Joe Hamilton
You joining me today on SPX is restaurateur, Brewer, entrepreneur, podcast host, beers with Fred. Fred forsley, welcome sir. Thank you, Joe. We have had some good conversations, because we like to do a lot of things. I think you do more things than I do. Let’s start by getting a rundown of the brands and endeavors and dozen plus restaurants and everything under your umbrella.
Fred Forsley
Yeah, actually, I started in real estate, so I have a brand called Harborview properties in Maine. I’ve got about 12 brokers. I was a broker when I was 18 – 19, years old, and kind of was the foundation of my entrepreneurial experience. And that led me into the beer business. And we got Shipyard Brewing Company, which was founded in 1992 in Kennebunkport Harbor in Maine. It’s the birthplace shipyard Federal Jacks. And Kennebunkport brewing is in a 20,000 square foot real estate location right on the harbor in Kennebunkport Maine. And then I also got involved in Sea Dog Brewing Company, which was started by the Camplin family, and we, we actually bought it out of bankruptcy in 2000 and that has nine locations, and then we came up with a root beer soda brand that became Captain Eli, is my dad’s name and my son’s name, but it was named originally after my dad, and he has had a family recipe for root beer, and so he was a veteran world war two Navy. And we’ve done a few comic books around it, and some had some fun. So I’ve been in business for about 33 years in the beer business, and about 44 years in real estate, and it’s led there’s a few other things, ventures that I’ve gotten involved in recently. This alt beverage, which is a hemp based THC product was solvent free, which is really key to mention, because a lot of the brands are, they use solvents to extract the THC, and it’s a all natural, only 30 calories. And actually it’s being distributed locally here by Great Bay. And then so I’ve ventured in a variety of other things, but those are the, those are the primary things.
Joe Hamilton
And Ice Pik vodka.
Fred Forsley
Ice Pik vodka that’s, yeah, it’s actually growing rapidly and doing well. And I’ve actually trade back some other names in the spirits business that we’re going to be doing in the future too. But Ice Pik is a brand that we’ve started before COVID, and we took some hits during COVID on supply chain things, but feel like we’re relaunching. And we just launched with Pepin over in Tampa, and we’re in Maine and New Hampshire and Massachusetts, and then we’re gonna launch throughout the rest of the country. And we enjoyed Ice Piks at Park Shore Grill a couple nights ago, Right we did. And yeah, what’s nice about this town and community St Pete is how easily I’ve been able to meet friends and actually feel like like yourself. We only met a few months ago, and then quickly, we a lot of the same interests. And Pat O’Hara and guys like Mike end on both different entrepreneurs in their own way, but I feel like they’ve known those guys my whole life, you know, and I’ve met a number of people in this town. They’re just, we’ve become friends. I’ve been in St Pete for like, nine years I lived in Snowbird. I go back and forth, but basically, my permanent residence is here in St Pete, and love it. I love this community. It’s really, in my opinion, one of the best places in the world to be, especially in January and February, March.
Joe Hamilton
Lots to dig in there. But I want to go straight back to being a broker. Is no joke. I mean, you have to, you know, be a regular agent first, then jump through 10,000 more hoops to become a broker. So to be a broker at 18 or 19 is pretty extraordinary. So what did 12 and 13 look like for you that led you to be a broker by the time you’re, you know, what were those teenage entrepreneurial endeavours.
Speaker 1
Dad and mom ran a home for veterans, and it was even though it was a boarding home, but it was a little bit entrepreneurial. You got to learn how to run a business, because back then, you know, kids didn’t have a choice if their parents told them they were working. You didn’t. I never got paid. And, you know, so you do side jobs to get paid, and I realized early on that I wanted to work for myself from the experience of having to listen and do jobs that I had to do, or side jobs. And I got lucky, and I met a friend of mine who actually started real estate right out of high school, Mike liberty in Gray Maine, and he basically said, you know, you should really get your real estate license, and you’ll be able to find properties for me. And we did, though, that’s what started it. Yeah.
Joe Hamilton
So he was an investor, and then you were doing the work for him, to help him source some places to get into,
Speaker 1
yeah, yeah. He got into government housing, and we, you know, very quickly, had done a lot of deals, and so we were on that roller coaster of the real estate game in the 80s, and then Reagan did the retroactive tax law change, which just decimated real estate, led to the SNL debacle, and so everybody had tough times were in real estate then, but I actually created opportunities to buy. And so I’ve been through three or four ups and downs over the last 40 years in which really the opportunities are when things get a little tough and crazy, and then
Joe Hamilton
If you have a little cash, you can jump in.
Fred Forsley
Or if you don’t have cash, you know people with cash. So I have fortunate to have a partner, Gordon Herjavec, who’s a bit older than me, close to 21 years older at the time the game was tough, and he allowed me the ability to and I would find a deal, and he would invest, and together we would own the property. And we had some great successes with that, with that, and I assisted him on some of his businesses. Yeah, it was the largest recycler in the state of Maine at one time. And I would deal with the banks and deal with the business aspects of it. He was really able to foresee and run businesses, but he wasn’t real good with the banks and lawyers and and I learned that at an early age.
Joe Hamilton
So, so you have, you ever had a w2 paycheck?
Fred Forsley
Well, when I paid myself through my own okay? But yeah, that’s it, though.
Joe Hamilton
So never from somebody else.
Fred Forsley
In college. worked for Coach Brock at Arizona State, and I got a paycheck there, but that was about it.
Joe Hamilton
So do you remember the transition between? So if you were, you know, if you’re sourcing, I say Mr. Liberty, because it’s a cool name. You’re sourcing properties for him. You’re for him. You’re getting a commission for that. When did you transition in to start looking for your own deals or think about owning your own properties?
Fred Forsley
What happened was my mom and dad get sick. My mom had always had MS but she always was able to she was driven woman, and she was running the boarding home with him. My dad got really sick, passed away, and I had to run the boarding home. So all of a sudden I had to focus on that. So on the side, I then started to do my own deals. And that’s what kind of sparked it, because I went from, you know, I’m really focused in one area, because we used to find government housing projects or build them, find land and build and so that’s what kind of sparked it. And actually bought a building from Gordon Herjavec and flipped it and made some money. And then he said, Geez, how’d you do that? We met, and he had a big landfill in northern Maine, and it needed some assistance, because he had some partners that had gotten into some trouble with the way they were operating. And so I ended up, at a young age, having to go in and renegotiate that deal for him.
Joe Hamilton
As a real estate investor, can you can talk a little bit about your process. What do you look for? So, you know, when you examine a deal, what’s, what’s your process?
Fred Forsley
It’s so funny. The first thing you learn, and anybody that’s had in many real estate classes, is location, location, location. And in my life, that’s really played to be true. You know, is like, where is that geographically located? Is in a spot you think is going to ultimately be successful because of something’s moving there, or that, you know, you can always make more money if you can buy when the market hasn’t trended up yet. But yeah, they always just say, buy the worst house on the best neighborhood, because that’s going to give you the best upside. But when I’ve gotten hurt in deals, it’s usually been because I didn’t do enough homework on the real estate location, like I got hurt down here in Clearwater on highway 19. I bought a location from the bank. Actually, I got a great deal in the building, but it was on enterprise right across from the mall, and I didn’t realize, and I should have done more research, but they, you know, not 19 completely got ripped up. So I did this beautiful renovation for brew pub the day we opened. They had bulldozers out front just sitting there. And that was, I’ve never seen a worse run construction job in my life. And I think it would have been very successful at that not have happened, but that location was painful when we sold it. Ultimately, it’s not a bad location, but that construction, redesigned how you got to that location made it very tricky. But so I didn’t make necessarily. Thought I made the worst decision buying it. So you got to look for my opinion. I always because I’ve got some young guys I’m mentoring. I say, try to read the deed, try to read the, you know, restrictions. What can you do? What can’t you do? And then, really, what is the zoning? And then what is the mentality of the zoning in the community? I mean, are they? I’ve changed zones before. I’ve gotten contract zones. I’ve, you know, it really comes down to what’s the will of the community, you know? And, yeah. Have neighbors, they’re going to fight whatever you’re doing, or are they going to embrace it? And those things can matter and and cost you money if you don’t have the community behind you. So I’ve gotten TIFs Before Tax Incremental Financing, and had to get, you know, a really dilapidated where we put the brewery in 92 we were in Kennebunkport Maine, and then 30 miles north is Portland, and we needed to expand. And I found an industrial site that was abandoned, and it was in rough shape, and it had environmental issues because of my background, dealing with recycling company, and we had a secure landfill. I had dealt with contaminated soils, and I understood people that knew how to deal with it so I could bring value to that property. I got it at a huge discount for four acres overlooking the harbor, and to this day now is like $180 million real estate development, mainly because of location. Location. Location is where now became the place people wanted to be, but I had to give up a lot to get there. But at the same time it’s there and we’re still there. The brewery is still there, but the people you have to work through and relationships, it’s it’s like when you’re almost you have so many different key points you have to cover off on. You know, not only getting financing and money, getting through the approval process, getting through the entitlements, trying to build something that, at the right time, will fit what the demand is out there, and what you’re trying to build is so, so critical, similar to some of the things you’re working on right now, you know, you’re with your science center and some of these other programs, it’s if you can gain support, but you got to make sure when you get it done, You’ve got commitments for people to use it, and all the other pieces, you know. So it’s, yeah, it’s amazing when you see, you know, you’ve been in business a little while, to see things that have transformed. Down in Florida. Things can move quickly on transportation changes, like highways and things like, not so much in New England. You don’t often get that kind of movement in New England. So here, you know, knowing what the D O T, F, D O T and others are doing, I would have been better served on knowing better on 19 what was going on highway 19, but on that deal. But then also, it’s important to keep informed and communicate and then, but at the same time, you know, really find the right business structure on deals. So I got fortunate to find my location at Treasure Island. At the time, the city was kind of realized that that site was a tough site because it sat vacant then close to 12 years. And I got a lot of encouragement from the city. The last minute, I had a problem with the F D O T because I actually didn’t get a permit from them. And I actually called Robin Miller, who then called somebody in the governor’s office who then got the F D O T to take off the stop work order, and then $10,000 later of fees and applications and everything else, I got restarted. But that was a week before we were already ready to open and hired everybody. And so you have these things happen to you, and you know is the key is to be able to adjust and talk to people and get things solved. Because no matter what, something’s going to happen to you that you have to adversity, they’ll have to readjust and deal with, but
Joe Hamilton
not with the Science Center. That’ll run perfectly, right?
Fred Forsley
That’ll be easy. That looked like such an easy project. I thought, I’m surprised it’s not open it. What are you gonna open it next month?
Joe Hamilton
Right? As long as you don’t mind being in a tent that I put up in the in back.
Fred Forsley
You know, somebody had an original vision, and you’re, you know, rejuvenating that vision. And you I think science and education and giving that it’s so impactful for that to be able to have access for kids, you know. So hopefully that’ll, that’ll keep going.
Joe Hamilton
But there’s, you know, there’s a thread with the Science Center. It wasn’t something I set out to do. It was an opportunity that was presented to me. And I think there’s a thread of opportunism in how you operate as well. You mentioned buying sea dog out of bankruptcy. You had that site that sat vacant, where the where you ended up ultimately putting the Treasure Island location, you mentioned, the land that had some problems. And I think even you got into the restaurant business out of somebody that owed you some money, right, yeah. So a lot of opportunism in there, right?
Speaker 1
I think that, I mean, it upsets my wife a lot, you know, like, why don’t you just stick on the real estate? Why did you have to get into these up for, I mean, I think that, yeah, part of it is, I grew up in a situation where it was like, Okay, there’s not a problem, there’s a solution. What’s the solution? What are we going to do here? And that just came from the way my my mother was basically like, she would plow through issues, even though she had, MS, she would say she would never talk about it. She was just, Okay, let’s get this done. Let’s get that done. And she was very civic orientated and involved in the we had a grew up in a small town. It was, I think at the time, there might have been3500 people Gray main and so you could make a difference in the community and that type of thing.
Joe Hamilton
Definitely have that here, yeah, not as much as 3500 not as first in town.
Fred Forsley
But what I love about here, though, is it. Wasn’t in, I mean, I lived in Winter Park for a little bit Florida. It’s a beautiful little town, and there are, it just seemed like you didn’t have the same ability to make impacts. It seems like it’s a there’s very giving. A lot of people give back to the community here.
Joe Hamilton
I mean, stuff I do in theory, and like, a Sharky kind of environment, I have no business doing it, and it probably would have been you. Probably would have been really, really painful. And the opposite happened here. I was, like, saw a need with earnestness, filled the need, and the community supported it. It was just, you know, very I guess I think it’s Midwestern values, you know, really coming down here, but I do think it’s a special place in that regard.
Speaker 1
In the future, yeah. You just feel the energy here. You know, there’s such an energy around here, and I think some people may not feel it as much if they’ve been here a long time, they haven’t lived in some areas that really aren’t as wanting of new the new energy, that’s it’s frustrating, because some of these things can take so much energy to, you know, whether rays are going to stay, where they’re going to go, they can do with the property. But, you know, we saw the, you know, people on the pier project. I think in the end, people felt, well, it could be a variety of different things, but when I walked down there, the energy that’s there, the people that are enjoying it, just seems like they kind of nailed it. As far as community involvement. There’s, it’s not like it’s a peer sitting there with nobody going out on it. There’s, I go out there, and it’s just amazing, the energy and what the community created. There’s always a thing where you could say, well, it could have been done better. This could have happened better or that. But in reality, I think when you look around, there’s so much opportunity to make this city just even more livable. And I’m excited about the future here.
Joe Hamilton
So one interesting purview you’ve had is the explosion of the brewery business. When you got started, there were relative to what there are now, a handful and now there’s 100x that. So kind of walk us through the environment when you started brewing and how it’s changed.
Speaker 1
When we started, Alan Pugsley, he’s English, he’s my he was consulting to a variety of people that wanted to open breweries. And I think I was probably the, maybe the 90th brewery in the country at the time, and that was counting all the and it got down. Jimmy Carter changed the law for Billy beer so his brother could have a beer of his own without having a brewery. And it affected the way the brewery laws were the with the three tier system. So Jimmy Carter made a big difference with his presidency and beer, for sure, if anybody so at the time, it got down to 50 breweries in the country, and then Sierra Nevada opened up on the West Coast, and you had Anchor Steam on the West Coast, and then Portland Maine, you had David Gary found Alan Pugsley in England, and he came and opened up Gary’s brewery in Portland Maine. And then Alan opened up a few others. So in mid 90 I met Alan, and we opened up in 92 June 15, and he, at that time, wasn’t my partner, but I realized that I didn’t want to be the brewer every day after doing it for a bit. And that’s when, on a handshake, he became my partner. And at that time, I think there might have been three or four breweries in the state of Maine. Now there’s 150 brewers in the state of Maine. And Maine is not, you know, it’s vacation land, but it’s, you know, year round, the population is about a million four, a million 5 and half those people don’t go out of the house. You know what? I mean? It’s like we’re the oldest state in the country, and anyways, it’s a great Maine has become a great beer community a lot because of Alan consulted, and then a lot of the people that used to work for us went and started their own breweries, and we helped a lot of people over the years. We trained a lot of people, and it was such a community. A communal feeling about it. And like 10 years ago, I kind of felt a shift in that there was a bit of the younger group had a little bit of an attitude, and it just wasn’t and now you’re starting to see really a fallout. And I think we’re going to see because a lot of people get into the beer business, think they were going to make a lot of money. And some Did you know you had Lagunitas sold called a billion dollars. You had Ballast Point, same thing, and you had funky Buddha, and you had cigar city sold out. So most of the guys, my contemporaries, have sold out. And you know, I love the beer business. It’s fun, challenging. It was more profitable. It really been tough since, you know, gas prices really affect brewing because of prices on glass and transportation and and then labor, the other big one. But so with gas prices coming down, the hope is it’ll get a little bit there’ll be a little more profitability in it. But we find that I always have had a lot of fun in the business, and I’m seeing that some of that’s coming back. We’ll see what happens as a big shift. That’s why we did the we’ve looked at Ice Pik vodka, we’ve looked at and the goal is for us to get into every beverage.
Joe Hamilton
Yeah, so in the stack. Well, first I want to say, you. So in the media business, I can parallel it right. When he used to have three stations, and then cable came, and now, you know, you have YouTube channels that are getting more than NBC, and it’s sort of democratized the process. But the sort of underlying weirdness about that is people will go and spend their whole life making that content and being big, even if they don’t make money because they have a quality of life that it gives them, whether it’s, you know, fame or ego value or just self expression or whatever. And I think some of that, a lot of people just think having your own brewery is really cool, and they’re willing to slog it out for years break even because they’re the king of that little brew pub, and they’re, you know, and so do you feel like that’s a piece of it?
Speaker 1
I think it’s like, I said this to a friend of mine the other day. It’s like, the wine business, you know, it’s like the old joke was, well, how do you make a million dollars in the wine business? Start with three, right? Like, it’s the same thing. And I think that’s it. If you really enjoy the business and you want your own little pub or tasting room, it’s a great thing in addition to do is make your own beer. But, and when we when you actually figure out the math, and for you, it’s a lot cheaper to buy beer from a distributor and sell it than it is to pay a brewer and have the equipment and all the other things you better love what you do. Recently, my nephew, who’s in his 30s, just got involved in federal Jackson KBC, where we started shipyard, and he actually, we actually are transitioning, and sold him the brewery, and he’s learning to brew. And he was a farrier before working with horses, and he just, you know, it was nice, because he loves working with his hands. He loves being active, and I think it’s going to be a great way of life for him. And he grew up working in the brew pub federal Jackson. So all that’s going to circle back for him, I think, and he can make a good living because way it’s set up, the model, the way the economics is set up. I see a lot of locations where the economics don’t make sense, like they just whether their rent structure is wrong, you know, whether they’re set up on the breweries wrong or, you know, you got to size things correctly. And really, what is the goal of the location, and then, and the location and all those things have to match up, and then you got to really enjoy it, you know? So I don’t, I think that, you know, we could end up with maybe 3000 breweries in the country. Maybe there’s days where there’s 7000 and just better operated or in locations, it’s tough, because the distributors regulate, we have to get a distributor who will sell our product, and they can only handle so many brands. So with Pumpkinhead, I get a lot of mindshare out of our distributor for our across the country for that time period. But a lot of our other beers, we can’t get it because they’re dealing with so many other brands in their house. So having a good brew pub or a location where people will come, you know, is a great way to get your brand sold. And there’s a brand called tree house in, I think it’s in Franklin mass or in Massachusetts somewhere. They don’t sell any beer outside of their pubs, and people come there and buy their beer to go, and they’ve been very successful at that.
Joe Hamilton
How many pubs is that?
Fred Forsley
I think they have, like, four or five now.
Joe Hamilton
So you can be profitable as a brewer just on, I guess the operation can be small,
Fred Forsley
They sell like 30 or 40,000 barrels, barrels, 31 gallons, and they sell it all to go and on site. So they’ve got, they just hit it, and they’ve done a great job. So there are people that can, again, it’s the model they were set up to. That’s how they started the business, and that’s how they marketed it, and that’s how they kind of let you know their beer was good, and consumers would literally line up for it. But not everybody can do that, you
Joe Hamilton
When you look at launching a new item, you know? And there’s the variables are the quality of the product, the brand, the distribution, the category, maybe the price point, maybe. So what’s the most important and hardest to nail? If you say, if I could just make one of these be great and the rest will take care of itself. What variable is at the top of that list?
Speaker 1
I think the quality of the beer. If you’re talking about beer, I think it’s the quality of the product itself, what’s in the bottle. Because if you have a great name and a great thing and get it out there at a good price, and people don’t like because it tastes good, you’re screwed. Ultimately, you know what? I mean, it was like, three stooges beers. Everybody had one of them, and that’s like, you know, they didn’t worry about was in the bottle. And I think at the end of the day, that’s, that’s the big thing, like we provided a unique beer in our first beer Shipyard Export, and it was different than most anything out there. Sam Adams was just starting, and it was us. And when I would have somebody have one or two, if they had a third one, I know they were a customer for life. If they took a sip and another sip and just didn’t like it, it was they weren’t going to try it ever again. But we were at a time where our beer was it was a good recipe. The quality of the beer was there and it was consistent every time. In the early days, were a lot of breweries that just didn’t get it right. So they thought all craft beer sucks. I’m not gonna have that stuff. They put it all in a category. Over time, enough different beers were good, and then, I mean, I saw so many. Breweries go broke that didn’t really have great beer. Orlando Brewing Company in the early days, it was an infected beer, and nobody knew it, unless you were a beer drinker and you knew it. I was just like, he was like, I don’t like that beer. You know what? I mean, it’s like, you know, lactobacillus is what’s, you know, in some of the Belgian beers, and people grow a taste for it, but, you know, your beer contaminated.
Joe Hamilton
So there’s enough justice in the world that if you make a really kick ass beer, it will succeed, most likely because of product that can get you there.
Fred Forsley
I think that’s why some good brew pubs do really well if they don’t sell on the outside, is that people get so used to going there to All right, I’m going to go there for my like, my buddies that I’m gritty McDuff, some Portland Maine. They have beer Black Fly Stout. I get a craving for it. Every once in a while, I’ll go have a black fly so and you can’t buy it in the store, you can’t have the same experience. And I like to say drinking a beer is almost like having a good steak. It all has to match right. You have to be the right environment, the right feeling. You know everything. You know. Everything clicks. If you know you can have a good steak by yourself at home, and it’s not going to feel and experience isn’t gonna be the same, right? So if you can have a good beer with friends, and you’re sitting there talking, and it just it’s the right temperature, and everything clicks, this is the greatest thing in the world, right? In that at the same time, Bill, we talk about building community, right, like and if you go back in the history of whatever communities there were 600 years ago, there’s a pub called the Royal Oak. It’s in the New Forest in England. We would go there, and the pub’s been there for like, Six 700 years. And it was really where everybody went to have town meetings. They had huge fireplace in there, and they it was, and the pub was the way it’s been for 600 years. And you walk in, you can literally feel that. And, you know, there’s pictures of going back when, when they started to take pictures, but literally, that’s the stories have been kind of carried down about how that’s where the community made all their big decisions were in the pubs. You know, it’s kind of cool, but, you know, we was going to start a show, let’s talk politics over a beer. Believe you gun at the door. I gave up talking politics recently. I talk about political issues like right now, there’s a issue on the beaches about how all the towns are really not providing the services that are needed on the beach, and it’s just especially in the code enforcement and approvals and and all that. And maybe it’s a time to look back again and have the maybe the county provide the services for like, eight or nine of the towns, and try to do it more efficiently with more
Joe Hamilton
it’s like the craft beer problem. You have the Craft Town problem because there’s so many small towns. There’s, you know, 18, or whatever is 20, little towns and Pinellas and along the beaches and stuff with all with their own administrations
Speaker 1
And sometimes in the old days, people would volunteer for administrative positions in towns, and there was a lot of volunteerism. And just that that doesn’t happen anymore, the legality of a lot of things. And so having a professional staff that would oversee maybe all the beaches might save money and be more efficient leverage, technology, all these things, because I just see a lot of frustrated people right now.
Joe Hamilton
You said you aren’t talking politics, but you are talking and that’s beers with Fred. You started a podcast talk about the podcast and your hopes for it.
Fred Forsley
It’s funny, like you were saying everybody’s got access to, you know, making a radio station or putting yourself out there. And I started, like, 6 – 8 – 9, months ago, watching these YouTubes, and started talking to people about the different YouTubes and what was going on. And a buddy of mine said, just, you’re really ought to start talking about what you do in your life and open up. And I think of people being interested in it, and, you know, and everything, you know, you think about these things. But what happened was, I actually just met a team of people that said it’s really not that expensive to do, and if you try and you’re interested, it’ll become fun. And literally, that’s how it happened. And I decided, Okay, I’m going to do this. And then I met a, you know, a couple people that have been helping me, and it’s really been enjoyable, you know. So, I mean, I love just having a beer and talking, and you and I did a great one. It was fun. And then, and then, you know, basically, with AI and other things that can be edited quickly and posted, and worst case scenario. It’s something that’s out there. People can say, the hope is, maybe it helps our brands. And I’m not looking to, you know, who knows what happens?
Joe Hamilton
And you’ve got the studio set up right in the middle of sea dog, you know, in the downstairs area, they’re outdoors, and people can just hang out. And I think, you know, the idea about building community is show up when the podcast being taped and and listen to it and drink and then talk,
Fred Forsley
yeah, Treasure Island right there on the first level. That was the one thing that came out of good, out of COVID, is that we were able to use that old downstairs area now was all parking, and now we can use it for dining. And we got it approved for the city. So, yeah, we put it right there. And actually, tonight, there’s we. Doing another show with Joe Rickard, and he’s not well enough right now to do it, but his guys are going to do his sports show there tonight, so we’ll be going bounce down. But yeah, and then my and then when I go up north, I’m gonna do the same thing up north from our tasting room. So, and the nice thing about the technology today, I can, you know, we can interview each other, but everybody doesn’t have to be right in front of you. Yeah, the other day I introduced and talked with Gordy Gronkowski. He was up in Boston, and I was in Treasure Island. And, you know, it was fun, and came out pretty well. So I just saw that, that video. So it’s, it’s, yeah, it’s just on Fred forsley YouTube, and we’ll see where it all goes.
Joe Hamilton
You’re getting into a THC brand. How? How much of a market disruptor for the alcohol space? I’ve already started to hear about THC spirits, where you can go have a gin and tonic with THC instead of alcohol. So how big of a disrupter you see that being
Fred Forsley
I think alcohol is being disrupted by THC in general. I think over the last five or six years, since the legalization of it in a lot of states, definitely seeing that, and people are wanting to drink other types of products. I think, you know, there’s a non alch category that’s blowing up this. THC, drinks are becoming like a fourth category. So I think you’re going to see there’s a belief that beer and alcohol will decrease by 20% over the next five years. And I don’t think that’s too far off. I don’t think it’s going away, but I think that there’s a lot of people that they look for other options, you know. And I’m a big believer in, you know, moderation, and I think there’s a lot of health benefits in the community, part of being able to have a beer or having a drink, but that’s the same thing with being able to do it like our drinks are five milligrams. So you’d have to drink quite a few of them to really be majorly impaired, but depending on how your resilience is to that product. But I literally would like to have, like we do, a soda, you know, I’ve talked about some other drinks. We dabbled in coffee. I think, you know, if you get into an industry and you know the logistics, and you know the process and you can deal with, get the infrastructure people. You’ve got a finance department. You get people in accounting. You have people for me. It’s, it’s almost like do a full portfolio to spread all over the costs that you have, and you’re going to have to add and with technology and other things, it’s going to make it more efficient to run. So if I can be known as a beverage guy or a company, can the evolution for you know, the next generation will be easier, I hope.
Joe Hamilton
So that was actually my next question. Is, you do seem driven to really fill out the portfolio, introducing more spirits and whatnot? So you see one of the competitive advantages as being you just you can out efficiency other folks who have to put a whole team of accountants and all that behind one brand, where you can, you can, you can dilute the cost across a bunch of brands. What are some other benefits besides that?
Fred Forsley
It’s almost a necessity today because sales people are so expensive, like put a guy on the street, just the car, the cost of a car insurance, all the things you have to be able to expense. So by having that portfolio, you can be able to spend and you know, you can’t be completely all over the place, but if you can spread it over three or four brands, you’re going to be more effective. And as long as they’re not competing brands within your own portfolio, I think you’re going to get more attention from distributors, as long as the quality is there, and they’re going to deal with one supplier that’s got seven products, you’re going to be better off. I hope that plays to be true. I got pushed down. We did very well in New York City with Pumpkinhead, and we were with a distributor that had maybe seven or eight brands. Well, they did one of the biggest mergers, and they, all of a sudden ended up with like 30 brands that were major breweries from around, you know, Guinness and so many other Sam Adams. And all of a sudden we went from being like a fifth or sixth priority to being like a 15th priority. So by having a portfolio, if you can have one or two that are really growing, then maybe you’ll get more attention. It is tricky. It’s a tricky, tricky business right now, because there are probably more brands in almost any and everything right like, there hasn’t been a consolidation yet,
Joe Hamilton
You talk about the efficiencies on the back end. There’s efficiencies in your power with distributors. Does that map onto the front end with the brand itself, or do you find that it’s more potent to really not say, Hey, this is our Family of Brands, to try to, kind of just to really go heavy into each brand and make sure they all have their own chance to go really big.
Fred Forsley
I think you leverage like, if you’ve done well with Pumpkinhead, the distributor knows, at least you know how to manage a brand. So okay, we’ll try that, and we’ll give that a shot, because I almost feel a little bit in so by bolting on to your successes you’ve had, I think it makes it a little easier. You do have to give it individual attention and focus, and you know, at some point, you’ll end up with a brand manager of each brand, and they’ll have face with the distributors, because you basically have to. Talk to the distributor sales guys, and you have to try to sell to the accounts, and then you got to sell to the consumers. So you’re really selling because you don’t sell direct, unless you can, but we are trying a little bit at direct to consumer, where we’re shipping direct with the alt beverage and stuff for to do with beers, because of the the laws between the states and the restrictions and a we haven’t had as much success. Nobody really has direct to consumer with beer,.
Joe Hamilton
So there isn’t. This is a little bit not understanding how the distribution works. But obviously, if you brew your own and have your own, your own family of places like you do, that’s one way you go through distributors. Are there any businesses that are at least regionally, able to sell direct to, you know, from we just go service the bars ourselves.
Fred Forsley
Yeah, there have been some breweries that have done it, like in Boston, and then they they actually have ended up selling the distribution rights. Stone Brewing. Out in California actually started a distributor because California let them legally do it. I think in Colorado, some of the breweries have done it. In Denver, you can do it if you’re in a densely populated area, or if, when I first started, I self distributed an S 10 blazer, and I’m bringing beer around every Friday, yeah, And I was like, oh God. And I I started, like, the first week, and I have a beer at every place, and so by the end of the night, I’m having to park the car walk home. But it’s tough to because you got to think about every stop, and if you the margin is not huge in beer. So you got to somehow come up with ways that you like off premise is really where most of the money is made in beer and the shopping centers and that type of thing. Because usually on premise, you have to spend so much money to promote, and you know that unless you get, you know, certain high volume offer on premise accounts that so what does that mean off premise office, like retail stores, Publix and those type stores. So like, if you sell 30 cases to Publix and it’s dropped off by a distributor, you might make a certain margin on that, but you’re not having to do a lot of work as the supplier, as the brewer, the distributors delivered it there in the store. You may have merchandise, some of it, and then you’re sold on premise. A lot of times you got to have promotions and other things. Although, if you get an account, and you get it, it stays, you can over time, that’s the thing. But there’s been a lot of these rotating taps where people try so many different beers. Now it’s starting to settle out a little bit where they’re not rotating as many beers in and out.
Joe Hamilton
Let’s talk a little bit about the future. What’s next? You mentioned a couple of brands. Can you be little more specific about what’s coming out next?
Fred Forsley
Well, so we were working on a rum called Island Time rum got the trademark on it, and basically some flavored rums. And we’re working on a McCloskey American whiskey, which my wife’s maiden name is McCloskey. They’re from the North. I get some funny stories about that. But so we also have a county whiskey we’re working on where we’re going to distill barley from northern Maine in an area called the county, which is where the most The potatoes were grown in Maine and people in the region. But and we’re going to age it and then. So those are some projects we have going on right now. In the spirits came. I’ve got a brand that my nephew personifies. It’s called Climb, and he’s the one Ben Fitzpatrick, he did the Appalachian Trail, and it’s going to be a mushroom energy drink, and got that formulated. So those are the exciting things we’re going to do right now and then just keep trying to promote the beers that we’ve done well over the many years. Pumpkinhead is always out of Vegas right now, but putting energy back into Blue Paw, the blueberry beer that we do for sea dog, and got a beer called Sunfish, which is a grapefruit peach, and then the blood orange is going to be repackaged with sea dog, and that’ll be able to do variety packs. So those are the things going on, and then just trying to keep everybody in the pubs having fun. And, you know, every one of the locations are a little different. When people are traveling up in Maine, we have a little inn on an island called Peaks Island. It’s only a seven room inn, but we got a nice little pub restaurant there, and it’s a mile and a half off Portland Maine. You take the ferry out, or you take a water taxi, or, you know, or a friend’s boat, or whatever. It’s a pretty cool place in Maine. So we’ve got that just opening this weekend, so
Joe Hamilton
I can already feel your wife’s fury once you get a seven room in. Now what’s next? You’ve got two more hotels in a year. I was my prediction.
Fred Forsley
We had, we already had that discussion. Today, it’s all she’s pulling the cord. I’m all done.
Joe Hamilton
No more room at the inn. Beers with Fred. Fred forsley on YouTube, Sea Dog over in the old Captain Kosmokos location right there, near Sunset Beach on Treasure Island. Lots of fun to be had there. Great food. I’ve enjoyed it myself, and I’ve enjoyed the conversation. Learned a lot, and I appreciate you taking some time.
Fred Forsley
Sure. Cheers. I appreciate it as well.
