Episode 7, Season 2: Studio Brewing Burnaby, BC Raise a Glass! Al’s final stop on his trip to BC is to South Burnaby and Studio Brewing where he speaks with Kathryn McKinney, General Manager at Studio Brewing. Staying small and becoming part of the community and brewing great beer was the goal. Kathryn talks about the challenges Studio Brewing faced opening in Burnaby during a pandemic. How did they do it? Listen to their story now.
You can learn more about Studio Brewing at studiobrewing.ca.
Al Grego:
Hello everyone, I'm Al Grego, and this is the Yes, We Are Open! podcast.
I'm back in Burnaby, just a few minutes southeast of Meraki Beauty Bar; this time, in an industrial stretch of Beresford street in south Burnaby. On the south side, there's a commercial kitchen, machine shop, railing contractor, and right across the road on the north side is the BC Parkway, a 25-kilometer bike and pedestrian path running from Vancouver to Surrey. Also along the stretch, and elevated above the BC Parkway, is the Expo Line of Metro Vancouver's SkyTrain rapid transit system.
It's a quiet area. That is, when there's no train, although that could just be the time of day. It's currently 10:00 AM, so my current destination is still closed. It won't open to the public for another couple of hours, but they're expecting me now. I arrive at a small, standalone industrial unit. Looks as if it might have once been an auto mechanic shop, with its large garage door in the front, but that door is the only sign of what it used to be. Now that building has a large wood patio jutting from its east side with a bunch of tables. This is the home of the newest brewery in South Burnaby, and the subject of today's story, Studio Brewing.
Kathryn Mckinney:
Hey there.
Al Grego:
Hello.
Kathryn Mckinney:
Are you Al?
Al Grego:
Yeah, Kathryn?
Kathryn Mckinney:
Kathryn, nice to meet you.
Al Grego:
Nice to meet you too.
Kathryn Mckinney:
Thanks for coming by.
Al Grego:
That's Kathryn. She's the general manager of Studio Brewing. She gives me a tour of the facility. In the front of house, there are more tables and a bar. This is called the tasting room. Beyond the bar is where the brewing magic happens. As Kathryn shows me around, she quickly takes me through the brewing process, explaining each step. I know very little about brewing, so much of it goes over my head. On the other hand, you can tell Kathryn is not only knowledgeable, she's passionate about beer. In fact, and this is one thing I did learn, Kathryn is a certified cicerone. After a quick Google, I learned that cicerone is someone with a solid, well-rounded knowledge of beer and beer service, as well as a competence in assessing beer quality and identity by taste. And given that, I felt wholly unqualified when after my tour, Kathryn offered me some samples, but of course, I bravely take one for the podcast, and hey, it was almost noon.
Kathryn Mckinney:
Those ones, they can have flavors coming from the yeast profile, mainly.
Al Grego:
After the beer tasting, and my pathetic attempt at describing and critiquing what I had just sampled, it was finally time to sit with Kathryn for her interview.
Kathryn Mckinney:
My name is Kathryn McKinney and I'm the general manager here.
Al Grego:
When did Studio Brewing start?
Kathryn Mckinney:
February of 2021, so we're just over a year old. I came on December of 2020. Matt, Mark, and Andrew are the owners, and they are hands-down the most amazing ownership team I've ever worked for.
Matt and Mark Quinlan, they're connected to Vessel, and then Andrew, he's an accountant. Mark and Andrew are both accountants, so it's kind of cool to have really fine-detailed people on the team, and then Matt is just one of those people. He's an entrepreneur, deeply passionate about everything he does, a workaholic like myself, so we have a lot in common there.
South Burnaby is very underserved. Burnaby in general is very underserved. There's a hundred breweries in Vancouver, and there's three in Burnaby, and we are one of them. So we were looking for a place not to just be another brewery on Main Street or another brewery in Port Moody, we want to be a small, local place, and this community needs that, so this was the decision to open in South Burnaby.
This used to be an autobody shop. This is used to be where they'd lift the cars and things, so really good, kind of industrial building, and it's kind of perfect for our needs. And again, lots of beautiful light in here. We really want to be part of the community of Burnaby. This was a really intentional decision to be here. We could have been somewhere else.
Al Grego:
And then your brewer is?
Kathryn Mckinney:
Ryan. So Ryan Voigt is the only reason I work here.
Ryan Voigt:
Ryan Voigt, I'm the head brewer here.
Al Grego:
When did you start with Studio Brewing?
Ryan Voigt:
Started six months before we opened, so in August-ish, then we opened in February. I've been a home`brewer for a long time. I was at a couple local breweries, Twin Sails and Superflux, I worked in Europe for a bit, studying some traditional styles, came back and started the studio kind of off the back of all of those experiences.
Kathryn Mckinney:
He and I worked on the same - he worked at Twin Sails when I worked at Yellow Dog, which feels like a lifetime ago. It was when they were both really new, but he's also had his own brewery and worked at many in the BC. And then he also did an internship with Cantillon, so he's one of those brewers who's deeply passionate and just a dedicated student of beer.
Ryan Voigt:
So I've never been with a brewery from the ground up, so building this place with its own separate arduous tasks, with working through permitting, and contractors, and all the processes that go into building it. And then startup, you're always going to run into certain small issues and tweaking beers and everything, but all things considered, I think we had a smooth start. We could have run into a lot more issues than we did.
Kathryn Mckinney:
We're called "Studio" because we really do believe in the art of beer. Ryan is an artist. He's both one of the most talented brewers I've had the opportunity to work with, but he's also very skilled. He's very interested in the science of it, and he's very focused on details.
Ryan Voigt:
We kind of have the team leads, like all the owners, and then Katherine and I, and Morgan, get together and we'll put together an idea of what we want to see for the spring, or the summer, or the fall, or an event, or that sort of thing. And then I'll take that feedback, go back, build a beer around that, and then they leave me to do that side of things, but the concept is often formed as a group.
Kathryn Mckinney:
He's a genuine artist as well. He puts a lot of effort into beer and learning beer, and like I said, he's a student of beer, but he's also designed some of our merchandise, he's also going to school for photography, he's someone with an eye for detail and a passion for everything that he does.
Al Grego:
He does all the cans too?.
Kathryn Mckinney:
He does, he has participated, so we do have a design company called Skeleton Crew that does that, but he does kind of participate in the look. So the logger series in the bottom, he definitely helped with the design there. He's definitely an aesthetic person, and an artist at heart.
This is meant to be a space where we're creating something special, and I think Matt, Mark, and Andrew are really giving Ryan the opportunity to do what he wants to do in a brewery, and that's not always the case. And also creating that it's a safe, comfortable, collaborative space. It really is a studio where we're all participating in a dream.
Brendan Sharp:
My name's Brendan Sharp, I run the wholesale for Studio Brewing on the mainland right now. I've been doing it for close to six months, at this point. I was brought on from day one, hired just before opening. I was really lucky to be part of the front-of-house staff for my first little while here. Things started to get a little busier and we were starting to try to find different ways to get our brand on display, so I started with doing farmer's markets for the brand, as well as doing front-of-house on the side. Eventually the transitional period happened, and I wound up getting put into a sales role just because we needed to start getting our beer out there a little bit more.
Al Grego:
What's your favorite part of working here?
Brendan Sharp:
Probably that I'm doing something different each day. I like the flexibility with the job a lot, also the beer itself is awesome. We're doing some pretty special stuff at this studio, and I'm really happy to be part of the gang, honestly.
Al Grego:
Like I said, it's a very cool space here. Have you had a chance to use it to its capacity yet?
Kathryn Mckinney:
We have, actually. We had our anniversary party and we still have quite a bit of the plexiglass up, but we were still well-over capacity. We opened the brewery for seating and had the patio for seating as well. It was probably the first time I'd really seen it very busy in here and it was really cool. It was really cool to see that outpouring of love from the community.
Al Grego:
Up next, opening a brewery already with a slew of technical and regulatory complications, but opening a brewery during a pandemic adds a whole other level of complexity. Is the Studio Brewing team up to the task? Stay tuned to find out.
You're listening to Yes, We Are Open. Matt Leslie, Mark Quinlan, and Andrew Somers wanted to break into the Greater Vancouver craft beer scene. So they chose an underserved location in South Burnaby, hired one of the area's best new brewmasters, Ryan Voigt, and hired Kathryn McKinney to manage the business. It had the perfect recipe for success, but even with all the pieces in place, will it be enough to survive opening their doors during a pandemic?
If I were to ask you if there was an event or something that happened that put the business in jeopardy, what would that be?
Kathryn Mckinney:
There was a time when we had indoor dining shut down, where we'd started to ramp up, we'd hired a couple more people, we were very excited to, "Hey, I think we can do this.", and then COVID restrictions shut more things down. And I actually had to make a couple really challenging phone calls to two team members and tell them that, "I'm so sorry, I'm going to have to lay you off".
And those were those moments where the soul of this place is so good, the intentions are good. Honestly, the business plan was good, and we could have gotten something and then we just see this dark cloud of COVID and all of our customers being scared, and it's just too hard to get our name out there, where making those phone calls was very disheartening. So normally, a new brewery opening would have opportunities like awards. For example, Yellow Dog, they had their first award before they even opened the doors, so that was kind of one of those things where the name was already out there. Superflux was contract-brewing, and then everyone had heard of Superflux, again, before they'd even opened their doors. So us opening Studio, no one had ever heard of us, and there was no way to market. There was no awards, there was no events, everything was shut down.
Al Grego:
How close did you guys get? Was there a moment, maybe, where you may have had that stock goal meeting? Like, "Okay, are we going to continue or are we going to call it a day?"
Kathryn Mckinney:
I think that's happened a couple of times, where we've pivoted the plan to make things work, but Ryan and I believe in the place wholeheartedly, and we have this team as well. There's a belief in Studio right down to every single team member, where we weren't going to let it fail.
Al Grego:
During the shut-down, how were you feeling personally?
Kathryn Mckinney:
When we actually shut down, I was on maternity leave, so I was a little scared that I would suddenly be a stay-at-home mom, which of course, a lot of pride in that, but I'm workaholic. I can't do it.
Brendan Sharp:
It sucked probably the same as how everyone was feeling in this industry, but how crummy I was feeling before, it all just erased in my mind, just because of how awesome we've been doing these past few months.
Speaker 7:
How did you spend your time during the lockdown?
Brendan Sharp:
Same as a lot of people; in my room, ordering takeout, a lot of that stuff, and then working, honestly. I got set up with the beer industry right at the beginning of COVID, so I guess in some ways it was a little bit of a blessing because I don't think I would've gotten a start with the industry without it.
Ryan Voigt:
I think it weighed on everyone. I'm lucky enough to have a job through that. I think that was huge for a lot of people in service who got laid off. Unfortunately, even we had to cut hours here in front-of-house, but I was able to just put my head back and work, and I'd hate to say that my workplace wasn't affected that much, but my little world back here at the brewery really was insular.
Al Grego:
You do your own work back here.
Ryan Voigt:
I do my own. I'm the only one back here, so in a way, I didn't really have to worry about being too close to anyone back here, and so I was able to still work, make beer. We just changed how we delivered it. It was actually not as dramatic a change for me. I know front-of-house got hit hard because they had to worry about plexi, and then rules enforcement, and things that were in place for good reason for our healthcare, but for us in back-house? Really, very little changed.
Al Grego:
Let's talk about what were some of the things you guys did to pivot during this time?
Kathryn Mckinney:
Wholesale is still something that is going to be very limited. We're not interested in being a production facility. We are keeping our team relatively small and we'll continue to do so. We all do everything that needs to be done. There's not a lot of people that have a single job here, except for maybe Ryan, but obviously he does tens. He's the only person in the back-of-house, so we all participate with canning with him. Many of the team members are learning to keg-clean, so we really are all making this business work.
Al Grego:
Community outreach? You mentioned you guys did a little bit of charity stuff.
Kathryn Mckinney:
Even though our first year was not successful for this business, and there's no two ways about that, we are not going to let our core values change in any way. We started off this year working with Burnaby Neighbourhood House, we brewed a beer for them, and a dollar per four-pack, a dollar for glass went to the Burnaby Neighbourhood House, so we raised, I believe it was about $7,000 for them. Burnaby Neighborhood House helps so many people in this community and we wanted to help them. Especially with COVID, a lot of these resources for spaces like that dried up. We didn't have the money to give, per se, but we sold out all of that beer and we made sure that we helped our community. We also did a similar thing for Big Brothers. Mark is connected with Big Brothers, and we did a meet draw and raised some money for them as well. We want to make sure that we are helping our community because although we are struggling as a business, we know there's people that are struggling more than us.
We started with a different POS system when we opened our doors and it was very challenging. It had a very minimal back-end, it was integrated to the payment software, but it was a burden and it was costing us money to use. So when we swapped over to TouchBistro, and I've worked with [inaudible 00:15:39] at my previous jobs and it's always been a very positive working relationship. The integration with our current POS system, everything is so much easier, the machines always come pre-programmed, they're very easy to hook up to everything, it's generally just plug-and-play and it's fantastic. It's saving us money for sure even though we had to do the initial startup of swapping to a whole new POS system. It's paid for itself 10 times.
Al Grego:
Were you at least seeing some growth levels? Was there some profits and signs?
Kathryn Mckinney:
In the summer, there was that brief window, I think for everybody, where, mandates got eased and we all took our masks off in BC, and it was really exciting. It felt like things were getting better, and then we got hit with omicron and things got really hard again. This year, we operated on a really tight operating system where we meet every single week and we have quarterly planning sessions, so we have yearly planning sessions. We've made several adaptions. One of quarterly planning sessions last year, we said, "You know what? We got to do wholesale. Otherwise we're not getting through this year."
So we started selling our beer elsewhere - to liquor stores and to, again, friends at bars and things like that that we like, or places that we like to go, or that will treat the beer well. Then in our yearly planning session, we basically pivoted the business model to, "We got to get our name out there." We were setting up for almost every farmer's market in the lower mainland and really connecting again within a culture center, the Burnaby Neighbourhood House, we've done a fair bit of charity work. We're going to get our name out there one way or another. There are some events this here, which I'm very excited about, to be participating,
Al Grego:
Coming up after the break, we find out what the future holds for Studio Brewing.
Mat Belanger:
This podcast is brought to you by Moneris. Today has shown us tomorrow has changed; changed how we'll live, work, and do business, because now we're more open to what's possible, open to contactless payments, online bookings, curbside pickups, and more. Open your business to more opportunity with solutions to help you succeed online, in-store, or on-the-go. To talk to one of our business advisors, call 1-866-MONERIS or visit moneris.com today.
Al Grego:
Welcome back to Yes, We Are Open. Studio Brewings' dedication to making quality beer and helping their community has paid off. It looks as if they've successfully come out the other end of this pandemic, thanks to the hard work of their team, and sticking to their values. So what does the future look like for Studio Brewing? Let's find out.
How does the future look for the studio?
Kathryn Mckinney:
Actually very bright. We are seeing a lot of payoff in our efforts already. I think our anniversary party was a good example of how many people know about us now, and many people come out to support us now, and how many people are enjoying our beer, which is the crucial thing.
We have more wholesale accounts than I thought we were going to have, so we're probably going to have to cap that soon, but we're on Vancouver Island now, working with Copper & Theory, who are amazing, and Brendan's doing such an amazing job in-house, getting our name out there. Really, we're not interested in just selling a ton of beer. Brendan is key to really building our relationships with each one of our accounts. We want to make sure that they continue to buy our beer because we want to make sure that they like it, that there's good value for them in that, that they're, again, in building those connections to everyone struggling, so we want to make sure that our accounts are well taken care of. Brendan's actually helped fix some draft lines at some places before. We really want to support our accounts because they're also supporting us.
So that's really paying off. We're getting our name out with a lot of farmers' markets this year. Again, those are just connecting with other communities, trying to build our network. And that's Morgan, our front-end host manager, doing all of that great work. It's only with the sunshine coming out, I think, where we're seeing people come back out, and a lot of new faces. I think people are starting to hear about Studio, both what we're doing with phenomenal beer, but all of our passionate people behind it, as well.
Al Grego:
You're stressing on being located small, but are there any plans for growth?
Brendan Sharp:
I would like to see us grow, probably not massively, but my biggest dream for this place is seeing everyone trying our beer and enjoying our beer, not just in the city of Burnaby, but everywhere on the lower mainland. Not necessarily saying that we want to get it out everywhere, to every liquor store or anything, but it would be phenomenal if within my time here, I could make everyone a little bit more aware about Studio Brewing and what we're doing here.
Ryan Voigt:
We're young, so we're a little over a year old and we've only really been a business through the times that we know as COVID, obviously, so we're adapting and trying to make sure that we are nimble enough to take on whatever it is, whether that's another variant where things shut down, or if it opens right back up. We don't have a ton of room to grow in this building, but we would love to add a few different dimensions to our brewery in terms of bringing in some styles that we haven't brought in yet due to time constraints and space constraints that we're putting into place for the next year. And then also in the future, I'd love if Studio had an expanded program of my background. Some of my background is in mixed fermentation beer, which is like barrel age beer, and I would love if we started to push that way in the next few years. That might require a separate facility, I don't know, but that would be a big goal for me.
Kathryn Mckinney:
We're looking into getting one more vessel for a mixed fermentation project. That is a passion of Ryan's, and I think for all of us, if Ryan's happy, we're happy, because he makes such amazing beer. Mixed fermentation are things like cool sours for farmhouse-style beers. We don't have a lot of space, so it'll be really challenging to make that work, but it's not really about exponential growth, it's about putting out really interesting beer, and only once, twice, maybe three times a year. So this isn't expansion, per se, but it's expanding what Studio has to offer.
When I started with Studio, I didn't know anything about them. I knew a bit about Ryan, and I knew that he'd signed on with them. It was going to be a good opportunity, but I saw their four core values, and I knew immediately that we were aligned in passion and integrity. Their first core value is beer comes first and we've always done that. Beer is paramount, and our goal is the unparalleled beer experience, and I think we're doing that.
Al Grego:
Thank you so much, Kathryn, for your time.
Kathryn Mckinney:
Thank you.
Al Grego:
Is Studio Brewing open?
Kathryn Mckinney:
Yes, we are open, and we hope you come by.
Al Grego:
Excellent.
That's the story of Studio Brewing. One of the most important roles of good leadership is hiring the right people, and then trusting them to do right by your business. It helps if those same people share the same passion as you do for your business. During my visit to Studio Brewing, that word, passion, came up often, and not just verbally. I could feel it in everything I witnessed, from the care and layout of the building, to the presentation and taste of the product, and of course, from the people who work there. Studio Brewing owners, Matt, Mark, and Andrew hired some great people with a shared passion for beer. If you and your team have a true passion for what you do, then most obstacles can be overcome. And if Brendan, Ryan and Kathryn are any indication, I'd say Studio Brewing is in good, passionate hands.
Yes, We Are Open is a Moneris podcast production. I'd like to thank Brendan, Ryan, and Kathryn for taking time to share their story. You can learn more about Studio Brewing at StudioBrewing.ca. You can also follow them on Instagram, @StudioBrewing. For more information about this podcast, visit our site, YesWeAreOpenPodcast.com. If you'd like to support us, rate us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're a Canadian small-business owner, or know of one with an interesting story of perseverance to tell, I'd love to help tell it. You can contact me at Podcast.Moneris.com. Tune in next week for another story of small-business struggle and survival on the Yes, We Are Open podcast. I'm Al Grego, thank you for listening.