We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Alex Spires a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Alex, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about your team building process? How did you recruit and train your team and knowing what you know now would you have done anything differently?

At the start of this business venture, the only employees were my wife, Megan, and me. We relied heavily on family, friends, and anyone in the industry who was willing to share. We knew that once we opened we would need a team to help us succeed.

We try to understand our strengths and weaknesses and hire employees who compliment us well and build out the missing skills, experience, etc so as a group we are well rounded. Neither of us had experience running a bar so right away we wanted to find someone who could guide us in that regard. With all of our hires, the most important trait has been personality. We wanted to create a fun, social place (it’s right in our name). We knew skills could be learned but we needed people who had the right personality. This doesn’t mean people who think or act like us. We want to be a place for everyone. So we want to have a diverse staff. We want everyone who walks through the door to feel welcome and at place. Part of that is having a wide range of beer styles and other drinks, but far more important is having friendly relatable staff.

We don’t always get it right, but we’re a small team so its easy to see when something isn’t working. In a book the founder of Dogfish Head, Sam Calagione, said to hire slow, but fire fast (I think every business school in the world has said this too). I try to keep that in mind when thinking about staffing. When hiring take the time to get to know the applicant and see how they’ll fit in with the current staff and what you’re trying to build. Then after hiring, if anyone is creating a negative impact on the team or business, it needs addressed as quickly as possible or it can break the team and hurt your culture.

We’re fortunate to have an incredible staff, built up by a lot of unique individuals who all understand our goal here and not only help us achieve it but help those around them be better. We were lucky to find them all but it’s the collaborative team efforts that keep them here.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

Megan and I started visiting breweries pretty regularly. We fell in love with the culture and collaboration in the industry. We’d always ask for tours and she would really geek out over talking to the brewers (or maybe that was me). We visited a small brewery in NC that was brewing the same size batches I made in my garage and she asked when we were going to open our own brewery. That triggered a business plan and about 8 years of research before we officially took the plunge.

The more we have learned about craft beer, the more we love it. We want to spread that passion with our customers. We have a Brew Your Own where you can come in and brew a batch of beer, learn the process, and take your custom beer home in cans. We also have classes on beer and beer making. We try to have something for everyone by brewing a wide variety of beer styles, having guest beer, liquor, wine, kombucha, and house-made craft soda. A variety of drink options makes it more inviting for all people. A wide range of beer styles makes it easy to introduce people to craft beer and styles they haven’t had before. All of this helps grow our industry and passion for craft beer.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

It has been harder than I thought it would be to get our name out there. We’re a small team without much of an outside sales force or marketing budget. My favorite way to grow our clientele has been tastings. We’ve done several at nearby apartments. It creates a nice social event for their community and there are few things I enjoy more than drinking and talking about beer. We’ve also done some at local business as team building events. For me the best part is when we see someone we met at a tasting come into the brewery with their friends and hear them talking about the tasting and what they learned.

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

My favorite marketing story is one that I’ve kept fairly secret, but I guess that’s over now. I love Halloween and our pumpkin ale. I was very excited to brew our first batch at a commercial scale. We opened in September and our first pumpkin ale was the seventh batch I made at the brewery. What I didn’t know at the time was how much pumpkin ale we would sell, but I loved the beer so we made a big batch. Big enough to get us through October, November, and as it turns out in December no one wants to drink pumpkin ale. It was one of our top sellers and then it just stopped selling and we still had a lot. Then one of our bartenders said “why don’t we change the name to winter squash ale or something not associated with fall.” That made sense so I looked up “winter squash” and it turns out all pumpkins are winter squashes. I remember being very hesitant about it (not sure what bad thing I thought might happen). Then we changed the name of our pumpkin ale to Winter Squash Ale. The result was shocking. I could hand someone a sample of our pumpkin ale and they would say “this is good but I’m not in the mood for it” or “this is out of season”. That same person would take a glass of winter squash ale and say how great it is and they’ve never had a winter squash ale or anything like it.

Since then I’ve paid more attention to how much pumpkin ale I brew. I’ve also put a lot more thought into what the customer sees and their perception of things. If you’re missing our delicious winter squash ale, please ask me about it next October. We keep it hidden in the back but I’m happy to get you a glass.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.spiressocial.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spiressocial/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SpiresSocial/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-spires-1574b784/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/spiressocial
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/spires-social-brewing-columbus-2?osq=brewery
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@spiressocial