This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Greetings and welcome. You are listening to Side Hustle School and my name is Chris Guillebeau. Can you start your own brewery for less than $100? Well, maybe not, but today you'll hear a story about how someone gets pretty creative in the beer industry and starts a profitable side hustle without spending very much money at all. Now you're probably familiar with the basic concept of supply and demand, which is simply the relationship between what's available and what people want.
When more of something exists or when it's easier to obtain something, the price tends to be lower. And similarly, when the demand is high and there's a shortage of something, especially something valuable or of limited quantity, the price is higher. Now, a lot of industries run into supply issues. In fact, there is a whole industry itself of supply management. Fun fact about the advertising industry, city billboards in prominent places are usually extremely expensive to rent except on very short notice because sometimes there is a gap between one contract ending and another contract beginning.
And if you've ever wanted to rent a billboard and you're flexible about location and timing, you might be able to get it for 50% off or even less. Just in case you've ever wanted a billboard, I'm still working on that one myself. But anyway, this issue relates very much to today's story. The beer industry has a supply issue, meaning that sometimes breweries have excess capacity. While it would be fun to consume that capacity, it might actually be better for them to sell it somehow.
So you'll hear about that in just a moment, but first a listener call-in about a side hustle failure. What didn't work out? - Hey, this is Shannon Abbey calling from Petaluma, California. I've just been listening to your show for a little while. And I think the best thing I've gotten from it is that it's a side hustle and don't throw everything into it, thinking this is gonna be the thing that changes your life.
So my side hustle failure, I work as an illustrator and a friend of mine said, "You ought to be doing these chalkboards at weddings." So I printed up 2,000 postcards to advertise that. And as I was doing it, a friend of mine said, "You're going to be lining your coffin "with those postcards." I have done one wedding in two years. Had I approached it more as this is a thing I'm gonna try and see what happens, I think I would better off. Thanks, Chris. Again, appreciate your show.
Okay, bye. Hey, thank you so much, Shannon. I appreciate your courage to share that story. I have been there many times myself. There are actually multiple times in my life I have invested in more than 2,000 postcards, only to see them go to waste.
Now, fortunately, as you mentioned, this little setback has not set you back entirely. By the way, side note, be careful when your friends or really anyone says to you, "Hey, this could be a great business idea," because your friends aren't necessarily qualified to know that. And really, if you listen to the show and continue to develop your skills, over time, you'll be the one who's more knowledgeable about whether a particular idea might be worth pursuing or not. Today's story comes from Neil Sony in New York City, who works for the Estee Lauder companies by day. And for the past nine months, he's also been building a side hustle called Unlimited Brewing Company, which helps anyone create their own custom craft beer.
He does this without opening his own brewery, which might be fun, but would definitely be expensive. Instead, Neil uses an Airbnb-style approach where he works with existing breweries and uses their idle equipment. This flexible manufacturing method allows him to offer small batch custom beers to customers for an affordable price. And it all started from a blog. Neil was passionate about beer, like so many people, and had a blog called Brewmasters Reserve, where he interviewed brewery founders.
And during the course of these interviews, he kept hearing the same complaints over and over. And these complaints were, number one, there was excess brewing capacity available, and number two, the demand was hard to predict. So there would be lots of times when they were paying all this money for manufacturing equipment and staff, but not actually able to use it, or at least use it to its most potential. And Neil had worked in marketplaces for most of his career. So he started to connect the dots in his mind and saw that there had to be a better way to leverage that excess production capacity.
And that better way came through working with events. Neil's first inclination was to market to people interested in custom beer, specifically people who were thinking about opening a brewery, but weren't sure if they wanted to invest all that time and money. It might benefit from a bit of a trial phase. And that might not be a bad idea, but he actually found a better approach. While catching up with a friend who owns a conference, he mentioned his idea to her, and she said she wanted to do a custom beer at the event, but she had no idea how to do it.
Up until that point, he'd never thought about conferences as potential customers, but it turns out they were pretty good clients. That first client was a conference in New York City called Millennial 2020. They wanted a bottled beer that featured a label with the logos of their two primary sponsors. So this was basically a custom label job. Neil's new company, Unlimited Brewing, contacted their local network of breweries and decided to work with the Thomas Hooker Brewing Company in Connecticut.
So Thomas Hooker essentially private labeled its blonde ale for the conference. Private label is a bit more complicated in beer than other industries because every label needs to be registered with the federal government. So the conference beer gets registered with the government and Unlimited Brewing Company helps manage all of that. They also manage the label process and the logistics of shipping the beer, which is another thing that requires a specially licensed vendor. Since then, Neil has worked with several other clients, including a hotel in New York City that wants custom beer, not just custom labels.
In that case, Neil worked with a small brewery near Albany called Davidson Brothers, which has a system that allows them to produce 12 keg batches. The brewery will then produce and deliver the kegs directly to the hotel. Neil sees Unlimited Brewing Company as a reliable middleman in the highly regulated beer industry. He takes each client's requests and manually matches it up with his brewing network's capabilities. If he doesn't find a brewery in his network that can get the job done, he'll reach out to other brewers as well.
Long-term, he's hoping this process can be more automated, but right now he's doing it manually. He says it's actually been beneficial in terms of learning more about the industry and its pain points. Unlimited Brewing gets paid in management fees. They just serve that first customer in March, and they're already pulling in up to $5,000 a month in those management fees. So in other words, this is all happening pretty quickly.
In terms of next steps, Neil still has his day job, but he hopes to turn Unlimited Brewing into a full-time, frothy project. He has high hops for its future, and I'll be excited to follow along to see what's on tap. I hope you enjoyed today's story. Does it sometimes feel like your side hustle needs a designated driver? Is the stress of your daily life nearly unbearable?
Maybe it's time to raise the bar. As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better. Today's show notes, including a link to Unlimited Brewing Company, are available at sidehustleschool.com/159. To leave a comment or question for the show, give me a call on the Hustle Hotline at 8449 Hustle. Let's have another round tonight.
I'm Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
