We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Mike Fahy a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Mike, appreciate you joining us today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea
This business started from my passion for homebrewing, a hobby turned obsession that started for me in 2010. I started with kits, ventured into extract brewing and eventually wanted more control over the recipes so I went to all-grain brewing. I met a lot of people in the industry through craft beer festivals and just visiting breweries, distilleries and wineries. This eventually lead me to meeting the owners of a local brewery who were looking for a brewer. This allowed me to get my feet wet with professional brewing there for a year and for 6 months at another local brewery. When Covid hit, breweries were operating at a smaller capacity so I was back to brewing in my garage. In the summer of 2021, my wife, Kaitlin, and I were driving home and passed a commercial building 5 minutes from our house with a “For Lease” sign out front and I joked to her that we should put a brewery in there. It was always my dream to have my own brewery so in the next 5 minutes until we got home it was no longer a joke. Since I knew the owners of the building we were there the following week to see it and a few weeks later had a signed lease. We quickly got to work renovating the space to fit our needs and working through all of the paperwork and inspections as well as acquiring equipment and setting up contracts for things we would need going forward, My good friend, John Maurizio and his wife Ronna, came aboard as business partners and we also later had my in-laws, Brad and Kathy Smith, join our ownership team. We each contributed some capital and we also ran a Kickstarter campaign that garnered a lot of support from friends, family and locals! This allowed us to jump over the final hurdles and be ready to open. We held a soft opening on July 1, 2022 and a grand opening on July 8, 2022. We have been fortunate that with our team we can handle most of the day-to-day operations ourselves but also have help from a close friend, Kevin Kudasik, on the brewing side and from my cousin, Rebecca Sube, with bartending.
Mike, 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?
For me, craft beer is something I love because it allows me to be creative. There is nothing more exciting than coming up with a new flavor and seeing the reaction on people’s faces. One of my most popular beers is a “Raspberry Jalapeno Wheat”, it’s something I came up with when we were homebrewing based on flavors from a jam I saw. My friends all looked at me like I had lost my mind…until they tried it! Their faces lit up and it was really one of the moments that got me addicted to brewing.
As a business, we really strive for variety. We’ve setup our system so that what we offer is constantly changing- with a few staples of course- and to always have something new when someone comes for a return visit. I am really proud of the product we’ve been able to offer and the atmosphere that our taproom and outdoor space provides. During the warmer months, we really focus on our outdoor space where we have a huge yard that features picnic tables and firepits and we really strive to make people feel like they are hanging out in their own backyard. In the colder months, we focus more on indoor activities such as bingo and trivia and giving our customers something to do on an evening out. We also put a lot of effort into supporting our community. We always have a beer on tap that we donate $1 of every pint from that beer to our neighbors at Patriot Park who have a privately funded park honoring all Armed Forces from the Global War on Terror. We do a fundraising beer and event for the Flight 93 National Memorial and another for ovarian cancer research in honor of my late wife, Darcel. We also do several events throughout the year where we do things to thank our customers such as free food and prizes.
How did you build your audience on social media?
Our social media audience so far has been through organic growth, we haven’t done any paid advertising or boosts. We started marketing on social media 6 months prior to our opening when people were seeing work happening at our building and were curious as to what was coming. We used it to talk about what was going on and the stages we were at to get people excited for our opening. We have since used social media as a way to stay connected with our customers, let them know what is going on and post event sign ups. Any time someone is in the brewery and asks what is coming up we tell them to follow us on social media so that we can continue to build our audience.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
Our product has definitely been our biggest success in building our reputation. I spent several years building a catalog of recipes and trying things out on a small scale before going into a bigger production. We are located in a small town which has the downside of not having a large population but also the benefit of not having a hugely saturated market to compete with. As a whole the craft beer industry is a very saturated market so in that regard we have to have a consistently good product while also standing out with our variety.
Our team has also been a huge part of building our reputation. Everyone has taken the time to learn our products and be knowledgeable in our market which has helped to gain confidence from our consumers. We truly strive to ensure that anyone who walks through our doors has a favorable experience and wants to return so that has also helped immensely.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.forbestrailbrewing.com
- Instagram: forbestrailbrewing
- Facebook: forbestrailbrewing