Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Nathan Watt. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Nathan, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s jump right into the heart of things. Outsiders often think businesses or industries have much larger profit margins than they actually do – the reason is that outsiders are often unaware of the biggest challenges to profitability in various industries – what’s the biggest challenge to profitability in your industry?

The brewing industry is tough in general what with so many brewery options in Colorado. We have it, in my opinion, even tougher up here in the mountains. There are 6 breweries between the small towns of Winter Park and Fraser, Colorado. We all get along and help each other out when it is needed so that is fantastic! However with that many options you need to do things to set yourself apart from one another. We designed our building to have an open area for the tasting room and patio so people aren’t packed in and have room to move around. We try to come up with ideas to allow people to gather together such as football bingo, a run club, an adventure club, and of course trivia. Everything is also just more expensive to get up in the mountains. The shipping costs of our ingredients aren’t cheap and cost of living is just higher, therefore we try to pay our employees a livable wage to have employee retention. The biggest thing we do to be profitable though is that the 2 owners work almost everyday. I am the head brewer and my wife is the general manager. This way we aren’t paying someone a salary to do these jobs which saves us money. I don’t think we will ever hire people for those positions because we would lose most of our yearly profits. It helps that we love doing these jobs though and enjoy being around our staff. I think most of the businesses up here in the mountains are set up this way with the owners working most of the time.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Nathan and my wife and I own Vicious Cycle Brewing in Fraser, CO. I worked in the medical field for 10 years before getting into the brewing industry. I got burnt out of my job. I was doing the same thing everyday it seemed like for the longest time and needed a change. I was a homebrewer while working in the medical field and really enjoyed the creative side of it. When I left that career I wasn’t sure what I would do next. After taking time off and doing some soul searching of what would make me happy I decided to do the Brewing Science and Engineering track through the American Brewers Guild. After that I got a job at Left Hand Brewing and then at Jagged Mountain Craft Brewery in Denver. I learned so much from those jobs and really enjoyed my time there. I had a crazy idea that someday maybe I could open a brewery. After several years my wife and I talked it over and decided we would look into it and see if it was possible. We loved the mountains and ultimately decided to look into several areas to find land for a brewery. We settled on Fraser which is an up and coming area just down the road from Winter Park. The name Vicious Cycle Brewing comes from the vicious cycle of life that we all get stuck in sometimes. We try to incorporate that into our tap list by doing some different styles and trying new things regularly to keep it interesting.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

I believe that we were able to and still do grow our clientele by just being present at the business. We are constantly at work and showing face with our patrons. Multiple times people have come up to me and said, “Our friends met you recently and told us we had to stop in to try the beers and say hi to you because your story is inspiring.” When the owner(s) are at the business it means something. People love hearing the story behind the business and how it came to fruition.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

We broke ground on our building in late 2019. We had the SBA loan all set, had a general contractor, and a plan of attack for building to be open by late 2020. Well we all know what happened to the world during that time. When prices of building materials went sky high we knew we were in trouble and wouldn’t make this happen with the amount of money we had. So we had to let our general contractor go and I became the GC. It was a daunting task. We had the footers and foundation poured and the steel skeleton erected but that was it. It was a stressful time for sure. I would go to the site everyday and just stare at it wondering where to start and how this was going to be possible. My wife and I ended up doing all the construction with the exception of concrete, electrical, plumbing, and HVAC. We had help from friends and family as well at times. We did the framing of walls, all wall coverings, built the tables and bar, installed all brewery equipment, exterior finish, retaining walls, concrete finish, walk in cooler install, tap lines and faucet install, etc. It was crazy. We had no choice but to do this to come in at the loan amount. We spent around 10-12 hours a day at the brewery for a good 2 years and finally opened in February of 2022. Now we are in year 3 and everything was completely worth it!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://viciouscyclebrewery.com
• Instagram: @viciouscyclebrewing