Building the Brewery Ep. 6
$3 Million and a Middle Finger
The hunt for a location continued. Things were about to get more absurd on lots of levels.
Up until this point, things had been deeply, relentlessly frustrating. Every single property we looked at felt like a puzzle with missing pieces. On my end, I was pouring dozens of hours into each potential site—analyzing how a floor plan change affected our daily operations, estimating buildout costs, mapping out plumbing, and stressing over potential dealbreakers.
And every single one of them ended up being a dead end.
We were five or six locations deep, and after months of grinding, measuring, and burning midnight oil, we had absolutely nothing to show for it except lost time. But this is the exact point in the story where frustration morphed into something much wilder.
Things began to spiral.
The Build-to-Suit Breakup
We got wind of a brand-new commercial development going in on the north side of town—specifically on the southeast corner of River and Douglas. It is arguably the single busiest intersection on the entire north side of Holland. The accessibility was a little tricky, but the sheer volume of daily eyeballs drove John Cash and me to take a meeting with the developer.
This was pitched as a build-to-suit anchor project. They were looking for a high-profile restaurant or brewery to set the tone for the entire strip center, meaning we could essentially dictate the square footage of our space.
By this point, my original vision of a modest taproom serving hot dogs had completely vanished. I had modified the business plan to match our growing desperation: a larger brewhouse, a full-service restaurant focusing on pizza, and a much bigger footprint.
A build-to-suit arrangement meant we wouldn’t need as much cash upfront for core structural construction. But as we sat down with the developer to negotiate rent terms, the numbers started to look insane.
When John Cash and I ran the financial models, the math told a brutal story. Sure, the business might generate enough top-line revenue to survive, but at the end of the day, the landlord was going to make a hell of a lot more money off our sweat than we ever were. Worse yet, because John was looking for an eventual exit strategy down the road where I would buy out his equity, taking on an astronomical lease made a future buyout mathematically impossible.
I called the developer to politely pass on the deal.
To say he was pissed would be a massive understatement. He was furious that we had wasted his time. Before I could even finish my explanation, he slammed the phone down in my ear and never spoke to me again.
Just like that, another door slammed abruptly shut.
Buying the Dirt
After picking up the pieces from that phone call, John Cash sat me down for a reality check.
It was equal portions exactly what I wanted to hear and the most frightening thing ever was when he said “What if we just do this on our own instead of working with a developer? Forget paying someone else’s inflated mortgage. I’ll buy the land, build the building, and that can be my equity return. Let’s just go big.”
From an investor’s perspective, his logic was completely sound. By funding a ground-up build, John would own a securable real estate asset. If the brewery failed, he could still sell the dirt and the physical shell to recoup a massive chunk of his capital.
Anyone who knows anything about commercial construction will tell you that launching a ground-up brewery from scratch is a ridiculously expensive proposition. But at this point, I was getting desperate. I was still operating under that stubborn, high-horsepower athletic mindset: You’re standing at the plate; you’ve got to swing the bat.
So, we went for it.
We locked eyes on a prominent vacant lot just down the road on Ottawa Beach Road, sitting right next to the longstanding local staple, the Itty Bitty Bar. It checked every imaginable box: it was close to the north side population center, captured heavy seasonal beach traffic, had great road presence, and was practically in my own backyard.
I sat down at my laptop and overhauled the business plan for the third (or sixth) time.
The new model was a $2.5 million to $3.0 million monster: a ground-up facility holding a massive full-service restaurant, a large production brewhouse, and ambitious plans for regional distribution.
Looking back, it was completely and totally over my head. An inexperienced, first-time business owner taking on a $3 million ground-up development is a recipe for absolute disaster. But when you are running on pure adrenaline and desperation, you convince yourself you can handle anything.
Monopoly Money and Stainless Steel
We retained a local commercial realtor and hired a talented architect to run a comprehensive feasibility study on the Ottawa Beach site. Ground-up commercial development requires navigating a labyrinth of local codes: surface runoff retention ponds, parking ratios, utility hookups, and proper traffic ingress and egress.
It was genuinely exciting to see real blueprints taking shape. We even approached the owners of the neighboring Itty Bitty Bar about a mutually beneficial arrangement. They were looking to reconfigure their entryway, so we designed a site plan that featured a single, shared main entrance off Ottawa Beach Road, expanding available parking for both businesses. On paper, it was a brilliant, win-win setup.
Around this time, I started holding regular strategy meetings with my friend Barry Johnson.
I had met Barry years prior at the bar of 8th Street Grill back in the early days of Holland’s craft boom. Barry was a wealth of industry knowledge having been in the Michigan brewing industry from day one. He was the original head brewer at Saugatuck Brewing Company, and at the time, he was working for Craft Works Brewing Equipment—a high-end, bespoke equipment manufacturer based out of Detroit.
Barry and I would sit down to map out the physical realities of a major production facility: grain handling, glycol piping, fermentation capacity, and custom stainless steel layouts.
The custom Craft Works brewhouse we spec’d out cost considerably more than the entire real-world budget I would eventually put into building Brewery 4 Two 4 years later. The numbers were so absurdly large that the money didn’t even feel real anymore. It felt like playing Monopoly. We were throwing around millions of dollars on paper, convincing ourselves that this mega-brewery was actually going to happen.
We had a feasible site plan, an architectural blueprint, and a fully flushed-out business model. It was time to buy the dirt.
The $225,000 Middle Finger
The vacant lot on Ottawa Beach Road was officially listed on the market with a local commercial broker for $200,000.
After reviewing the site feasibility with our team, our realtor submitted a fair, market-rate offer of $160,000. Following standard commercial real estate protocol, the offer included explicit contingencies: the sale was dependent on receiving township site plan approvals, environmental sign-offs, and the necessary special-use permits to operate a brewery.
A few days later, my phone rang. It was our realtor.
“Well,” he sighed, “I’ve got some good news and some terrible news. We have a counteroffer, but I don’t think you’re going to like it.”
Turns out, somewhere during the negotiation process, the owner of the land discovered our site plan idea to create a shared entrance with the Itty Bitty Bar. To this day, I have no idea what ancient local history caused it, but the landowner possessed a deep, burning, apocalyptic hatred for the Itty Bitty Bar—and alcohol sales in general. Old school Dutch Reformed teatotalers I assume.
Finding out that we were partnering with their mortal enemy to open a brewery pushed them into an apparent rage.
Their response to our $160,000 contingent offer on a $200,000 parcel?
A counteroffer of $225,000—a full $25,000 above their own asking price—all cash, with ZERO contingencies.
It wasn’t a counter-negotiation. It was a batshit crazy, $225,000 middle finger for even daring to ask. The counter was so completely unhinged and unprofessional that the seller’s own listing realtor was deeply embarrassed, apologized profusely to our team, and fired the landowner as a client on the spot.
Needless to say, the deal was dead in the water.
After almost a year of work, thousands of dollars burned on architectural feasibility studies, and endless late-night spreadsheet revisions, we were shoved right back to square zero.
We had nothing to show for our effort except a stack of useless blueprints, a mountain of wasted time, and a negative bank balance.
And as we would soon learn... this was going to become a very common theme. Desperation leads to another major change of venue in episode 7.
Start from the beginning of this story in episode 1 by clicking here.