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

Hi Kyle, thanks for joining us today. Talk to us about building your team? What was it like? What were some of the key challenges and what was your process like?

When I started my business, I knew from the beginning that I would need a team to run the day-to-day operations. I still have my full-time job, so balancing my personal, professional, and small business priorities is a constant challenge. Early on I wanted a flat organization without the need for oversight or micromanagement. “Everyone is a leader” was my tagline, and for the most part it worked.

However, when my business partner abruptly left the business 6-months after we opened our doors, I knew I needed to restructure. As it turns out, everyone being a leader can be good, but it can also defer decision-making and unpopular tasks if you don’t have the right personalities.

Now that I was the sole person executing production, administration, maintenance and logistics for my small business on top of taproom staffing, I knew I had to delegate authority to run the taproom and employee scheduling. I needed a manager.

I used my experience as a military officer and working for the DoD to establish a disciplined and regimented approach to hiring using a standard set of questions and a numeric score for each answer. I cast a wide net and begin sifting through the applications. Once I had the person selected, I started onboarding my new manager.

The hiring of my manager wasn’t just a new position – it was a complete restructuring of the organization. To help the process I worked with my manager to write detailed SOPs, quick reference sheets, checklists, and policies to ensure that how we operated was an organization was clearly defined and that our expectations were clear.

Finally, we started building the team. It took time. Sometimes we hired people that worked out immediately and sometimes we hired people that weren’t a good fit. As a business owner, I paid my staff as much as I could afford so that we were recruiting the best people we could find. We have limited taproom hours, so most of the time the staff I hired had professional careers outside of the brewery. Many of our employees joined the team to make a little extra money, to socialize, or be a part of the brewery culture.

What we found was that our team became self-sufficient and took care of each other. A “call out” for a shift was immediately met with volunteers to fill it. Communication of scheduling needs and issues was clear and came as early as possible. The team believed in the organization. The team took care of each other.

As a business owner, I always want to make sure that my team’s time is valued and that they are never taken for granted. I try to host semi-annual team events, where we don’t work but we simply enjoy each other’s company. I expect a lot, and whenever I can, I try to introduce fringe benefits for the team outside of monetary compensation.

In the end, I wouldn’t have done anything different. I needed to learn the hard lessons as a new business owner and I needed the crisis of my business restructuring to rebuild the team. In the end, it is the people that make the business successful and I work to ensure they are taken care of as best as I can.

Kyle, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am an active-duty army officer with 20-years of service. My background was initially in Infantry, and then I switched over to Project Management in 2017. I have a B.S. in Engineering Management from the United States Military Academy at West Point and a M.S. in Systems Design & Management from MIT.

When I arrived at my first assigned as an acquisition officer, I met a retired military officer within my office. We started talking, and since he needed a space to brew beer (he was in an apartment at the time), he agreed to set up his elaborate homebrew equipment in my basement and teach me how to make beer. We brewed almost weekly for three-years, as I absorbed 25-years of brewing experience from him.

At some point, we started thinking we could open our own brewery. COVID hit, and that didn’t stop us, as we started the paperwork to form our business entity and we found a space to lease while the world was shut down. Before long, we had built a barebones taproom and production area, and had all the licensing needed to open the doors, which we did in May 2021.

I got into making beer because it is where I fill my artistic needs. I find the combination of physics, chemistry, and biology fascinating and the process of making beer rewarding. I love consuming information about beer, beer styles, beer history, and reading white papers about research and findings in the field. On top of that, I enjoy being a leader within my small business. I enjoy building a team, working with different personalities, training and developing new brewers, and removing obstacles for the team so that they can be successful. I enjoy supporting and mentoring my staff if they are applying to a new career field or and education program. For my staff, I know their time at Battery Island Brewing Company is finite and I want them to be closer to achieve their goals when they depart.

I think what sets us apart from other small breweries is that we take a scientific approach as much as we can to our craft. I consume as much information as I can in my free time, and every time we brew, I try to make our beer a little better. I will obsess over small details and then try to implement them in production and record the results. We are very detailed oriented, and we put a lot of effort into every beer we produce.

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

After my business partner left and I took on the other half of the business responsibilities, I was stressed. For the first time in my life, I had high blood pressure and trouble falling asleep. I was overwhelmed. On top of that, some equipment went down, which added a significant unexpected maintenance cost. I was putting personal money in to keep the business going, while we struggled with production.

I used those feelings and that fear to motivate me. I built a very detailed training program for the taproom staff and brewer staff, to include training videos tied to our cloud storage. I restructured the company and built a new team, under a new manager who is terrific. I went through every point of failure for each piece of equipment and purchased replacements where I could. I evaluated every brewery process and researched ways to improve, and to better ourselves and our product. I looked for ways to reduce waste and maximize profitability during slower times.

In the end, I built a business that has endured economic fluctuations and COVID resurgence. It took time, but my blood pressure is at normal and I sleep soundly because of it.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

A good product. If you are there to make craft beer, charging craft prices, you better be confident in your product.

That was not always the case. There are growing pains with every new business, and ours was no different. New equipment, new processes, new techniques, challenges, etc.

In the early days of the business after we opened, we put out a beer that I felt was substandard. My business partner didn’t think so, and confidently stated that it should be kept on tap. That error hurt our reputation that will take years to repair.

After my business partner formally left the organization, any beer that had the slightest hint of an off flavor or imperfection went down the drain. I’d rather eat the material and labor and the lost revenue than have my reputation as a brewery be affected negatively again. Reputation is everything, especially when you have thin margins and almost no advertising budget.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.batteryislandbrewing.com
• Instagram: batteryislandbrewing
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BatteryIslandBrewing/