(soft music) - [Narrator] Funding for Working Capital is provided by the Friends of KTWU and Go Topeka.

- Welcome back to Working Capital.

The Norse, like many cultures gathered in great halls, whether to celebrate victories, ponder over defeats, discuss future plans, or officiate business.

It usually happened with the horn of meat in hand.

The meat hall was the center of the Norse Viking communities.

That same spirit is alive and well today in Old Topeka.

And Odin approves.

Brewing a community, coming up next.

(soft music) In 2016, when Norseman Brewing Company laid anchor in the NOTO Arts and entertainment district, instead of pillaging, it became a pillar of the North Topeka community.

Passion and pride show in every ounce of hard work poured into crafting the amazing beers and experiences at the Norseman.

Joining us today are Emily and Jared Rudy, two of the four owners of the Norseman Brewing Company.

Welcome Emily and Jared to the show.

- Thanks for having us.

- So, this is not your guys' only job, so let's just go back to the beginning where this kind of passion.

This just start as a hobby.

I mean, how did you guys both get into this?

- Oh, it's a pretty long story, but I'll make it as short.

I started out being a domestic beer drinker like most people, and Emily surprised me for, was it Father's Day or was it anniversary?

- It was the anniversary.

- Anniversary to a tour through Boulevard Brewing Company.

It's been now probably over 10 years, 12 years ago.

And we got to go through this tour through this brewery, and at the end you got to try all the little beers.

We had 20 minutes to try 'em all before the next tour came through.

So I tried all of 'em and I just fell in, I was shocked by how many different styles of beer there were.

And it just kind of reminded me of like wine, but for beer.

And so it kind of got me liking craft beer.

And so, got into craft beer, made a kegerator at home.

We'll drink craft beer.

And I got laid off at one point and I was like, oh man, how am I gonna afford my expensive craft beer habit?

And I was always good at cooking and smoking meat and stuff.

Something that I did on the weekends a lot.

And I was like, well, maybe I can make it.

And so me and my buddy Adam got together and I did some research and got a little kit and it kind of started right there.

It actually started in the kitchen.

Is that right?

- So what happened in the kitchen?

I heard there might have been a little story from there.

- So he started in the kitchen and burnt the laminate countertop and kicked him out.

- Luckily was not the end of the beer story, thank goodness.

- I was just like, but you're out of the kitchen.

- Got back to the garage.

- So, but you have more space.

- There was more space out there and that allowed room for expansions, which we did over the years as I started on little 10 Barrel, just over a propane burner to building a 15 gallon gravity fed system to building a 25 gallon all electric system.

And then I helped my business partner Adam, build a system at his house.

And then next thing we know, we built a really big system at the the NOTO.

- Where did you learn all this then to put these systems together?

- Lots of readings, lots of reading.

I'm a learner.

I love to learn and if I put my mind to something, I'm going to read all that I can.

And their nickname for me sometimes is science Jared, 'cause I like the science of things and the beer chemistry and the water chemistry all really attracted me to it.

I just thought it was really cool.

- So what was the first beer you brewed?

- The first beer I brewed was a Pale Ale by Palmer.

I forget his first name, but he was a big guy that's been in the brewing world for years.

It was his recipe.

I found online one.

I have one of his books that he published on, you could get it on web HTML version, web version of it.

And that was my first one.

It was all extract.

So a lot of the brain process was kind of done for you.

It's where you get, it's like sugar water, you kind of get already made and then you just boil it and add your hops and you know, from there to your cooling down and fermenting and all that jazz, but it was.

- Kind of a first step into the brew.

- Like a first step.

And then in hindsight, super easy, compared now.

- A lot more science involved but.

But that really shows your passion for it.

So you start brewing at home, you're probably making it for friends, just little parties.

When do the conversations start about, "Hey, we might be able to start a bar or at least brewing to sell to bars?

What was the first thoughts there?

- You wanna?

- No, it's all yours.

It was not my idea.

It wasn't Emily's idea.

And honestly there wasn't.

Some might think we might have been, the initial talk might have been over about a whole bunch of beer.

But we actually have a video out there too on Google or YouTube if anybody wants to look it up.

It's kind of fun to watch what our opening video that we made for announcing that we're bringing a note and it kind of has a story in it.

But really it came down to, we were spending a lot of time, a lot of time doing this home brew stuff.

And we had befriended a lot of people, professionals in the industry and had made changes to the way we were home brewing to mimic commercial practices.

And it got to a point we were spending like 20 hours a week just on this.

And I think if we were even pushing the limits of the Kansas legal amount of beer you could produce at home.

And we were like, okay.

So at the time, only Blind Tiger was around and I got with them, I was like, you know what?

Maybe Blind Tigers only brew here in town, they're doing great, but we have a town of 120,000 people.

I think we could probably, make this a business if we found the right spot.

And it's interesting because him and I both knew we loved being around our wives and kids and being involved in the community for as long as we have been, we've seen enough guys going out it alone and then ending up in divorces.

So we need the wives to be 100% more.

Not just, oh, I love you.

Okay, fine.

Like, they needed to be as excited as we were.

So we spent time going to other breweries, meeting other breweries, working, spending days with Walnut River out of.

- El Dorado.

- El Dorado was our one, I think was the aha moment for them when they saw them brewing beer and now amazing facility.

But back in the time it was kind of like NOTO, where you're building from a building that needs work and they were 100% on board with it.

And that was kind of the, we made sure that was the most important piece.

And subsequently they are half, they're over half the owners of the business.

So we're minority owned.

- It's a Brewery, but it really is a family owned business.

- It is, it is.

- That's fantastic.

- Yep, you'll see my daughter there running food and hosting and so.

- When we get back we'll talk about some of the tools you guys used to start this business.

It's time for a short break.

Stick around, we'll be right back.

Welcome back.

Okay, Jared, I think, if I read correctly, to start out, you kinda used one of our good tools here in Topeka for businesses starting out.

The small business development center there at Washburn University.

- Yep.

- How are they able to help you and get you started down the right path to starting this this business?

- I would say honestly without them, I don't know if we'd be as successful as we are.

Outside of running like a small contractor business in IT when I was younger, didn't really have a lot of experience running a business.

And so came across, SPDC had a class of starting a business class that was actually over here, I believe.

Was it here?

- No, it was at the library.

- It was at the library and that we all attended, we went to, and we talked about business plans and that's where we met Carl Klein.

And from there I worked with Carl Klein and the resources that they have and they helped, they helped me build a business plan, helped me modify the business plan, helped me with coming up with financial figures and estimates and, but they were a huge resource and really helped us when we started going to the banks to find financing.

It helped to make it really smooth and easy.

- What was the hardest hurdle in that experience that they really helped you with?

But what was the, what was the worst part for those people out there starting?

- The hardest part was probably really.

- Projections?

- Projections weren't too bad.

There's a lot of writing and research that I had to dig through so that I could get it put into the business plan in a way that the financial people were gonna be making decision on to fund us or not would like to see.

- Were you looking at other towns this size and like how many breweries were supported or how were you pulling figures when, like you say, we just had the Blind Tigers, so you're kind of still going in new territory in Topeka, - Right, and that was something that I got from this.

But you see, they had had access to those numbers.

That's not public knowledge, but they have the ability to do it.

To do it.

And so I was able to dig through those numbers and a combination of that and just the size that we were gonna be over there.

I was able to come up with the projections.

So in the end, we were pretty close to hitting year one, so that was cool.

- So when you started with the development center, how long from starting your marketing plan, revisions, to we signed for this space, how long did it take you to get everything in order to?

- I believe when I met Carl Klein at that small business, how to start small business, that was in like the winter of 2015.

We researched, I got it going.

We started looking for a building in the early part of 2016.

Found one in March of 2016.

Sorry, my dates are off.

Go back a year.

So 2014, 2015 we founded the building and we went, we started the process of getting funding, closing on that building, which took a year.

That one did take a while, but we officially closed on that building in March of 2016.

So a year after we made an offer and then negotiated the price for the building.

And so the owners of the building, the growers at the time were very, they loved our idea and they worked with us, which is was crucial for us being able to open there if they would've been in a hurry, just wanted to sell and, you know, and get out there, we would not have had that opportunity.

- Well you got a building now, it's a blank slate.

- [Jared] Yeah.

You know what you wanna build.

I mean, did you already have the Norseman Brewing Company name picked out and where did the branding come in, the logo?

- [Jared] That's a good story.

- All the work?

You can tell that story.

- That's a good one.

- So being in NOTO, we wanted to tie ourselves to North Topeka and I've been teaching in the Siemens school district since forever.

This is my 17th year.

So been there for a while and wanted to tie us to North Topeka and the home brewery name is Fatback Brewing Company.

And we knew we had an event space and if people were having a wedding at the event space, people did not wanna write Fatback Brewing Company on their invitations.

So Melissa and I vetoed that, we were like, no, we can't have fatback on a wedding invitation.

So we were.

- Fair enough.

- Looking around and being a Siemen teacher, I knew that Northern Hills closed down and they were the Norseman and then Logan also shut down and they were the Raiders.

And I was like, nope, can't be the Raiders in chief's country.

It's not gonna work.

- [Jared] Probably good choice.

- So I made sure that the new Northern Hills, they weren't going with Norseman mascot and they're like, nope, we're going with a bulldog.

So it's open reign.

So I was like, okay.

So we chose Norseman so we could do Norse mythology and Vikings and get ideas from that and branding that way.

- And you didn't just come up with the idea, I think you created the logo.

- Yeah, created the logo.

- How did you start with that for some people?

I mean, is it just sketching on a napkin like we see?

- How do you come to this?

- Logo of sketching.

- Well I'm an art teacher, so I have some design background, and a lot of people don't know that Vikings actually don't have horns on their helmets.

- That's very true.

- So did a lot of research on that and looked at a lot of Viking ideas and came up with our own.

And there's actually wheat in, well not in this one, but on the regular, yeah, there's wheat.

That's wheat in the beard, which is grains A, one of the four ingredients in beer.

So incorporated that, so, and yeah, started on a sketch and then scanned it in and then put it on Adobe and then played with it that way.

- That's fantastic.

So how long did it take to evolve from probably the first first printed one to this.

- Quite a while?

- Quite a bit yeah.

- We had to make changes to it.

Like for example, there's no eyes and that's so that you can look at that and interpret what you want to feel that day, if that's a happy Viking, mean Viking, thirsty Viking.

So it's kind of let let's the the person perceive what they want to in it.

Which is fun.

- [Jay] Yeah.

'Cause the original one did have eyes in it.

We were like, it needs to be more ominous.

- He had hop eyes.

- Yeah.

- Which he looks kind of creepy.

- Yeah, with the hop eyes.

- Yeah.

- It's time for another short break.

We'll be right back with another round.

All right, we were just talking about your logo, kind of how it's ambiguous.

It's for with your happy, sad, I mean, you guys have a place where you can come in, kinda like we talked about up front.

Talk about your victories.

It might have been a softball game, you may be talking about your grandfather who passed, but you have a community space you've really built there.

Tell us a little bit about how you've curated that space and what all is available inside the Norseman Brewing Company.

- Well, you know, the first thing you notice when you come into the Norseman Brewing Company is this, it's a huge, lots of rock, cedar.

And it just, we tried to make you feel like you've escaped into this big Norseman Viking mead hall of some form or fashion and ready to sit down and have a meal and some drinks with with your friends and whatnot.

That's the main thing.

And really it focuses on our brand and our beers that we have there.

But we also have things to help bring even bigger groups together with event spaces.

And so we utilize event spaces for a lot of different parties, like corporate parties, weddings.

And I think that's important too, 'cause it gives people an opportunity to see the space but also be there for the bigger groups.

- We were able to put on a live radio play there.

So we had an event there in your space and it that was fantastic.

So it's kind of an upstairs, it's away from the main floor in the main area.

So it is really its own space.

There's not a lot of bleed over and sound or anything.

It's fantastic.

But even downstairs, like you say, when you walk in, just that natural feeling.

But really, if it's a nice day out, probably the first thing you notice when you're walking in is your front open up.

- Yep, the front.

We do have the doors, the garage doors that open up and you can be inside but still get that nice fresh air from outside and watch 'em on busier days.

Watch people come and go and people watch a little bit too, which can be fun.

- How early do people show up on First Fridays to get those spots at the window?

Is that kind of a prime spot there?

It can be at times.

People get there really early.

We had to implement some changes where we don't sit people unless their whole parties there to keep people from just squatting for hours because we used to have some of those.

But yeah, people tend to on really nice days fight for those, those front doors.

- Well, let's talk about why we're really here and why this has all happened, beer.

So how many flavors do you guys brew?

Do you ever carry anyone else's brews?

How do you decide your mix of what you're caring for season?

- We have our mainstays, right?

We have the real popular Beers or Schwarzbier Wheat or Scottish Export L, which is called Raiding the Highlands by the way.

So the, you know, and we actually made a stronger version of that where we said it was Highlands Revenge.

Anyway, so we have like our mainstays, the IPA owns one eye IPA, which is our biggest seller by far.

And people just like saying it, and we have a story of people like to ask where we came with that name and I say it's because it had the all see in one eye.

The wife likes to say that's because when you have too many of them, I talk like this so, And then we have a rotating about eight other styles throughout the year.

We just rotate beers.

Any given time we will have eight to 12 beers on tap and then seasonal beer offerings.

And so Adam or the business owner partner, he's a full-time brewer.

He keeps pretty busy to brewing those up.

And he also likes to go and talk to other brewers around and bounce around ideas too and come up with some cool new things.

- Are there associations, you're a part of that sharing knowledge or is that not really something that's set.

- There's US wide groups that we're a part of that we communicate through and all the breweries in Topeka tend to be very friendly with each other, and we get together.

Before COVID we got together once a month, we call it the Taps meeting.

We decided to call the Topeka Anti Prohibition Society, which we did come with that over some beers one day, how to call it?

- [Jay] Some good T-shirts.

Yeah, some good t-shirts.

We haven't done those since COVID.

It's just we're all so busy now and, but we do still talk and bounce around ideas.

- So all this, you've saved, you've worked your butt off and we're gonna get to this in the next break, but really you guys decide to take on more work for yourself.

- We are a little bit glutton for punishment.

- Yeah.

- Glutton for punishment, yeah.

- How many gallons of beer are you guys brewing at a time?

And now I know you guys are looking ahead to another location, which we'll talk about in a second.

How do you keep all that supplied?

I mean, at a time, how many gallons are brewing.

- Depending on how Adam does it?

Typically you can brew seven barrels at a time, which seven barrel's 31 gallons.

So you can do the math real quick.

It's like 270 or 250 gallons at any given time.

And you can also do a double batch, which will put you up there to 13 barrels, 14 barrels.

Right now we've been running about 30%, 40% capacity.

COVID kind of took a hit with that with how much beer we were selling.

We also had cocktails, which kind of took some of the beer sales away, but not much.

But anyway, with the new location, we expect to double if not triple that.

And so we're gonna go from 30% to about seven percent of our capacity, but the system's built for it.

And so it would be pretty easy to keep up with that demand that, well Adam would be pretty busy keeping up with that demand.

- Well, with the success so far, you guys have saved and worked up to basically, so you guys know they're, they have a lake house now for us all.

So when we come back we're gonna talk to 'em about the Norseman Lakeheim.

So stick around, we'll see you then.

(soft music) Welcome back to Working Capital.

Joining us is Emily and Jared Rudy from Norseman Brewing Company.

So we were getting down to the dirty of a new place opening up.

What point did you realize that hey we can, we can support another location?

- You know, it's funny, I wouldn't say we were necessarily 100% looking to start a second location.

However, sometimes one thing we've learned with running a small business is sometimes the business you kind of gotta roll with the punches and the business sometimes takes you where it needs to go or wants to go.

And then opportunity arose to bring what we have accomplished in NOTO out to an area that was needed a nicer little bit somewhat higher end place, family friendly sit-down place and it just kind of somewhat fell on our laps a little bit and it was hard to say no.

Now with that said, we did have lots of discussion on it, lots of discussion on it and in the end it was just something that we couldn't pass up.

- Serendipity, I mean things just, the universe came together and was like, you're stupid if you don't do this.

- Yes, we knew it was gonna be a lot of work, but we were like, we kind of need to do it, yeah.

- So I like this evolution.

The whole time from the beer evolving, from logos evolving, you guys are just constantly evolving.

So this new location, how is it gonna differ and stay the same as your NOTO location?

Are you brewing any beers out there?

- We will have, it is registered as a brewery and we have some plans of doing some, some maybe more funkier things like some sours and stuff out there.

But initially the main location is gonna be our primary place that we're brewing beer from.

Menu wise, it's gonna start kind of the same, but we have a little bit different tools over there, a little bit more space in the kitchen.

So I'd expect to see over time there will kind of become their own entities with a little bit of the same base food wise and with some specials or specialty items at each location.

'Cause we want people, people like to bounce around and go try things.

So our hope is that there'll be something that they love at the original, the OG as I've been calling it now.

And something that they love at the Lakeheim and I think that's probably where.

- Will there be anything signature that you can only get at one place or the other?

At some point?

- Not right now, but maybe.

- Maybe.

- So we'll look for that in the future I guess.

So decor, I mean, what kind of touches do you have out there?

'Cause I know that you were renovating again also from another establishment, so how do you come up with a theme in there and make it look fitting?

'Cause I don't think it was probably rock walls and quite as natural feeling in there.

So how do you bring that, that Mead Hall feel right to Lake Shawnee?

- We had that discussion quite a bit too.

And I don't know if you wanna talk more about it or not, but really in the end, when you walk, the building itself is what makes the Norse Brewing Company, it's that awe factor.

How do you make an awe factor in a building that's in the middle of, a shopping center?

How do you give it that awe.

And so we worked hard and we decided that it was gonna be, we're gonna modernize it a little bit.

So it was be more of the modernized viking feel.

So we got cool modern chandeliers in there.

We got a really big fan that helps circulate air.

But the main piece though is we got a really big super custom made bar that is all Vikings, Viking Shields on it, 1% wood out a company out of Kansas City called Casey Custom Woodworks, who brought this vision to life.

So when you walk in that's your awe, it's like this thing is cool.

And I think that's kind of the direction we went on with it.

- Like the Norsemen Brewing Company is just, when you're in there you just feel, feel you can feel the space.

It's a great place to hang out.

What do you do for customers are really friends and family that probably become that with you, to get 'em to keep coming back.

Is there any sort of clubs or programs?

I mean do you have a beer tour?

Is there anything else kind of, do you have any quirky fun down there?

- So at the new location?

- Both of them?

- [Jay] Both, yeah.

The main location we have, trivia nights and we have our Mug club.

- What's the Mug Club?

- The Mug club is a yearly fee and then you get to drink out of a personalized 23 ounce mug for the price of a pint.

So it's like getting, it's like pre-pint I guess you could say for discounted beer throughout the year.

At the new location, there's nothing set in stone and we've continued to evolve, but the initial thought is maybe not having the Mug Club there as much and doing more of an awards program where you get points or money that you spend and then you get to trade that in for an appetizer or something like that.

And I think that's where we're gonna go.

It just comes down if you have the time to set that up.

- [Jay] Yeah.

- We make sense for that location probably too, Mug Club, keep that for your original, it really fits that space.

But you're gonna deal with a new market out there, basically a new.

- New client flow, less space, lot less space, that's one out there.

So we're not gonna have space to put all those Mugs and stuff like that.

- Are you guys giving the business a little time to feel the waves of how the customers are?

'Cause a lot of businesses, you know, especially restaurants, it's hard to start 'cause you don't know how that crowd's gonna flow.

With Lake Shawnee you have tons of people baseball one day, the next day a lot of people out walking and hiking, but not as big a crowd so,.

- There's just gonna be a learning curve to it for sure.

And that's why initially we're opening with the same hours that we have at the main location.

However, I would, no guarantees it'll stay the same.

I would probably expect them to change a little bit out there as we evolve and find out where, what we need to do to best serve that area.

- I'll let people check the website for the actual times.

But I know you're open every day other than Monday.

- Correct.

- So you can stop in any time for a good beer, some great food.

So thank you both for being on today.

- Thank you.

- This is exciting.

I can't wait to try out the new Lakeheim and of course I'll see you guys down at Norseman Brewing Company.

- Awesome.

So that's all the time we have.

I'd like to thank Emily and Jared, Rudy from Norseman Brewing Company for joining us today.

And as always, if you know of any interesting businesses or business topics, we want to hear from you.

So give us a call, drop us an email, or send us a letter.

Tune in next time and thanks for watching Working Capital.

(soft music) - Funding for Working Capital is provided by the Friends of KTWU and Go Topeka.