Powder Hollow Brewery plans to keep growingDate: 11/21/2017 ENFIELD, CT – When recently reviewing his company’s accounts, Powder Hollow Brewery owner Michael McManus stumbled upon a milestone.
Powder Hollow beer is now available in 500 locations.
The landmark number is a tangible representation of the huge growth for the company as it approaches its third anniversary on Nov. 23.
“I had really, really hoped for that, but, yeah, it is surprising how quick things are moving,” McManus said of the brewery’s roaring popularity.
Starting out with only a couple of bartenders at a 2,400-square-foot brewery and taproom, Powder Hollow now employs 15 people, boasts a Massachusetts distribution facility and is in the midst of building a new 8,000-square-foot production and distribution center on Post Road in Enfield.
“When we started, we brewed 80 gallons a day. Now the new tanks we’re installing at our new place are 1,200 gallons,” McManus said. “In three years we’re certainly not the biggest in the state, but that’s a huge amount of growth.”
McManus credited local support as the greatest factor in the company’s growth – not only the beer fans, but the businesses that were willing to take a chance on them.
“I would say you can’t beat the craft beer industry when it comes to support,” he said. “We’ve got area restaurants and area liquor stores that gave us shelf space and gave us tap handles while we were growing and learning, knowing that we’re not Budweiser, that we don’t have it all figured out and we have a lot to learn and they were all understanding with that.”
Like many other small breweries, Powder Hollow has used events and partnerships with other local businesses as a means to market itself.
Offering its “Hoppy Hour” and beer and food pairing dinners with local establishments and less conventional events like yoga and beer sessions have helped drive interest. It also makes coming to work more interesting, McManus noted.
“I think it’s important for us because it keeps things exciting. The day-to-day task is exactly why you get into craft beer because it is different every single day. The different marketing avenues of doing yoga, working with restaurants and doing all of that stuff makes our life more fun,” he said. “You’re not marketing through yoga. You’re supporting a small yoga instructor and in return, we’re both getting exactly what we’re looking for. It’s not so much marketing as it is just doing something fun and different. Running a radio ad over and over and over, there’s no fun in that.”
While expanding its resources, Powder Hollow’s original facility on Hazard Avenue will remain the heart of the operation.
“This will still be our No. 1 retail location,” McManus said. “This isn’t going anywhere. We’re not moving anything about this part. We just need more space to produce.”
Having quit his full-time job to build the brewery more than three years ago, without the means to hire contractors, McManus said Powder Hollow’s Hazard Avenue home will always be important to him,
“I was in here 18 hours a day for six months to build the place,” he said. “This space is a never-ending reminder that you’ve got to start somewhere and no matter how big we get, every time you look around this place, it still has that hometown, small, cozy feel. Everywhere we look in here is a reminder that any problems we face on a day-to-day basis, we can get through it. We built this. Nothing was handed to us.”
Looking to year four, McManus has lofty goals. With the completion of the new Enfield production facility, the goal is to reach 1,000 locations.
“We want to have our product sold equally in Massachusetts and Connecticut and to do that we need about 1,000 locations,” he explained.
The company also plans to open a winery at the Hazard Avenue location in the summer of 2018.
“Not everybody who visits us likes beer, so the best option wasn’t to buy some wine and sell it,” he said. “The best option was, ‘We like to make it, so let’s make some and sell it.’”
For more information, visit www.facebook.com/powderhollowbrewery.
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