Twin Leaf Brewery aims for 2014 opening in Asheville

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Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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From twinleafbrewery.com, on their plans to open Twin Leaf Brewery near downtown Asheville in 2014:

Firstly, we’ve decided that Asheville is indeed where we want to be. There are a lot of nice towns around here, but Asheville has the vibe we want for our brewery. It’s where we want to live and work. We just feel right here.

We’ve been perusing available commercial real estate to get a feel for what’s out there. There are a couple general areas we like, but we will more than likely be somewhere outside of, but fairly close to downtown.

We’ve also come to a decision that means a fairly major change to our original plans for Twin Leaf. This one took an awful lot of soul-searching, but at this point, I’m confident it’s the right thing for us to do. We’ve decided to start out as a brewery and taproom only, then add the restaurant after we’re up and running. There are a few reasons for doing this.

First, we definitely know how to run a brewery. We’ve been trained professionally as brewers, we’ve brewed in three commercial breweries, we have a long list of kickass recipes that are ready to go, we’re confident in our brewing skills, and we have a ton of contacts (and friends) in the industry to call on if we need advice.

On the restaurant side… well, let’s just say that there’s a lot to learn. Opening a brewpub means opening two businesses simultaneously. You essentially have to treat the brewery and the restaurant as separate businesses. This makes things… complicated. To try to open both sides of the business at the same time on our own would spread us pretty thin, so we’d need to hire a lot of staff to do it right.

On top of that, a brewpub requires much more start-up capital. Starting off with the brewery only will mean a lot less fundraising, which is a major time suck in the start-up process.

Bottom line, we want to open Twin Leaf sooner rather than later. Starting with just the brewery means we can start sooner. We’ll be able to raise start-up money faster, we’ll be able to build out faster, we won’t have to hire staff (except probably a few bartenders), cost of operations will be cheaper, and things will just be a whole lot less complicated. Yes, this means we won’t generate as much revenue in the beginning since we won’t be selling food. But we’re okay with that. The faster we start up, the sooner we start generating money to put towards rent and utilities.

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Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

  • 1

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3 Comments

  1. jabob November 10, 2012

    i hear profit margins for breweries in asheville are wide open………….

    Reply
  2. Jeff Murphy November 10, 2012

    There is a really nice old building in Black Mountain, right by the railroad tracks, and it is for sale.

    Reply

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