We recently connected with Lindsey Clements and have shared our conversation below.
Lindsey, appreciate you joining us today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?
In the hospitality industry where margins are tight and businesses are faced with endless competition, I believe being an active owner can separate you from the pack and lead to greater success. As an active owner, I have been able to build community, steer our culture, create a safe and supported space for staff. Customers love getting to know you as an owner, and respect you as a participant in their experience. I don’t hesitate to do any of the tasks that I ask of my staff, which has resulted in a high retention rate. I also provide autonomy to my teammates that empowers them to represent our brand and enhance the customers experience.
Lindsey, 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?
It all began with an immense passion for craft beer, and a need to redirect my career. I moved to Chicago in 2008 still fresh in my career in the interior design industry when the economy crashed and I was one of many that were let go. I ended up waitressing to get by and it began to change my outlook on what I wanted in a career. Craft beer was beginning to grow at a rapid rate, and I loved exploring the varieties of beer and its history. In 2011 my husband and I began homebrewing and we instantly knew we wanted to open our own brewery but knew Chicago would be incredibly difficult to launch into.
I found myself unemployed again in 2012 and took a month to only focus on what to redirect my energy towards. Through reading, researching, journaling and more, I began to manifest a career in the craft beer industry. I had a friend visiting from my home state of Nebraska that was sharing about the momentum building in Omaha around craft beer. It was during her visit that we were having drinks at a packed craft beer bar in Wicker Park, and two guys from Omaha happened to sit down next to us. As classic mid-westerners, we were excited to meet someone from home, and learned that one of them worked for an independent craft beer distributor. I knew the universe was providing and I didn’t want to miss this opportunity. We exchanged contact info despite there not being a current position available, and a couple weeks later, I was in Omaha looking for housing and work. That week he called me and told me he just lost his sales rep and wanted me to come in for an interview. A month later we were relocating to Omaha and I began a three year career with them.
It was during my time as a rep that I networked, studied the industry, and applied this to developing our homebrewing recipes. My husband Tom has real talent for brewing, allowing us to divide and conquer when it came to opening our business, and operating in currently.
It took us six years to open our brewery from the first homebrew batch, and faced countless rejections along the way, from a failed kickstarter, to finding investors, and a bank willing to take on the risk. Learning the hard way that business loans are much more challenging to acquire than traditional loans. We found a dilapidated vintage building in the heart of a historic neighborhood, and brought the corner back to life. Our focus was to create a community centric taproom that was family friendly, and could become a third space for the area, opening in August of 2017.
We serve a rotating tap of twelve beers, serve food, cocktails, wine, and non-alcoholic options. We are known for our creative pizza’s, unique beer offerings, and a safe space especially for women and the queer community. I believe because of the female representation within our company this welcoming and safe space is achieved.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
When Vis Major Brewing Co. opened in 2017 we offered table service. Not many breweries offer table service, but as a brewpub with food we knew this would be the best model to increase ticket averages and enhance customer experience. It worked! We were quick to turn a profit, and began paying down our loans. Naturally with the onset of the pandemic, we switched to bar service once dine-in was permitted. It remained this way, initially because call-in orders and curbside pick-ups were demanding, and because we wanted to minimize unnecessary exposure for our staff. Slowly the masks came off, and the new normal set in. For a couple of years it seemed to work fine, but in 2023 we started to see a decline in sales, and in 2024 it became apparent that something needed to change if we wanted to survive. We knew we needed to return to table service, but now came the challenge of getting my team on board and re-training our regulars on what to expect when they came in. It didn’t cost us as a business anything to try but it did come at a cost with some of my staff resistant to the change. I laid out how I would support them in the transition, and committed to increasing events, and advertisements. We saw an immediate increase in ticket averages by 20% and tips increased by 30%. We participated in Omaha Food Week, bringing in new customers, and have pop-up cocktail events in October, December and January. The pop-ups are a great way to get creative, and to transform the taprooms decor based on the theme. It takes a lot of effort and education of our team, but we are better for it. I knew that with everyone feeling the economic pinch, we had to give customers a reason to spend money with us. It’s been over six months of increased revenue, and I feel much more equipped to take on the challenge of gaining business. Our team is happy to be earning more, and I know we are better prepared for future challenges.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
My husband Tom and I had no idea how hard it would be to start a brewery. We knew we had a great product, I had extensive experience in hospitality, and the craft beer industry was growing rapidly. I read many business books, fostered relationships with mentors, and wrote several versions of a well thought out business plan. None of this really mattered because we didn’t have enough personal assets to guarantee a business loan. I thought for sure, the SBA would be happy to support us as a female-owned, and veteran- owned business. I remember breaking down in tears when I received yet another rejection from a bank.
What I know now:
1. Banks are like car dealerships: they specialize in specific makes and models. In other words, you have to find a bank that is comfortable with the risk of your industry. Despite the popularity of craft beer, in a banks eyes, we are just a bar, and that is risky. In learning this, I reached out to other brewery owners and breweries in planning to learn which bank they were working with. From there, I found a small bank that was willing to work with us.
2. You don’t just need cash to qualify for a loan, you need assets. Tom and I are middle class folks and outside of partially owning our home and a couple of cars, did not have enough assets to cover the loan. We had been searching for cash investors but we needed asset investors. We ended up finding partners through the building we lease. The property owners of our 1913 building saw our potential and wanted a new business to be the stepping stone to revamp the block. They had the assets and thankfully Tom and I are still majority owners of our business.
3. You have to be willing to scale back to make it work. We looked at roughly ten locations and revamped our business plan for each. When starting out we planned to be a production brewery, with a distribution model, but after running the numbers, we had to reevaluate what we could be financed. We knew we couldn’t swing a million dollar start up so we scaled it back and created a taproom business model, with the hope to build a production facility down the road. After over seven years in business, I don’t see the need to complicate our model.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.vismajorbrewing.com
- Instagram: vmbrewing
- Facebook: Vis Major Brewing Co.
Image Credits
Noelle Agenor