Q: How's your search coming along?
A: We're on a beer budget, and Houston real estate has run up so high that it's very difficult for us to really be able to justify a lot of the prices. My first choice would be to find an existing building that we could move into that's in a good area.
But with our rapid growth, suddenly it's economic for us to potentially build. I'm still looking at one building north of downtown that would be a home run if it works.
It's an old building. It's functionally less than perfect, but location-wise it would be great.
If we can pull it off, it would be great, but I'm very concerned it could be a white elephant. No business wants a money pit.
Q: The company has grown a lot recently, but you don't really advertise. How have you gotten to where you are?
A: We've focused much more on grass-roots marketing where people come out to the brewery for a tour and we build a connection.
We've done events around town, and we donate to a lot to charities. I think every elementary school PTO in this city and almost every church has gotten donations from us. I think what we've created is a community. That organic growth is in and of itself satisfying, but the people are also very loyal consumers. They're not trendy.
It's almost like we've become part of their lives.
Q: Was it your goal to create, as you say, a community?
A: I don't think you can set out to create a kind of community like ours on purpose.
If you do that, it's going to always seem contrived. You can foster that community once it already exists by being aware of what expectations people have.
I try to do the things I enjoy doing, and then I try to see if I can rationalize a business purpose for them. We do the MS 150. We have a giant team. We have 300 riders, and we could easily have 1,000 riders if we kept it open.
We have a '57 Bentley we've tie-dyed for the art car community. I thought it was something that would be fun. The art car parade is such a part of Houston.
We did that not because we were looking at it as a way we could cash in on it, but more that we wanted to be part of it. And I've been very careful we don't try to commercialize it.
Q: Do you ever worry that a move might in some way alter the sense of community you've established?
A: Constantly. This is a big deal. This is who Saint Arnold's is. To our customers, it's their brewery, and that's something we have to be very mindful of.
There's a way to do it where you can make people part of the process, and they'll continue to feel ownership.
The biggest thing is keeping it in town and just making sure people feel invited to come there.
Q: It seems like the popularity of wine would cut into your business. Has it?
A: The editor of Food & Wine said beer is the new wine.
To me that sounds somehow weak — like we want to be the new wine. I think what is actually happening is that people are discovering this wide array of beers that are out there. I'd argue that there's a greater spectrum of flavor in beer than in wine. People are also discovering that beer goes great with food, and that you can pair beer with food often better than wine. Two weeks ago we did a beer and cheese tasting. It was an incredible event. A majority of the crowd was predominantly craft beer drinkers, but there were wine drinkers along with their beer-drinking friends. At the end, they were the ones who were the biggest proponents of how wonderful it was.
Brock has done a great job cultivating the local blogging community also. All the best to this Houston icon.
