would then only own 1/8 of the company. That may not look fair to an investor, but we don’t want to give away the whole company either, so we have some thinking to do.
She knows some people she thinks can help find us loans
Ms. Network loves the pop-up tastings idea. This is really good to know, because I don’t so much. It’s going to be a lot of money, work, time, and possibly frustration to accomplish this. Hopefully no blood and tears, but we’ll see. The Banker doesn’t seem too keen on it either, I think because of the costs involved and I don’t know how much benefit he thinks there’ll be. But to have two people from the SBA say this is the path to go down, because we’ll learn a lot and it will say a lot about us, means this is something that really should be worth the pain. Sometimes, you know, in life, you do things you don’t want to, because it’s a good idea, everyone in the past used to do it like this and you did it but it didn’t help at all? Yeah, it’s happened to me a lot. I’m really trying to avoid anymore senseless, draining, unprofitable, time-sucks. So, I was hesitating and needed that extra push down this path.
The Banker reminded us to “make your money work for you.” This was partly in relation to the fact that we might be able to get the pop-ups funded with grants or loans and save our money as investment in the actual business.
The best part of the meeting was that they both said a couple of times that “you are going about this the right way.” I didn’t know bankers could calm my anxiety! Where has Banner Bank been all my life?! (I could have used them to walk across the fallen tree too.)
New Cider Guys
Chat with New Cider Guys
This new cidery opened up last February pretty close to our neighborhood and when we were meeting with The Facilitator (the guy with cider equipment we can use) he name dropped this cidery as one that he helped get going. He leased his equipment to them and mentored them. Well, I emailed the cidery and asked if they didn’t mind chatting with me about their experience starting up.
This was kind of bonkers. They are both really busy right now, so I fully expected to only get a chance to talk with one of them for like fifteen minutes in their seating area, but instead they both greeted Chris and I and immediately took us to the back. The gave us hours of their time! It was ridiculously kind, and a little exhausting. They had tons to share.
Their Advice:
Regularly email feds and TTB regulators. Ask questions directly and with an electronic trail, not over the phone. They frequently won’t have the answer right away, but they’ll eventually give one, and because it’s in writing they can’t punish you later for something you did ask about.
There’s differences in production and distribution licenses. We heard a lot about that. Not sure I understood all of it, but it was highly encouraged to outfit a garage to make these hurdles easier.
Their lawyers are worth every penny and then some. It sounds like there are a lot of regulations around contract brewing. So, working with The Facilitator under his license, like we’re talking about doing, is not something regulators are super comfortable with.
For electrical, do threes of everything and make the outlets stronger than you think you’ll need, it will get used.
You can self distribute now! I didn’t know that, when we were looking into distribution, in the state of Washington it was illegal to not have a middle man sell and bring your kegs to the bar.
They have already out grown their equipment! They self-distribute and there’s a ton of interest and demand for their cider. Most of their time seems to be spent handling the distribution orders, and they can’t make enough cider on their own to cover their taproom and their distribution needs. My main reason for not wanting to ever distribute was the massive loss of revenue. You sell a keg for an 1/8 of what the bar will take when they sell it to the customer, and part of that price difference is due to the distributor’s cut. But, after seeing how much work goes into self-distributing, maybe the fee is justified?
I then asked what it was like working with The Facilitator:
Once we keg our cider we’ll have to move it to the bar or event we’re having the tasting at. Truck rentals are impossible October through December. All are reserved for deliveries for the holidays. These poor guys made large amounts of cider and were trying to get it to bars and their reservations for trucks would just evaporate and be given to regular home shipments.
Get a licensed production space very near The Facilitator. (We shouldn’t need to worry about this. For them, this was their solution to not having their own cider making facility, enabling them to take orders for kegs and cans. So I think they had finishing steps to do elsewhere. We’re just trying to make a small amount, so start to finish should all be doable at The Facilitators.’
The Facilitator doesn’t have storage space. Again, The Facilitator made it sound like storing a small batch would be fine. These guys, are really popular. They have a strong devoted following and bars blow through their kegs. (Their personality and branding is really niche.)
We will be the last in line to ferment product at the facility, and there are cider makers, wine makers, and distillers that’ll take priority over us. There’s a mythical calendar that The Facilitator keeps that we’ll never see and our appointment will be dropped or changed randomly. We could show up because it’s our turn to make cider, but all of a sudden some forgotten previously scheduled brewing for someone else will take place.
These two owners were really nice, and offered different ways they could help. Like sell us some of their start-up equipment or give advice on different products. What I’d really like is to “help” them with a fermentation, but it’d probably be more like shadowing and possibly be a bother. We volunteered to help with anything anyway, and maybe there will be a job that even our inexperienced hands would be useful.
SCORE Mentor
We had another meeting with The Mentor. He thinks that talking about potential investment from family and friends is getting ahead of ourselves. “Don’t be impatient.” But then he helped us with our questions of the legality of this anyway. It sounds like we might be allowed 35 non-accredited investors. This entails creating an offering circular with our financial projects and a securities lawyer could help us with that.
He really wants us to do more research into what places might let us host a pop-up event or tasting, as well as volunteer. Our mentor is really focused on proof that there is a demand for our product and that we can do it. The bank and friends seem more to care that we can get this thing funded. Meanwhile, no one has asked to see my business plan. I do still get told regularly about where to go to help me make one.
The Advisor has finished reading my plan though and has made lots of comments for me to go through, which is perfect. I want our destination to be clear so we don’t get lost.
Coming Up
I’ll go over all of The Advisor’s notes on the business plan and hopefully meet with him soon. As soon as we get our new business credit cards in the mail we’ll buy a filter so we can test out how it changes the flavor of our cider if we skip pasteurizing. Hopefully this will give us a clear path forward on what pieces we need to be able to make cider with The Faciliator. We’ll also talk to some people Ms. Network got us in touch with about grant and loan options. Thanks as always for reading and being a part of our cider trek.
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