In 2022, we transformed my home garage into a working pilot brewery. The goal was to obsess over crafting the highest quality non-alcoholic beer on the market. To do that, we knew we needed to control the process, get the recipes right in the garage, and not rely on contract manufacturing. In short, we had to build a brewery, lab, and packaging line that would allow us to launch.
Our go-to-market strategy was to start by selling online, which was something we knew how to do. With a best-in-class product, we aspired to start building the Go brand. Within just a few months, in April of 2023, we found out we had won a Gold and Silver Medal in the Best of Craft Beer Awards, which really validated what we knew about our product. Online sales started to climb, our repeat purchase rate remained steady at over 50%, and we opened up on Amazon, becoming one of the top brands. And now, we even have a Beer Club with over 1,000 recurring members.
In the last year, we started distributing and are now in nine states with top-tier partnerships. We are in major chains like Jewel, Mariano's, Whole Foods, Giant Eagle, and soon to be in Wegmans, Meijer, Kroger, and another huge one that I can’t announce just yet. We plan to open up more states by year-end but are very conscious of what we need to deliver, which is where our go-to-market disruptive playbook is coming into play.
Best of all, we have discovered the most incredible community and get so much energy when we get messages that our product helped someone through their day and gave them a healthier alternative to the habitual drinking they used to do. We are averaging over 4,000 orders online a month across the entire country and are poised to be one of the fastest-growing breweries in the country, pacing to 100k cases by year-end in not even a full year of distribution. It’s been quite exciting to see how many people are now changing their habits, not just with our products but within the entire NA segment.
This brings me to today. We have two exciting announcements:
-
We are expanding our capacity by almost 10X as we formed a joint venture called Craftsmith with a neighboring growing brewery called Noon Whistle Brewing, which also has the same obsession over product quality and aligns with the idea that we can go further, faster together. It was vital for us to control our product, so a JV in which we have a large stake was the only option we would consider vs. outsourcing our product to contract manufacturing.
-
To date, we are bootstrapped with only internal capital at work. Yes, I have built and sold a couple of companies which helps, but the amount of investment is large and this space is very competitive for good reason. Therefore, for the first time in my entrepreneurial journey, I realized we needed help. I met with selective investors and had one thing top of mind: Can this partner give us an accretive advantage and do they wholeheartedly believe in what we are trying to do?
That’s when I met the team from Listen. This firm has made investments in some of the fastest-growing consumer companies, including Angel's Envy, Calm, Factor, Jolie, Black Buffalo, and others. After months of conversations, diligence, and the like, I’m beyond proud to say they have made a significant investment in Go Brewing and are already working as incredible thought partners.
I wanted to say to all of those who believed in Go and the non-alcoholic space in general, thank you. We could not have gotten to where we are without you. Equally as important is our small but mighty team at Go. From the brewing operations side to sales team, to our customer service department and warehouse team, it’s the people within an organization that make it what it is.
There’s a ton of opportunity in front of us, and now I can officially say it’s LFGO time.
PS: The pic below with the cold plunge— we had no AC in the garage and the guys needed to cool down 🥶
