We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kirk Nishikawa. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kirk below.
Kirk, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?
Too many beers were consumed, a drunken promise was made and Brewyard Beer Company was born. Isn’t that how most children are brought into this world? 😛
Kirk, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Sherwin and Kirk became friends way back in high school when huge baggy pants, Cool Water cologne and Tommy Hilfiger Jackets were still in fashion. We quickly discovered a shared love for cars and disobeying our parents. Sherwin was known as the “go to guy” when it came to fixing our friends cars, and Kirk was always there to help with stubborn rusty bolts and stuck axels. This partnership eventually progressed to a point where we began meticulously restoring classic cars together. After cars, they formed an amateur garage band with their friends. After the garage band it was home brewing craft beer and tinkering on Sherwin’s fixer-upper house. Sherwin’s love for beer and passion for brewing is what initially inspired many of our friends to become beer fanatics in their own right. It all started with a Mr. Beer kit that so many of us are given as a Secret Santa gift at an office party and then regifted years later. Eventually his brewing moved to the stove. As Sherwin became more and more sophisticated with his brewing, he began to enter home brewing competitions and accrued a large collection of medals. It was only a matter of time before an ill-advised drunken promise locked both Sherwin and Kirk down a path to opening a brewery together. In a strange way, it literally took massive amounts of craft beer to start this business. It started out as a joke really, then a dream, then a realistic dream. As the pieces of the puzzle started to come together, they decided to quit our careers and go all-in on building out their brewery. On December 5, 2015 They opened the doors to Glendale’s very first micro-brewery, Brewyard Beer Co. Since then They’ve enjoyed welcoming folks in to be a part of our craft brew-loving extended family.
Brewyard Beer Company uses a lager based house yeast also known as California Common (or Steam Beer) yeast. What makes this yeast so special is that it originated in California and can ferment like an ale or a lager depending on how you treat it. This has given us a tremendous amount of flexibility which resulted in us brewing beers with a blend of light lager finishes and ale flavor profiles. We basically expanded the “California Common” universe of hybrid beers to include everything you are familiar with in both the lager and ale universe.
Being of Filipino and Japanese decent, we found a niche in the craft beer world brewing a new universe of flavors inspired buy Filipino & Japanese cooking / baking that weren’t thought possible in beer. It has been a complete joy to see people of all ethnicities discover these flavors we hold so dear to our hearts and share them so enthusiastically with their friends. We have also found that since this particular niche is so underserved, our Filipino and Japanese American communities find it a huge source of pride and support us unconditionally. This feeling of opening minds of new beer drinkers and being a source of pride in our communities is what motivates us everyday to keep brewing and keep growing. In many instances a business can destroy friendships but we and our families have only grown closer.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
Prior to COVID, our business was close to 85% reliant on in-house taproom sales. The other 15% was distribution of kegs. Because of COVID we have diversified a lot more and are distributing both kegs and Cans now. Our distribution is accounting for closer to 20%-25% of our sales now and we hope to increase that substantially to 50% within the next year. Basically we ant to shift our revenue streams so that we are more distribution heavy vs taproom heavy. The reason being that we are safer during another shutdown if the taproom is forced to close again.
We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.
Sherwin and Kirk became friends way back in high school when huge baggy pants, Cool Water cologne and Tommy Hilfiger Jackets were still in fashion. We quickly discovered a shared love for cars and disobeying our parents. Sherwin was known as the “go to guy” when it came to fixing our friends cars, and Kirk was always there to help with stubborn rusty bolts and stuck axels. This partnership eventually progressed to a point where we began meticulously restoring classic cars together. After cars, they formed an amateur garage band with their friends. After the garage band it was home brewing craft beer and tinkering on Sherwin’s fixer-upper house. Sherwin’s love for beer and passion for brewing is what initially inspired many of our friends to become beer fanatics in their own right. It all started with a Mr. Beer kit that so many of us are given as a Secret Santa gift at an office party and then regifted years later. Eventually his brewing moved to the stove. As Sherwin became more and more sophisticated with his brewing, he began to enter home brewing competitions and accrued a large collection of medals. It was only a matter of time before an ill-advised drunken promise locked both Sherwin and Kirk down a path to opening a brewery together.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.brewyardbeercompany.com
- Instagram: brewyardbeerco
- Facebook: brewyardbeerco
- Linkedin: brewyardbeerco
- Twitter: brewyardbeerco
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMzBW6D2pM40SfL-e8TJtgg
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/brewyard-beer-company-glendale-2
- Other: Online Store: Brewyard.Square.Site