Sun King- A 15 Year Overnight Success

from South Bend to Evansville and everywhere in between this is get in the show focused on the hooer state and the incredible stories happening here today I'm Nate spangle founder of get Indiana and I will be your host for today's conversation on the show today I am joined by Kay Robinson and Dave col the co-founders of Sun King brewery needs no introduction there right gentlemen Sun King brewery was founded back in 2009 with one simple mission to just make beer who are buying cegs you were buying gegs from Circle V and you were taking them up to Deer Creek which is now obviously R offer

R whatever it's called now and you were slinging those for five bucks uhuh yeah fish fish shows and like horde Festival other music festiv now that's entrepreneurial that's it right there launching indianapolis's first production Brewery since 1948 now fast forward today they literally this past weekend just celebrated their 15-year anniversary whoop they now have locations in Caramel fers cooko Mishiwaka the airport and Sarasota Florida baby come on I have been patiently waiting for this conversation for months now clay Dave welcome to the show hi Nate hey Nate gentlemen I am I'm pumped about this uh we were talking a little bit pre uh pre when

we turned on the uh the mics here that sunking has just been a staple for me like I mean I'm 27 now grew up like in the posts Sun King era so I mean growing up craft beer like this was what I drank you know like cream ale was uh was a staple for me so I'm pumped to have this conversation and learn a little bit more about the beginning what you guys are doing now and uh what's on the plate to come for for Sun King brewery if we could start with sunlight cream ale for just a quick second because you wandered into it

you mentioned it let's get going 40% of all beer made at Sun King Brin company is sunl mail oh four out of every 10 four out of every 10 four out of every 10 yeah you going to crack into that sample Nate he'd like to drink beer on the podcast I said I'd love I'd love a good beer on the podcast come on gentlemen so um it turned out that sunlight was not supposed to be our Flagship it was just a beer we made for the summer when we opened up we brewed our fruit spatel beer in July 1st of 2009 and we thought what

would be a good refreshing summer beer I know Little Kings kind of thing right a little creale action very Midwestern very Jenny cream Upstate New York and so we thought let's make this and so we did and then you know it went pretty quick and we're like okay I mean it's still cold it's still hot out so let's make another batch and we did that um and that one went quicker but we're still like okay if it's fall now perhaps perhaps we won't and we started as we were the of four people um we are two of The Tap Room employees as well so we're

feeling Growlers and we open our in September that's true so and we're like yeah this is you know this is it and we're going to move on to another season we brought out our October Fest we're like October Fest is here goodbye to Summer seasonal hello fall seasonal because we wanted Sun King to be all about seasonality that was the thing right that was the stick was every season something new yep all new beers all the time rotation of things um so real quick Cheers Cheers gentlemen there we go for having us oh that's good but we would we would have people Dave and I

be behind the uh literally our Tap Tap Room we ran out of money when we before we actually got open and our Tap Room started with four Costco Folding picnic tables three Costco folding six-foot tables two of them were tasting tables where we poured your samples over and the other one was by the front door with a Costco cash register and that was it that was our tap room and we would work in there we were open Thursday Friday Saturday and we'd sample beers and um you know these people would come up and be like oh well I'm glad you like sunlight you should try

Octoberfest it's our new seasonal and they're like yeah but I really like sunlight and we're like well this is the last run of sunlight cuz it's fall and we're season brewing company and they would inevitably say oh my wife doesn't drink beer and she loves this my dad hates craft beer and he loves this my Uncle thinks this is the best beer he's ever had and it was like unanimous decision from our customers at that point in time that this beer should not go away we kind of looked at each other we're like well everybody loves it like let's just make it year round and

it became our first year round beer and again has steadily and consistently been 40% of all of our sales wow for over a decade now for me now when I think about the the gold standard for local craft breweries it's like it's Sun King right like for me thank you from that I mean you guys are I mean you're crushing it in my eyes from the outside looking in it's like oh man what if I started a brewery when I grew up I would want to be Sun King but it hasn't always been that way right let's you're talking about all these CCO Costco cash

registers and all that jazz like take me back to 2009 maybe even 2008 like the time that that happened and and how this ended up coming to be Indiana's first or not first commercial Brewery but first since 1948 yeah first full scale production Brewery because before Sun King there were only brew pubs in Indiana so you'd go have food and beer and dinner You' might grab a growler a six-pack to go but it was really on-site consumption let's just educate the consumer a little bit what's the difference between a brew pub and a brewery well they both are breweries uh Brew Pub has the restaurant

slf food element of it so Brew Pub is a restaurant with a brewery on site um or a brewery that is owned by the same company there's a number of Brewery brew pubs now that maybe have satellite locations that don't have breweries but they're still a pub very food Centric um we spent over a year trying to plan a restaurant Brew Pub because it's all that we knew and we had Chef Craig Baker and another of our friends who was a restaurant manager and we met every week and we talked about all of these great plans for the seasonal food and beer restaurant and honestly

at the end of that at the end of a year of Sunday meetings um we were looking at each other and we're like we're no closer to getting this done we couldn't find a location we couldn't agree on a corporate structure we couldn't come up with a name we had a lot of good ideas but meshing them all together were hard and then we had the realization that it costs a lot of money to open a restaurant and a lot of money to open a brewery and I personally was like I don't care about food it was like I I want to be a brewer

like what if we just make beer like can that work will the math math yeah will the math math and yeah if you know anything about me the fact that I managed all of our Excel spreadsheets and original budgets is hilarious um so um but been working on our on our business plan based off some other round numbers and we had run Brewery a brewery for a year and it was part of a few years together and we'd both been professionally is that how you guys met oh you want that story I want to know where did you guys meet just get the get in

the time machine take me back cuz I think it was even 10 years prior to that it was mhm oh boy yeah so I started my Brewing career in 1996 at a place called Circle V Brewing Company what if I told you that your Brewing career is longer than my life I knew that when you said 27 like I'm 28 so I started before you were born there we go um that's how you know it's good that's how you know it's good we're an overnight success at 28 years in uh so I no we were I was uh working at a brew pub and I

asked the guy who was a brewer and also owner and I said hey can I help you you know jump in there and make a beer I've always loved beer since I was not old enough to actually legally have it uh so you know he said yeah I'd be here tomorrow morning so I jumped in the car in the morning very excited got there helped him Mash in and that moment where you know the grain the Grist and the hot water meat and it just is warm and wonderful and inviting it smells like breakfast in your Grandma's Kitchen kind of thing and I went oh

my gosh that's what I want to do for the rest of my life how old were you at this point let's see 30 you were 30 when you and you said I want to show up and what was your role at the Brew Pub uh I was a bar manager so you're managing the bar and you're just like you know what I want a little bit more like I want to just go and do and I think that there's just a thread that always pulls with with the best like entrepreneurs and innovators it's like I'm going to sign up for more because I want to

learn more about this so I can be better at my craft I had this recent conversation with somebody else um about and they were talking about a job and how they had gone ahead and just written this new plan for a program at their work because they cared about it and wanted to do it and then they showed it and they were like this is great and they're adopting IT company wide and it's so interesting because there are a lot of people that I've met over the years are like well I want to do this thing and you'll talk to them about and they're like

so do I get paid extra to do the thing and I'm like you don't have an entrepreneurial mindset if that is the case like entrepreneurs do do that you're the person who's like oh I see an opportunity here let's go for that opportunity I want to learn more I want to do more and it's those kinds of attitudes that we both have that have led us to where we are and it's like in the world somehow finds a way to make that right in the future right it's if you put good out there and you go and just like and you're naturally curious right it's

like naturally Cur curious about I like beer I enjoy beer I've enjoyed beer for a long time like might as well see how brew beer gets made right yeah um so you're back there you're doing that so he's bartending at Circle V and assistant Brewing uh I graduated from Wabash College in 1997 o um yeah I'm a DEA guy so it's okay we can still be friends right yeah you're wearing the Sun King hat in the W bash colors though I might uh this is true I've gotten a lot of comments on this hat people love this hat so um so I graduated from college

had no idea what was going to do with my life uh while I was in college I worked at an English pub um and fell in love with good beer work it's called Joe's Barn Grill doesn't exist anymore but after every shift I got to have a shift beer and they had 12 beers on tap 12 import beers on tap and another 50 micro brews at the time and I could just pick a beer every day and so every I'd work three or four nights a week uh while I was in college and every night I would drink a good beer and I was just

blown away by all the different flavors of beer I had some friends who got into home brewing and by the time I was graduating college we were having parties with like home brew kegs or one of my buddies had done some work at Lafayette Brewing Company and he would bring down kegs from Lafayette Brewing Company so I get out of college and I'm like man I want to throw some parties um I had a bit of a rock and roll habit I spent about 10 years of my life chasing fish around the country and world and um I wanted kegs of beer so I wanted

kegs for a party and I called Oaken Barrel and Barley Island and all of these staple names are about eight or 10 brw pubs around the greater Indianapolis area at the time and none of them sold kegs they wouldn't do it and in our industry kegs cost $150 a piece you give it to somebody they give you an $880 Deposit they take it home they use it they put it in their garage and they bring it back four years later um so small breweries just don't like to deal with kegs a lot or at least didn't at the time and Circle V sold kegs so

I'm like oh I called great they sell kegs so I drive my Volkswagen van up to Circle V where's Circle V at Castleton it was it was right behind the Starbucks right there uh uh yeah Sparkling Image Car Wash okay all right I'm I'm picturing it so I I pull up to Circle V in my Volkswagen van I had an 85 Volkswagen camper van um and I go in and I got uh beard and long hair and I talk to the guy handsome fellow behind the bar about beers I try a handful of things I choose muddy wat's brown ale fill out all the paperwork

have a pint of beer he helps me load The Keg in the car party goes great people love the beer I love rock and roll started uh buying I think the statue of limitations is up I started buying cigs of beer from Circle V to go to Deer Creek music center and sling $5 pints of of fresh local beer out of the back of my van well you were buying kegs you were buying kegs from Circle V and you were taking them up to Deer Creek which is now obviously R offer r or whatever it's called now and you were slinging those for five bucks

uhuh yeah fish fish shows and like horde Festival other music festival now that's entrepreneurial that's it right there boot legging so yeah so over a time I would I would see him over the year of uh 98 I worked at Rosco's tacos in Greenwood where I where I grew up I would um basically just take time off to do rock and roll but after uh 2 years at Rosco's tacos the ins weren't quite meeting as a tacos Taco manager um and I was like man I need to make more money um I want to wait tables so I started looking at places that I would

want to wait tables at I started doing interviews and I sh shave my beard down to a little thicker than this just cleaned it up I had a ponytail and I'd go for job interviews and they'd go great and the guy the the middle middle AG mustache manager would always say well you seem really great we' really love to have you but there's just one problem and I'd say what's that and they'd say your facial hair and I'm like huh and he's like well you can't have a beard late '90s beards were not in Vogue like you can't have a beard but you can have

a mustache I'm like okay you have facial hair he's like yeah it's a mustache that's okay you have you could have a mustache I'm like I don't want a mustache um nor do I want to work here thank you so after complaining about it a friend of mine had a friend for that went to II that worked at Rock Bottom downtown Indianapolis and she says to me Brian works at rock bottom and he has long hair and a beard so they hire hippies you should go work there they hire hippie and so I did and that was actually so this was the what led you

to Rock Bottom was beards yep was beards I I actually it's a tenant that we we hold true today a lot of what we did about Sun King in the years before starting it was talk about broader cultural things about what we loved and hated about jobs that we had we didn't actually talk about what kind of beers we were going to make until we got funded um and then we're like oh crap we got to make beers well we know how to do that that's the easy part but how do you take care of your employees and give back to your communities and run

a great business well you were you were a Taco Guy how did you learn about beers um well so then I I took a job at Rock Bottom parttime waiting table so I work tacos and my rock bottom job um and then basically we did a beer tour and the Brewer at the time was named Tom he does a beer tour we do it with our staff today you walk through the brewery talk about how the beer made and by the end of it he was probably 30 and by the end of it I'm 24 and I'm like holy like wow this guy makes beer

for a living like I I love beer I knew it was a job I didn't know it was a job I could have hold on this is super cool so I would get done with work talk to Tom over a beer just ask a bunch of questions and after a couple of months one day he said hey do you ever think about making beer for a living and I said I didn't know it was a job someone like me could have until I met you and he goes well you ask really great questions about beer you've got a good head on your shoulder and I've

seen you running around here you've got a great work ethic I think you'd be a good Brewer and it just so happens that I'm moving on bill's coming in my assistant Jackson's moving to Colorado so there's a bunch of turnover right here Bill's going to need somebody with a good head on his shoulders and a good work ethic so I'm going to introduce you to bill and if you guys get along you can start a career making beer and I was like no [ __ ] and he smiled and he sipped his beer and said it's delicious and I was like all right Tom so

I met Bill we went to Broad R Brew Pub had lunch and a couple of beers went and played pool at Old Pros table uh got along for four hours and he said I think I can hang out with you you're hired and he took me to great fermentations and bought me the new complete Joy of home brewing and said I'll see you on Monday at 6:00 a.m. and same thing as with Dave we brewed an oatmeal stout and the minute that that grain hit the hot water and the smells came out and you're in this little box with all this stainless steel equipment and

hoses and pumps and Loud rock and roll music and you're just like oh I am home this is awesome it's like a sanctuary I love that oh my gosh so so time goes on and then how do you guys get reconnected so Circle V um fell on some hard times and you know sad for them but actually lessons learned that carried forward to our business so we knew a few things you know it's a lot of times what not to do more so than it is what to do when you're you know kind of Blazing your own Trail at that point this place called the

ram started to open up or was it was going to get opened up it was announced and I went ooh that's a brewing job I need I I want this Brewing job I I want to continue on this path and so I back in the day this is before the internet and to know things like where the corporate headquarters were phone numbers for people where do you go the library ah yes you know who likes to look stuff up Librarians they love it I gave them a couple questions they fired back with the information and then I started calling Dave Hollow who is the guy

who was in charge of the Brewing program for the Ram at the time and and I called him and I didn't get a return call so I called him the next day did not get a return call called him the next day and the next day and the next day and the next day and the next day and how many days are we talking I mean it was probably about two and a half weeks or so there it is it shows up again persistence and just a little bit of that entrepreneurial grit right it's like oh you're not g to answer I'm G to keep

going till you answer yeah I mean tell me no to screw off or whatever but uh you know I need it I need to know and so he finally called back and he goes hey please stop and I said okay I will I I made the connection that's what I was looking for and he goes I'll be in town at such and such a time and then I'll you know show up for the interview so I did um they had somebody who they were bringing from you know out west to be the Brewer but I got that assistant Brewer gig which was pretty cool and

then that fella um moved on to Colorado and I was left there standing holding the bag but to go back to the in the meantime I started brewing beer at Rock Bottom in 1999 which means my Brewing career just hit 25 years heck yeah and um so the ram was building out and opening up and Bill was from Indianapolis had moved to Colorado started Brewing at Rock Bottom in Colorado and they had an opening in Indie so he got moved back because he wanted to open his own Brewery so um he can't so he's teaching me how how to brew beer it's an old school

apprenticeship style you work with a guy teaches you everything you know you spend every day together learn how to clean things and basically a lot of cleaning um and so then the ram starts opening up he's like hey there's a new Brewery in town we need to go say hi so we fill up a growler um we walk down it's not open it's under construction and uh we basically walk our way in like we know what we're doing work our way back to the cooler and see the brewery and work our way through the brewery and just walk in and are like hey hey guys

welcome welcome we're the we're from The Rock Bottom wanted to come by say hi welcome you to town so we met John who was Dave's boss um who became a dear friend of mine and was already on his way to a dear friend of his and we're like hey Bill clay John Dave we're kind of standing there for a second Dave looks funny at me and it's kind of that like we know each other and it's that like uh Circle V Volkswagen van like oh hey hey we go way back like haven't seen you in years what's going on so at that point it's just

kind of like hey we now do the same thing down the street from each other three blocks away from each other so we spent a few years of visiting each other's tappings and stopping by on Friday afternoon for a beer and just getting to know each other we talked about rock and roll music and life and Dave was starting his family at the time and life changes and all of the things and just kind of became fast friends over the next few years but but you guys work at competitors how can you be friends oh it's fighting against the man so all you know Rising

tide carries all boats yes it's a funny thing we actually talk about this a lot cuz I I like to call it coopertition um so we're in competition but we're also cooperating with other folks and you know we can probably talk about this a little later but everybody looks at Sun King as this big entity that is that has been around and we're this huge thing and we're you know ominous whereas the truth of the matter is is that everything that we built we use to help our peers because we've got a lab that we've invested over a million dollars in and we have two

full-time people and we do lab work for any other Brewery in the state of Indiana if you've got a beer that goes well or poorly you want to run it through a tasting panel to see what's up with it you want to run it through a piece of scientific equipment to check it for an infection or just see what's going on we'll run your beer for you uh we we actually we grow so much yeast in our own operation small Fe for very we do a small fee because we pay a lab I mean you have a lab yeah so but we offer lab services

at a discounted prices to other Indiana breweries and then we'll help them figure out what they might be experiencing and how they might address it yep free yeast okay you guys are talking about labs and you're talking about all this Stu like what is it doesn't seem to me I thought I was kind of like okay it's a brewery you just like brew beer and you know you drink beer and you'll have to come over for the nickel tour it's a great to love to have you I'm I'm there but but talk to me then that's a misconception like I'm there's misconceptions about Sun King

brewery being this like War Machine Behemoth you know like what is the most common misconception when you think about breweries and then we'll dive into Sun King in a little B but the just breweries and Brewers in general I think that it's easy right and then you just kind of like you do a thing and then the next day boom you've got beer and that's not even close like two weeks at the minimum much longer depending on if it's a logger alcohol content plays aart uh any special treatment if we're adding fruit or what have you well speaking of loggers speaking of loggers are you

and a tie back to our Inception because um we just recently relaunched launched Indianapolis Brewing Company which is part of our heritage or lineage in Roots so the last fullscale production Brewery in Indiana which was closed due to the owner and tax evasion back in 194 I actually did look that up right he was uh they were like shorting shorting their pores or something they were shorting their bottles um it's like you go to buy a 12 oce bottle we'll give them 11 we they won't notice 11.2 no one will notice turns out someone would notice somebody was paying attention turn turns out like you

hold them up to you're like huh something's weird here so this is not like the beer that they hung their hat on we did some research and figured out the style of beer that would be popular they were most popular for a Dortmund which is kind of a brown logger which isn't a big seller but what are big sellers are crispy delicious light loggers oh that's good stuff IBC thank you yeah wow okay so misconception that it's easy like when you said the word lab and when I think of you're talking about like ponytail beard kind of hippie type stuff and then you're talking about

a lab like those two those two don't like really mesh for me I mean one of the coolest things I think about the business that we've built um you know our investors May beg to differ but we've put everything that we've made back into the company as we've gone so I mean when you look at us and this is one of the funny things like one of the biggest misconceptions about us and we'll meet people all the time they're like oh you own Sun King you must be killing it um and there's this idea that because we own a successful business that we're magically Millionaires

and we have a joke amongst us that we are reverse millionaires that's right cuz we owe a bank a million bucks it's not we're not rolling in any dough we're paying bills just like everybody else but as we've gone along we have a lot of really great assets we bought our brewing equipment you know we've had to finance some we've had a great partnership with First Merchants Bank who helps us with financing and terms and growth and they've been First Merchants Bank is also the bank that uh that represents get Indiana so that is fantastic so uh plug solid plug they're great people they understand

our business they we meet with them and talk about stuff we meet and have beers and talk about where we're at what our challenges are where we're going and they help us meet our needs as we've grown so well let's just dive into that then right so you're you just rolled over 15 years and a lot of times from the outside looking in you're like Sun King is you're crushing it you're available in many states you have spots in Florida and you have what cooko and fers and Misha you know like um tell me like the truth like I mean how does it feel like

I mean put it in comparison like how big you were 5,000 barrels year one and your 30,000 now and put that in comparison to like aneer Bush they make millions yeah I would say that the uh that the bud distributor in Maring County sells more Bud than all of the craft Brees in the state I mean it's in Maran County just Maran County yeah they sell like 50 million cases of Budweiser or something with all the events and sporting and everything yeah and the sponsorships and stuff you know welld deserved they've been around for a very long time um a solid cons consistent beer and

is a very solid consistent beer so it's just one of those it's one of those things yeah like we make 30,000 barrels which is 60,000 kegs of beer and it sounds like a really large number it's honestly more beer than we ever thought we could make when we started the laws in Indiana you could Brew up to 20,000 barrels we helped get them changed to 30,000 barrels we've lobbied to change laws at least six mean what do you mean by that um like there's a maximum on the am you can produce yeah well there still is but yeah so John Hill and Greg emck were

two of the people Lafayette Brewing Company and Broad R brewing company that got the Brewing laws they were the ogs got the laws changed Greg IMC actually worked at at Broad rle Brew Pub before moving to Lafayette to open his thing and before broad ruple Brew Pub it was illegal to have a brew pub in the state of Indiana so that was the first beer lobbying effort okay which is probably almost 30 years ago now go they may have already hit 30 um but they basically got the laws changed to where you could have a small Brewery and a pub together and when they did

that and honestly we've lobbied a number of times and you know however you lean politically honestly our legislature in Indiana is very Pro business and if you go to them and say hey here's a problem that we're having and you talk to your representatives they'll help you work on figuring out how to navigate it and sometimes it takes time um but so we've both been engaged in times have been active lobbyists in the state of Indiana just lobbying for pro Brewery related things I was the president of the Brewers Guild for a while Dave cold is the current president of the Brewers of Indiana did

you think that uh when when you were T around fallowing did you be lobbying the state no I have a really great picture of I have a like uh shaggy hair and a huge beard and I'm in a suit and I'm lobbying in 2015 um and I'm at the podium and we were trying to get the barrel ra limit raised past 30 um so um and I'm literally like banging my fist on the podium and waving it in the air and our PR Company which my sister ran at the time was our PR Company um you know sent me a screenshot and she's like you

were great if you could refrain from banging your fist on the podium and waving it in the air you might be a little more effective next time but I was very passionate about what I was doing and you can't handle the truth it was very it was very much you can't handle the truth moment because they cut my time all I was supposed to have like five minutes three minutes I'm like there was this little uh lady who was a representative there and she was she just looked at me she goes take your time honey just breathe you'll be fine we'll listen and I was

like okay thank you by the end of it she hugged me um you know but but we started lobbying and like we talked to Greg and John about it when we did our first push to change and we're like where did the 20,000 Barrel limit come from and he goes we just pulled a number out of our heads that we thought no one would ever be able to achieve and 20,000 was seemed like inordinate amounts of beer yeah until you came along so well so put that in comparison then right now you're doing 30,000 a year put that in comparison to other Indiana breweries that

might be staple names that we know love drink support we're the second largest in the state um Upland I believe is third number-wise and then it kind of gets a little yeah after that Three Floyds is the largest Brewery in the state they're in 20 some states they have Chicago as their backyard which has 10 million people and honestly if you go anywhere in the world being from Indiana and part of our gig as starting a great Indiana Brewery um is to Showcase how awesome Indiana is it's a part of an early conversation we had about the brewery and bringing accolades because it's a flyover

State people Overlook Indiana all the time we always have this asu's hoery kind of thing where we don't want to boast and when I talk to people all over they're like oh Floyds yeah it's in Chicago I'm like no it's actually in Indiana they're like no [ __ ] um so but they do 100,000 barrels of beer which is three times as large as us Rin gist is another popular Brewer in our area only out of Cincy they actually we helped them get started um and they're like our little big brother because they blown up to over a 100,000 barrels as well holy smokes they're

not that old either right they just turned 10 they're five years behind us oh my gosh but like that coopertition thing their head Brewer uh worked at Lily he got downsized was a friend of ours and a home Brewer and he couldn't take another job because of his Severance so he volunteered to come in and clean kegs for like a year while his Severance was going on and during that year he started getting interested in learning more about brewing and once his Severance was over and he could take a job we didn't have a lab and he was like hey I'll help you build out

your lab if you'll teach me how to brew on a professional level master's degree chemist from Lily so yeah that'll do that'll that'll play yeah yeah so that's how our lab started was with with Jim Matt and then we met some guys who were going to move to Cincinnati and start Rin gist at the craft Brewers conference one year and we're like oh you guys are great you're doing to Cincinnati what are you doing for a Brewer our friend Jim moved to Cincinnati because his girlfriend lives there and he's at Christian mine right now and you should meet him and six months later bada bing

bada boom they got now now they're just ripping yeah yeah wow so Ryan guys Brewery in Cincinnati got it starts somehow with some ties to Indianapolis yes absolutely wow that's all and now they're just rocking and rolling I love that are you guys friends with the The Three Floyds guys oh yeah see okay so it is coopertition right it's like it's it's just against the the big big beer machine it is and honestly I mean so in our lobbying efforts there were some times because you kind of got a give and take and there were a couple times in our efforts to get more out

of the rules that would allow us to grow that we had people approach us with unsavory opportunities if you will they'd say things like we'll give you everything if you want because Indiana is one of the handful of states that allows for self-distribution so when we started Sun King we delivered all of our own beer it all started going out in my Volkswagen van or Volvo station wagon my our partner Andy's truck he lived on the North side I lived on the South Side we'd run beers around the city during the day and each of us would take runs to the north and south at

the end of the night you would text one of us for your orders we' put it on a chalkboard um and then we would deliver it the next day um and we did that and then we got another guy um and then we got another guy and then we built a team and at one time we ran 12 I think probably 12 12 people people in the logistics department and did 120 to 140 stops a day delivering beer all over the city um but we also as we were growing we wanted to go to grocery stores and in grocery stores in Indiana they don't touch

beer the beer distributor moves the beer from the back to the front and we had never sold beer in grocery stores before so in 2013 Dave and I are talking because I'm going to parties and my friends wives are like oh I was going to get Sun King but they were out and I'd say they were out and where'd you shop Kroger I'm like oh we don't sell beer in grocery stores and go why not and I'd start to tell them about warm beer versus cold beer and not having a lab structure that would allow us to make sure that this beer sitting on a

shelf in a grocery store if it were there for two months would taste as good as it does today and all of our morals about making the best beer and our Brewer's intention and they would tune out and I'm like we got to we got to work really hard and figure this out we got to figure this out and figure out how to get to grocery stores but in figuring out how to get to grocery stores we also needed to figure out how to make and sell more beer because there's a lot of grocery stores um and we had to figure out how to get

it there so we started working with monarch how we transition our distribution over to Monarch so that they would do grocery stores but at the same time we couldn't make more than we were at like 28,000 barrels at that time we couldn't make any more beer um and so we needed to change the law and some of the people would say things like if you'll give up self-distribution um for all breweries in Indiana you can have however much beer you want to make so they what it's a lobbyist thing and so the some of the the the some of the Distributors have their own lobbyists

we had great support from one set of Distributors and great fight from another set and the other set was basically like hey if you'll sell out all of your comrades in the state so that no one can self-distribute anymore then we'll let you have the moon um and we were like no we will not do it I'm sorry like we want everything we want you guys had the power for that yeah like to put in perspective like sun had a lot of power there that you guys could have chose to be the like this was like the third good for us not screw those guys

yeah this was the third time we' lobbied for Law changes and we'd been doing successfully what we wanted this was very important because it involved what turned into millions of dollars of investment into the brewery increased lab better equipment more equipment back to the we just reinvest everything it's like we've got to we've got to put this money we've got to invest millions of dollars some of which we're borrowing most of which we're borrowing in better equipment more equipment and First Merchants um and and more people to do the jobs that go with it and so we're doing all this and it was one of

those things it's like no we're not going to do that we will fight and we will tell our story and we will win but are not going to sell out everybody else because regardless of what you might think as a small Brew in Indiana if you've never met us or never taken the tour or come by to hung out which we welcome all um for sure you would think oh big bad Sun King sometimes but we we fought to keep that we think it's important for small breweries to have the access if you got a bar across the street or whatever you know for us

it was a major step towards growth that allowed us to get where we are in the idea of selling it out so that other places can't like I currently live in Florida because of our operations down there you can't self-distribute in Florida so if you have a we've got a brewery and we've got a bar three blocks down the street the beer has to go to our Distributors sit there for a day go back through the system and come back on one of their trucks with a bunch of other stuff and so it's a huge impediment to small breweries and part of the reason we

even went to Florida we're like whoa the Florida Market is like 10 years behind everybody else and it's like oh why well their distribution laws aren't favorable towards small Brewers but we are at a size now where we can take advantage of distribution networks and work within the system because we learned the system the way over the years wow I mean that that's super interesting and I think that that you guys might get a bad not a bad rap but just like this big overarching you know machine machine Vibe it's the thing people say all the time they're like oh Sun King is everywhere and

were're a lot of places but again we worked really hard to get to those places the community programs we built over the years to give back we've got a one-third in kind donation program that if you're with any nonprofit in the state of Indiana and you want to throw a fundraiser and buy beer and we sell it to you essentially at costs the first two-thirds of beer is overhead um overhead and and people and costs cost of goods um so but we will sell it to you and then you can set up a bar and turn around and sell beers for six or seven bucks

a piece and then you can keep all of the profits for them so you get discounted beers we get our bills covered and you can make money for your organization well put that let's talk about that then feels like Sun Kings everywhere size scope right 30,000 Barrel is that the has the law changed what is the law like where are we at now the law is now you can make and sell self distribute up to 30,000 barrels once you pass 30,000 barrels you have to work with a distributor do you guys self distribute we do not no everything it's just like built in the like

with with scale comes processes right and it seems like right that first you know four to five years was like we're a startup we're figuring it out like I read all these there's articles you can go find out that are just like hilarious haircut day like all that fun stuff and then it seems like you went through this like scaleup phase where you're going and and you're getting known everywhere and you're like oh man they're really crushing it sun King's everywhere and then obviously like the pandemic happens and you know life changes a little bit and like give us the scope of like what happened

through the pandemic yeah I would say that um our decision in 2013 to to make a move toward groceries is the thing that really saved our ass because everything went to grocery you couldn't buy beer how hard is it to get a like if if you start a brewery how hard is it to get into a grocery store it's pretty hard pretty hard these days yeah you have to you have to Lobby that organization like you got to get a buyer right like they have we have Joe Burns who is our he was our full sales manager um but now runs our Florida Market um

and is oversees the our salespeople in Florida but other 25% of his job is chain management and he deals with Meyer Kroger Walmart Target uh Benny's what was the first grocery grocery store you got into Kroger Kroger Kroger so you got to go to Kroger and be like hey like just one specific location or with that the Monarch side helps us because once we were with Monarch and we had this plan we were able to go to Kroger with Monarch and say hey we're going to be launching into Grocery Stores um and we would love to you know here's our Sal data yeah here's our

scan data from you know from package stores and all that kind of good stuff so they could see oh yes there's lat potential let's so so the pandemic thing we could probably talk for three hours on because it was our master's degree in business management Bo um but we fortunately so my we pulled my dad out of retirement to be the business Sun King at 70 he was with us this was in 2009 when we opened up so he came on and advised us in 2008 on this is Omar I always just call him Omar because actually there's some funny funny antidote stories about Bank

meetings or something you know like it's like hold on let me ask my dad um you know like Omar um so um but when he left Dave and I took over as co-ceos we were like hey neither one of us want this job um so somebody's got to do it so let's suck it up and both do it cuz honestly as a as people we balance each other pretty well um and we make like one complete human we're both a little off and we but we work well together and we've worked well a lot for a long time together which is helpful anything any business

that survives 15 years like kudos to you guys like and partners that survive 15 years like that's even more ESS if we flip back to the beginning too I mean Dave and I were both approached by people with money that wanted open breweries and we knew immediately that we didn't want to open that person's Brewery because they had ideas about what they wanted to do and they needed us to make the beer part happen which is what drove us to looking at each other and going talk to me about the original funding how do you two how did two Brewers and downtown Indiapolis open up

a brewery yeah just accidentally very very strangely so as we get approached and people are coming at us and we're like maybe we should try to find money right so like if we open these breweries we're going to be in the same position doing something we love for people we don't necessarily agree with and half the time they want one of us not both of us CU they don't want to pay both of us or give us any equity and their Equity off off are like 5% after a handful of years and I'm like I I was raised by an entrepreneur and I was like

what why these people with money need us why wouldn't two guys who we know each other well we see I ey we can genuinely work together we've been running a brewery together for three years with very successful results um and grinding through it all I'm like why wouldn't two guys like us put together a plan and find the people with money you can find the money like that's like the flip for I think that gets people to take entrepreneur preneurial leaps is that like like the money ends up being the easier part it's like finding the business and like that piece finding the building was

the hard part we thought money would take months and the building would be like there's buildings everywhere building took 13 buildings in six months money took one day so yeah so our third partner comes into the scene here Andy f take it all the way back all the way back to Circle V and so Andy ran a successful um engineering company and he would come have lunch his employees had come have lunch I knew Andy very well because I was bartending at the time and also assistant brewing and so we' had a great conversation um over the course of time we lost touch because Circle

V closed he ended up selling his business off but I ran into him at uh the ram that was on the north side of town because that's where he lived I'm like oh my gosh Andy how you doing you know uh great conversation and I said I'm starting up a brewery with some people and I know you've been pitched a million times over and we want you just to absolutely pepper and drill holes through our Grace proposal our Grace guy proposal and he goes okay great let me hear the pitch so I had in my off time I took a few years off um between

rock bottom and the ram to figure out what I was going to do with my life more rock and roll so in more rock and roll I chased rock and roll slept on couches read books and worked part-time construction for three years while I while I burned my 401k that I cashed in at 28 years old cuz I wasn't going to be ever be old enough to retire um so [ __ ] it let's spend um so during that period I spent my 401k I amassed a $20,000 worth of debt I needed a job um and the phone rang and it was Dave and he

was like Hey clay what's going on I'm like not much it's like are you in town I'm like yeah I'm in town for a while I'm in town now still trying to figure out what I'm going to do with my life and he's like oh that's great do you have Dustin's number and I was like Dustin's number what do you want Dustin's number for um and he's like well he knows how to brew and I need an assistant Brewer that's gonna you know the Rams expanding and I was like uh well Dustin's open in a bar he was open in Spencer Stadium Tavern um I

was like Dustin opening a bar so he's got a gig but I need a job and they's like I thought you were done and I was like I was done but I'm in dead up to my eyeballs I need to figure out what I'm going to do with my life and when can I come talk to you this afternoon great um so so I went and talked to Dave all of this other stuff transpires we asked Andy to look at the business plan I left in June of 2008 went home with my wife to Alaska for two months where she was born and raised she

worked on fishing boats deck handing halit fishing oh she must be a badass she's a badass she's like 5 foot four worth of badass um but she'll gut a fish in 38 seconds did she grow two Ines since I saw her yeah I'd like to tell her she's 5'4 she might be 5' 3 and a quarter I don't know I never get I never get it right plus she always wears shoes mou um so anyway and then I came home from there and actually everyone thought I would disappear to Alaska and never come back when I told people what I was doing because it seems

like a place that I would go and never return from but Dave and I we even had tough he's like are you [ __ ] coming back I'm like I'm coming back man I just I got to clear my head I helped her parents remodel their house I spent the summer up there my dad came up helped me remodel my in-law house 10 of us lived in a three-bedroom cabin with one bathroom it was like a melee and I'm like I'm going to marry this girl and you're going to get along with her parents and let's go so we lived together for a month did

this project I was up there for another month came home literally wore my pajamas all day and wrote A business plan while drinking Miller High Life because that's the only beer I could afford at the time so my wife would pick it up to the grocery store and then on Thursdays I would go meet Dave the only other person who knew I existed in Indianapolis anymore and I'd go meet Dave and I'd have beers with him and then i' take a growler of IPA home with me so that I had something else to drink um and I spent like six weeks just writing the business

plan putting all the thoughts that we had together into words uh my degree in W from Wabash is in rhetoric um with an area concentration in business so I bet you couldn't tell I wrote I wrote all the flowery language for it um and put all the spreadsheets together but I had in my meantime I'd written six business plans between leaving my last job and being a part-time hippie rock and roll junkie um for various bars restaurants different things I wanted to do a live music venue that I thought we needed at one point in time with Dustin who already had a gig um and

eventually open Duke's Honky Tonk yes that's awesome Yep Rd um R so um so anyway but every one of them I'd take to somebody like Andy and I always had this blue sky in and I'm like oh and I'll put the numbers together and you know you're just going to assume growth and I'd always get my I'd always get just busted down it's like well when you go from year two to three there's this giant jump and how do you get this giant jump and where does this come from and how do you jump justify this and I'd leave these meetings feeling demean so when

I wrote the Sun King business plan it was gray sky Bare Bones brass tax these two guys need a job um he's got a family we forgot that there's a self-employment tax that you get hit by by as an entrepreneur so the amount of money that we actually needed to live was lessened a lot by taxes so we found ourselves upside down after our first year uh with our personal finances because we miscalculated um so entrepreneurs remember that if you're paying yourself you got to pay the government your taxes still um so build that into salary um if you can afford to build in a

salary so we went we Dave set up a meeting unfortunately Dave can't make the meeting it's a very officious beginning to Sun K because Dave had won a medal at the Great American Beer Festival the prior year um I think his second medal for a barrel AG beer and he and I had made we had entries in this year so we hatched a plan and we Brew two different beers a stout and then was a Belgian triple Belgian triple put one in Buffalo Trace barrels the Stout and Jack Daniels barrels let him AG had left the ram Dave pulled him out entered him into the

competition he got a free trip cuz he'd won the year before so it leaves it on me and my Omar to go meet with Andy so we meet at the fishers on the North side we have lunch and some beers we pull out the folders I built we look over the business plans we start looking at budgets it's 2008 you know there was a hop fire that killed like 40% of the America's hop so hops were a thing NPR was talking about it all the time he's like I I hear there's a hop shortage what are you going to do about that I'm like if

you'll turn to page three of your addendum you'll see our hop contracts that cuz stayed behind and organized our hop contracts grain contracts all of our things with our suppliers during the year that I was working on the rest of the business plan stuff and we were working to find spaces so we had all of the answers his wife comes and joins us Anna they're lovely people we're having beers and lunch and talking and asking questions and talking about our vision um and at the end of it uh Andy's looks at Anna and they're like all right we're in and I'm like all right great

you're in that's fantastic super happy to have you on board thank you very much we'll pay the bill go in the car get in the car with my dad I look at him as I start in the car and go did we just get funded and he goes I don't know that meeting went really really well I didn't want to ask too many questions like they're in I'll just call tomorrow to see how far in is but before he can call Dave calls clay mm it turns out the two beers that we sent both won medals at the Great American Beer Festival we won we

won bronze or sorry silver and gold for those very beers that clay mentioned so before it we funded we didn't know how much funded was but in order to make that phone call back then Omar got to say oh by the way have you talked to Dave yeah these this happened overnight while you were sleeping and are you guys in how far in is in how far in is in how far in is in and the answer was all the way um he basically was like we're all the way in he's like I'd like to create an investment group and spread it out I don't

want to take all the risk I'd like to spread it out between my parents my neighbor some friends and family who've done well and would like to be part of an investment group and we're like cool we'll create an invest you create an investment LLC you're the single person that we representative so we don't have 12 investors to talk to also a good tip out there if you're putting together an investment group so Andy was our key point he talks to his 12 people and he talks to us and he also wanted because he'd been kind of part-time um living his life because he sold

his company and he wanted he like can I just deliver beer or do whatever can I have a part-time job and turned out to be his money so he was our CFO for a while he ran the books the QuickBooks all of the various things and it turned out to be me Dave and Omar being the four full-time folks and then Steve is our attorney partner who has a small percentage of the business and looks over all our contracts does all of our legal work and all of the those typ you guys just busted a myth I don't know if you even know there was

a myth about it the myth that Sun King was founded by someone who won the lottery or something like that well actually Andy did win the lottery oh all right so wait so myth but okay wa we brought Andy on yes the place was founded by Clay and myself okay so we founded it we brought Andy in as our investor so Andy Andy a rose home Rose homean graduate with a master's degree in applied Optics he's a smart dude um he started his own engineering company that wrote engineering software eventually this is the circle vday um around the turn of the century around 2000 or

so sells it to his largest customer like the whole software game sells it to his largest customer so sells a company that he's built from nothing and does well for himself um and then somewhere around the same time he won the lottery but turn of the century Indiana lottery was like a million bucks um it's still money it's still a million bucks but now Lottery Lottery lottery is then he double hit the lottery when he invested in Sun King brewery damn straight yes sir sorry I swore SW a few times trying to refrain come on it's it's all it's all fair game there all right

so obviously I think we might need one more one more as we're I think we should have Nate pick on oh yeah what would you like to try I was just going to go to panga and move up I me I am all in we have a little bit of branding here with the the Bell sunking collap is that this guy right here you can buddy let's go we got the palom Paloma this is going to be ooh grapefruit and Agave come on is this a little bit of gfj action similar no um it it is in the sense that there's grapefruit but here we

took like 100 pounds of grapefruit and limes we zested them we Juiced them uh we added some grapefruit grapefruit tpin in there we added Agave so you can when you get a sense of it at the end it has that nice like little kiss of agave that little hint of citrus and a little spicy pepper character uh there's some nice dankness in here so know it's an IPA all right and um gosh darn it it was one of another crazy idea we were like hey for our 15th anniversary let's let's get a whale to make a beer with us so it's wild to me I

love it there's still whale breweries to you guys yeah to Z like you go out there and you find Bells put in perspective how biggest Bells compared to Sun well uh 200 times yeah [ __ ] yeah there're 600,000 600,000 barrs oh okay yeah be whale and they're now merged with New Belgium which is a million barrels so the two of them together who do you call there you just like have a friend this is a 10-year conversation to try and get bells to do a collab with us hilariously um and we went almost all the way to the top we went to Laura Bell

Larry's daughter maybe you've heard maybe you've heard of her um so we we went to Laura Bell and we're like Laura please please please do a collab with us this is really cool these are the reasons why so on and so forth and she goes I don't know I'll check it out and see if I can no no response she ascends to the president I'm like hey don't forget us let's do this collab it'll be fun just come on down it'll be fun and and uh you know hey thanks for that blah blah blah no response on it more conversation she quits we're like H

well that was our in I guess we're out uh and then lo and behold a friend of ours in the business Alec mole who was U quintessential at you know some of the big growth for Founders which is also larger than Bells like 800,000 barrels I believe so um opportunities became available at Bells he went over there to be the President of Operations at the com Comstock location and so I'm like all right yep Alex's there who do we know we know Alec we know Alec hey Alec do you remember your friends Dave and clay from Sun King from such things as a collaboration we

did with Founders he's like oh my gosh yes hey how are you guys doing it's our 15th anniversary oh my gosh would it be so amazing if you could do a beer with us so it took 10 years for Sun King to partner with bells yes 10 years in the making this beer how uh how long is it available for what's the what's the Stitch when she's gone she's gone one and done special edition yep if you're playing it if you're keeping score at home although this won't be Evergreen this will kind of date it but um it's only at Sun King locations oh which

one okay this is this brings me to this is a great Segway I want to round up with some fun questions just some fun interesting you know like but what do you think of the beer um I love it I love I'm not like a super big fruit Beer Guy like I like subtle fruit yeah that's why I kind of like the gfj cuz it's not like too fruity it's still like an i it's an IPA there is no fruit in gfj whatsoever all that flavor comes from hops m no way yeah 100 P it's literally grapefruits in the name isn't it uh well it

was it's it's called gfj because when I went to get the original ttb designation for the cans they told me we could aloh alcohol tax and trade Bureau yep we they told us we couldn't name it grapefruit jungle because it didn't have grapefruit in it and we're like uh I was like well we could squeeze a grapefruit in it Dave's like that changes the beer like we'll just call it gfj and so I got it approved as gfj wow but this one we talked to bells and we're like What do we want to do we could do some fruit we could do some we just

make it we they we all kind of like cocktails a little bit here and there it's like let's make a beer that's styled after a Paloma something that brunchy cocktail BS if you see this this might be the best collab you've ever done if you see this one it's all I'm saying it's all I'm saying this is really good they get some cases later this week so they'll get a chance to taste it oh boy well then it's going to it's going to get up into Michigan and they're going to see how how beer made down here in the H your state how we do

yeah all right this brings me we we're wrapping up we're pretty close on time this hardly gotten started I know right I feel like we could just you know get a couple cases and yeah we haven't talked about our three Floyd's collaborations and how they were integral with us in changing all those laws we talked about Artisan distiller bill was born out of a conversation between Clay's father and Nick Floyd and how we wanted to do spirits and they wanted to do spirits but it was illegal for breweries but okay for wineries all kinds of stuff we're going to need a part two re you

know we give uh gosh we give yeast away to any Brewery who wants it uh just kind of lab services clay talking about just general advice chitchatting back and forth and all that kind of good stuff so if you had narrow it down one each I'm going to go back and forth we're going to go here if there is one thing that you wanted the state of Indiana to know about Sun King brewery what would it be clay the I mean we're a true hoer company there's 55 people who work day in and day out tirelessly um full-time we've got another 125 part-time people but

I mean while we sell beer in other states and I even live in another one of them where we sell beer now we've always been really true to our hoer Roots um and the type of people that we are and the things that we say and do and we really tried to create a great local company that not only sells beer to the people of Indiana but gives back to the people of Indiana and really Mak Sun King a truly good corporate citizen that is just part of the fabric of Indiana that was the original goal honestly the original goal was Indianapolis and then we

kind of gradually grew it we did I would congeal all that down to we give a damn you give a damn we give a damn we give a damn about the place that we work and live in the environment that our people work in how we you know look at the world around us how we try to highlight other companies in the mix collabs that we've done with just Popin and countless others right in the mix what's your dream collaboration if you could pick any company anything Sun King X who we we've got a cool one coming up that is uh where we have a

meeting tomorrow with the cake bake shop um so because wendland's built an incredible business there and they actually are opening a spot in Disney in August on the boardwalk yep on the boardwalk and that actually led us to our our sales guy Joe was like man cake bake it's Indie it's now in Florida like we got to get together so he made an introduction and they're going to run Sun King beers at all of their locations and we do a pastry Stout every winter with the collaboration we've done it with the Flying Cupcake with best chocolate in town um and so this year this year

we're going to throw really rad cakes into a beer very delicious cakes well when you guys are ready to do a collab with an Indiana Media company and you want to do a limited release maybe get in get in uh I'm like a this is going to you guys are probably going to hate me for this but it's okay I love Coors Light I love don't have to I love Coors Light everybody has that um kind of dirty 30 rat yeah you know like I I just like go crazy for it I'm a Miller High Life guy I mean you know I I'm still in

that stage I'm in the stage of trying to grow a business right now so like I'm in the like Hey we're we're drinking yeah right um but if there was ever a chance down the road to collab and do something fun oh man we could make something pretty cool happen all right um we like fun uh we like fun we like the collaborations and like the opportunities we've done some of the coolest stuff we've done we did a collaboration with time for three which was the artist in residency at the Indiana Symphony and Dave sat down with him and talked about we took him on

a tour about how you make beer and that led to conversations Dave and I were both in show choire led to conversations about music and how music is created and they literally had this moment they're like creating beer is not that much different than creating music and this and so where's the spark of it is that is that what sparked the Tyler children's recording album in the sturg S stur made Tyler happen because Sturgill said um you should play Sun K you should play Sun King because it's awesome wait how did like what give me the okay quickly give me 30 seconds on this we

go over time we'll be fine that was awesome I was like looking up I was like oh my that's that's like long-haired hippie Tyler Killer's playing there yeah yeah man well yeah that was a full drug taken drinking Tyler childis yeah yeah he played two of our anniversary parties uh back in the day and we did we used to seril was the first so our fourth anniversary was the first time we had a big party um and we work with Josh Baker from MB owns the Hi-Fi and um they're good friends and have been since our Inception uh him him and Craig Dodge Lyle and

at the time we just talked to him we're like hey we want to do this party what do you got for an upand Comer and we both enjoy honky ton but we also like hip-hop and blues and Bluegrass and like we're all over the board musically but um I'd never even heard of Sturgill at the time I mean this is 11 years ago and he's like hey you should get this guy named sturg and we looked him up online we're like that's pretty cool like and that guy sounds like Merl ha let's do this [ __ ] yeah so they were like okay well he's

coming through he's up and coming nobody's ever heard of him he came to play the high-fi whatever room was upstairs I went to the show and it was stur it was this size is like the LOI yeah so Sturgill's in the corner with his band standing um and the rest of the room is here and it's like me my wife Chris elely Molly Elie and like 20 other people um that came out to see him and but he was like he's coming to town to do this show you should do one of these shows we'll film it at your place so we put it in

the beer cans and we filmed the whole thing and we all watched it we're like holy [ __ ] that's hot um turns out to this day I show people it regularly but the the you can have the crown um is his number one view on YouTube and it has like 38 million views with the sunking with it's the sun session and it's the cans and all of it we get referenced by bands all the time like hey can we do a thing where the cans are behind and we're like sure so Tyler signs to Sturgill Sturgill says you got got to play Sun King

and do the cans mhm and they th that's so cool that's so cool oh my I was just out at the Tyler show in at ruoff and I love that yeah he's fantastic super he gave us a shout out awesome dude yeah wow okay that's cool let's get into some more of these fun conver some fun questions here as we go into the lightning round lose some lose some of the seriousness no yeah lose all the seriousness that we've had um gentlemen if you're not drinking Sun King what are you drinking if I'm not drinking Sun King I'm drinking wine oh okay any any local

Winery any any winery in general you want to give a little love to um I don't uh honestly I buy my wine at Trader Joe's little tjs little tjs I'm not a wine connoisseur by any way but I know like the styles that I drink so like Vino Verde vion I like white wines like white like dry refreshing I now reside in Sarasota Florida where it's pretty hot most of the time and so um you if I'm not drinking wine or if I'm not drinking Sun King I also might be drinking the new Sun King Delta 89 seltzers um so we have to wrap out

with uh with what's going on there Dave if you're not drinking Sun King what are you drinking tequila oh a specific brandow oh yeah I'm a big yeah so when Dave's not drinking something King he's drinking to forget something uh always aren't we aren we part of the reason no no no I I I really enjoy the taste uh profile I I did whiskey I still like brown Spirits quite a bit but I find this is new and intriguing and interesting to me the process is different you know you've got these penas it takes seven years to grow one to maturity then you've got to

roast it and depending on technique isn't there only like a certain area of Mexico or something that tequila can wind up in Pisco is usually where it's from but I think anybody any producer in Mexico it can be called tequila okay when we made thank you when we made our first Agave spirit in Caramel we knew that we had to call it a a spirit because you know just like France France right they make champagne Americans don't make champagne we make sparkling wine so an aave spirit is what can be made outside of Mexico okay I actually pitched at one point that we should uh

move some Distillery options our operations to Mexico Indiana and see if we could skirt that loophole we did yeah we did actually talk to the ATC and they're like no not a chance like all right I love that right it's like guys you know I I respect it I see that sign all the time when I'm driving down 31 so then we said I guess we can't make kasasa in Brazil Indiana only in the country wow what about Peru is there anything in we could do in Peru uh I'm sure what kind of Peruvian Spirit I'm not aware but I'm sure that they sure there's

a local there's a local all right um we're going to stay here and we're going to go which Sun King location is your favorite have a favorite you may have a favorite in the moment right okay let's say like right now we're in the summer summer you're hanging out where you want to hang out just going to tell you that you know the 15th anniversary party just happened so that belongs to the Mothership right amen there you go you can't you can't beat Old Faithful right there we go clay favorite Sun King location to hang out at uh well closest and most favorite is Sarasota

Florida it's a tiny little Tap Room it's real small it's honestly looks a lot more like what Dave and I thought Sun King would be 15 years ago like what people ask him like this is what I thought we were starting um turns out there's a whole another thing and if you're ever in Indiana we get a lot of transplants there's a lot who's your influence but the mothership downtown is my favorite as well because I mean it's just it's where we were born the other I love all our locations and they all we worked really hard to make sure that if you've been to

one you haven't been to the other so we're not like when I worked for rock bottom or we worked for the ram if you went to a Ram or Rock Bottom in Indie City you could be anywhere because it's just it's like a hotel or whatever you're oh I'm at a rock bottom you're great am I in Denver am I in Indie am I in Boise um but with Sun King if you go each one is very different their own and they have their own Vibes so but the Mother Ship like we started there we grew it there's so much like Blood Sweat and Tears

and climbing around on things we assembled the coolers and like all of these things like when you walk through and like all regularly my favorite time to visit a Sun King is like after hours or first thing in the morning when nobody's there and you just walk in and it's this thing and the lights are off and you're just like wow we did this like this feels pretty damn good cool that's so cool well if you didn't love the which location is your favorite you're probably not going to love the which beer is your favorite so which Sun King beer is your favorite um so

beer beer style-wise I I alternate from like crushable light logger uh as where my heart lies or IPA um and so I used to be all the time Pachanga but we just released this Indianapolis bring company which is even a little lighter um but so ibc's become like my favorite go-to and then on the IPA front we had a beer here we do have it here we have a beer called Keller hay that is only available on draft in our tap rooms here and is available on draft and in cans in Florida um and Keller Hayes is my favorite Sun King beer of all times

just so delicious now these are really your children literally literally my children if you had to pick one it's whichever one I'm holding at at any given time amen okay wait then here's a I I'll give you a different one then it won make you pick one is there a Sun King beer that you thought was going to be a huge hit that tanked uh bitter Druid yeah we made this ESB so we we thought we'd have three beers we'd have a hoppy beer days beer that's that's my shift beer okay um but I also like to have you know a taste of something out

of our sour and wild program as well so you know I'm all over the board Just Like Music I'm you know any kind of music you can drop me anywhere and I'll be great with whatever the music is so we had this thing uh that we thought we'd be doing a weac um Osiris and and bitter Dr ESB with br3 Flagship beers like that's what is going to happen and then we made bitter Drew at ESB and then we'd make another batch and then three four five months later another batch and all the while all the rest of our beers are you know taking off

through the stratosphere so there are still five people who when they see me walk through the Tap Room any given Sun King Tap Room will be like bring back ESB there's a very small this one the first beers too yeah it was it was sunlight was our first seasonal we knew Osiris is the beer Dave and I designed with the Hop contracts we had to be the the hoppy beer that we would drink every day um weac we knew we wanted a multi beer appeals to a certain crowd um and then bitter Druid was kind of in between the two and esbs we loved Broad

Ripple ESB at the time we'd always drink that we're like yeah ESB it did really well on massav when we first started and it kind of had a little runaway start and then I think it was a year and a half in after our after our first full year we were looking back at numbers and we realized that um we sold 10% the sunlight 10% ESB at to 100% sunlight and it was just like oh God and we were kind of at that point where beers have to stay fresh and you're like any seasonal that we ever made sold more than ESB and we're kind

of like this is going to make some people sad but we literally just don't make enough ma the math ain't mathing all right what is a lesson that you learned the hard way oh my gosh we like to refer to it as paying the stupid tax and and we've done that so many times over and over and over again where you know things you have a hunch and and that's one of those sort of weird things about being an entrepreneur right like hey we were right we were right about Sun King we were right about this so we have to be right about the next

thing that we're going to decide to do and that thing was plastic kegs we decided to like take on these plastic kegs they were new and cool uh price point was better for us but they had all of these magical things less weight so it was less energy to move them around so on and so forth and they didn't blow up in our face Unfortunately they blew up in somebody else's face and we learned that lesson we had to say like a yeah there was a brewery a Red Hook Brewery in Washington um and I had a friend who worked there actually and he called

me that the day it happened and a a a pressure valve on a keg cleaner malfunctioned and the keg over pressurized and The Keg exploded and a piece of shrapnel killed someone um so and my friend said I'm not even sure I'm allowed to call you be talking to you about this but I was at your Brewery recently and you have these plastic kegs this happened um you need to be very careful we immediately installed double fail safes on the pressure relief valve in front of it but we're like we can't have these things they ended up coming completely out of the market over the

next year pretty much um and they got sued and there were a lot of things but we had those and we had to at that point we're like oh [ __ ] and at the time thankfully it happened when it did because we only had so we had so many of them and we probably we spent $50,000 on kegs to get started with in our original budget and we maybe bought another1 ,000 or so more but to replace them with the stainless steel kegs that we ended up replacing them like 250 yeah that's going pay at $250 $300,000 here's a new innovation that's cool we're

going to adopt it and it we didn't let it have enough time to and that's some like that's just piece of it right like that's just a part of it where you're trying to be Innovative but then you're also you know like you got to kind of let it some someone else like test a little bit of that out I'd say I mean our our most recent one um and I I I I we're so we run an open book management company we actually share the numbers with our staff every week the budget where we're at versus budget we go over we started doing this

financial literacy stuff in 2018 as we were trying to figure out how we transition from Omar running the company to us running the company which to get back to your pandemic question which we never even answered it made it really easy when the [ __ ] hit the fan to like look at our staff and go all right here's where we're at here's what the numbers look we're going to have to make some difficult decisions we stopped canning beer or k beer at all we moved all the way to cans we're going to do this there are people in this room whose jobs don't exist

because the things you do can't happen and we're going to figure out how to do that we ended up furlough 14 people so they could keep their health benefits and take advantage of unemployment benefits but and then still work to figure it out we brought some of them back we pivoted in a lot of different ways but as we went through that whole thing it was great because we'd spent two years teaching our staff what it meant to run a business CU we were both we actually had these exercises we we used to we started doing cuz I read a book the great game of

business and then Dave read it and we'd ask people we'd be like our staff like hey uh how much money do you think that Sun King makes for you know every dollar that we make or in a year um you know we sell millions of dollars worth of beer how much do you make and the answers ranged wildly from 25% profit all the way up to 90% profit we gave everybody 100 pennies and had them divide it into buckets how much grain costs how much overhead blah blah blah raw materials overhead labor everything and how much was profit and we were able to show I

mean we're like no honestly if we do really well in a year um roughly five cents of every dollar is profit like 5% not 90% they don't tell you that about when you start a business they don't and it was also great because again we reinvest in our company we are upfront with our employees but it was also great to be able to be looking be like look there's five of us who own the company and run this thing and if like if you think like we work hard but we get out of bed every day for for one penny on every dollar because of

the ownership structur so you know if and so we were we were able to navigate that and we still navigate all of our things we do our weekly meetings and we're like hey here's where we're at here's our budget here's our finances and over the last five years since covid and with everything else and I talk about that nauseum to people um the rising cost of everything um you know just shipping just shipping beer to Florida a truckload part of the reason we put a brewery in Florida is because we were sending half truck loads and it costs the same amount to send a half

truck load as it does to send a full truck load because they book you for the whole truck and we're like we need to maximize Logistics so we brew beer in Florida specifically floor Florida but we do package beers that we move down and we take advantage of the size of our Brewery because the stupid text thing I guess I'm getting at is we have capacity in our Brewery to make more um and we've always thought of that as like we have capacity to grow and we're growing but it's hard to grow particularly in today's climate so we're efforting efforts to grow with new markets

in Florida and some expansion in Ohio and and doing a lot of different things but we've also started we do contract manufacturing now because we also realized for for 15 years we've been a craft Brewer and recently we've realized that yeah we're a craft Brewer but honestly we're a brewer and at the end of the day we're a manufacturing facility and if we've got latent manufacturing potential and it's just sitting there not being used then yes we make less money making other things for other people caning beverages for other breweries distilleries or beverage manufacturers but most of our bills are covered by our major operations

and as we try to figure in and factor and run a real manufacturing business and maximize our output that's where we will grow and gain and maybe one day U make more than one cent on every dollar one and a half perhaps hey gent all right these are the final three questions these are the staple they're staple they're quick quick hitters it's artificial lightning that we've been doing since we first started the show what is Indiana known for extremely friendly people nice folks who will give the shirt off your back to help amen I love that clay what is Indiana known for honestly I I

think it's it's knowingly unknown for great things we talked about this when we started Sun King like you've got red gold Tomatoes we have world class tomatoes and I mean put Indiana Tomatoes up against our corn is also really great soybeans uh huge export for edamame um duck Maple Leaf Farms duck people don't know about that but Maple Leaf Farms if you eat duck in peeking duck in China it probably came from Maple Leaf Farms um we've got Caprio Farms goat cheese uh we've got Goose The Market who makes the Bali sandwich which I ate yesterday and is arguably the best sandwich on the planet

named that by Food and Wine magazine at least once um but there's Goose The Market Goose The Market yeah I second that but SM Goose man but there so there are so many Weaver popcorn like we're the popcorn capital of world so there's actually all of these really great grown and handmade manufactured products in Indiana that are artisan things that a lot of the world loves and don't even realize that they come from the hooer state Mike drop there we go I love that clay what is a Hidden Gem in Indiana um I'm going to plug a spot I found just yesterday um so a

hidden gym in Indiana is Frank's uh Frank's paddle Sports Livery um it is located in the same building as the Indie Parks Alliance off of the White River um do you know on 30th street where the old army Armory is that is now the Heron High School yes it is across the street from there there used to be a golf course you get off on 38 Street on like one on the right right as you come across you get off and go down you can look it up online it's Frank's paddle Sports Livery it's owned by a guy in his wife and they do canoe

kayak and paddle trips and they'll take you up the river they've got three vans they've got a staff it's super professional um so uh Pete and Kate are really nice folks like it just my buddy does it and my buddy James and he was like you want to go float the right River I'm like you float the right River he's like oh dude there's a spot called Franks so we go great the building's cool it's Parks Alliance building they got a little setup you go you do your waiver 20 bucks they'll take you up the river there's a five mile Cano trip Five Mile float

that drops in Rocky Ripple or another one where you go up and it's seven miles the section of the river is beautiful and it's treed and it's really nice and so we just took paddle boards yesterday we took paddle boards we floated the White River um I brought some Indianapolis Brewing Company loggers that we drank and my buddy Kurt met us and he brought Bales um and five of us floated down the river on Sunday afternoon we hit it right after the storms and the sky opened up and just like I've lived I grew up in Indiana I'm almost 50 years old and I'd never

Flo loaded the White River and like him and his wife their goal was to make India River a River City they're taking out a dam at 16th Street and pretty soon next by next summer hopefully they'll be able to float all the way to the White River and then or White River State Park and they'll run shuttles back up to Rocky Ripple you can do different segments of it but anyway FR it was awesome I was like wow it was such a great way to spend a Sunday just to be out in nature right in the middle of downtown you float under um under uh

65 and 38 Street right there on that section of the White River it was crazy but it was so relaxing and so I love that I love that wow Dave what's a Hidden Gem in Indiana I think it's it's hidden in the sense that people don't realize how big it is but the cultural Trail is absolutely stunning right and it connects neighborhoods and I just I adore it I go for a lot of walks every day I get my 10,000 in every day and you know that's part of my exercise routine also helps me clear my head it's kind of my zen time um a

lot of times I'm actually talking to this guy about [ __ ] that's going on and we we spend hours and hours on the telephone staying connected and talking about this this baby that we built and I love it how we go and grow it okay the cultural Trail is a good one this brings us to our final beer and our final question so this beer is trippy tals is it the last dab are we there yes by the time we're done we got to finish them all um so trippy Tales um I've never had this beer that's why I was like I tried palom

alom over the weekend but um it's part of we have a rotating IPA series series we do a a variety pack variety pack with four different ipas three times a year one of them comes out as like a 16oz can which goes to liquor stores and other things so trippy taals double IPA super Killer fun artwork by our guy Mike Atwood Mike it's uh 10% so be careful that'll that'll do the trick it's a good finisher but when I cracked it it just smells stank I was like who does have tpin in it oh that's pretty good I like that guy we're trying not to

suck every day am that's all we all that's all we all can do we jokingly have said that for years it's just kind of gentlemen this brings us to our final question of the day you're going to share you're going you're going to share the wealth with some other hoer right like people are going to come and listen to this episode because they're so curious about Sun King and now we're going to give you the chance to help shine light on another hooer so who is a hooer that we need to keep on our radar I got one cuz it's on the back of this

can true Essence so we talked in the Before Time of this interview about Innovation and other various things and we talked about collaboration so we have a thing going on it's actually a company my father Omar turned us on to they're like you got to go meet Matt um at true Essence and um it started as sochatti chocolate it's in the circle City industrial complex but I want to say sochatti is a front but so chatty chocolate is like kind of a proof of concept for one of the things that they do Matt has how many patents oh just in chocolate I don't know it's

like over a dozen he's got chocolate patents kidney dialysis patents and then this company true Essence is we it's called a flavor balancing technology and we're under ndas but we work with them and uh particularly for like products like these Delta seltzers can have kind of a resinous wedy characteristic and he has a technology that uh you can run products food products through and at different settings will pull flavors out of them and remove them and make them taste better so like the first time we ever did it he put a $3 bottle of wine cabernet and let us taste it he put it into

his machine in the stainless steel bowl he pulled it out and it tasted like a $50 bottle of wine um yeah it was insane and so Matt is incredibly smart he's one of those great team of people yeah great team of people he's incredibly smart he's built a great team around him but I think the most impressive thing about him as an entrepreneur is that like he's really smart and sometimes when you talk to really smart people they can't talk to investors or other public or people but he's smart he's well spoken he's easy to talk to um he's honestly brilliant and he's been so

fun and like as we've been working through some of just the challenges of running a business in this day and age he's another local business person that we can sit down and talk to and talk about what you're seeing what's going on I mean they just closed a $30 million round of fundraising like a series C fundraising or uh no I think it's uh second a okay yeah so she W all right Matt yep uh Matt Ruben Matt Ruben we'll s an email we to get him on the on the pot here yeah for sure for sure gentlemen this was a spectacular conversation I loved

not only enjoying the beer but also the guys behind the beer the stories behind the beer and just like learning a lot more about a staple in the Indiana Community which is Sun King brewery um I appreciate you I appreciate your time I appreciate the beer and um we're going to wrap up this this episode of get in uh we're brought to you by Sweetwater up in Fort Wayne make sure you go check them out if you need any sound or podcasting equipment and guys thank you First Merchants Bank First Merch huge shout out if you guys see this maybe uh send some of those

sponsorship dollars this way and we'll we'll make something happen gentlemen it was a pleasure safe travels back to Florida keep crushing it here's to the next 15 years of sunking Brewery thank you cheers thank you