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What It's Like to Be: A Microbrewery Sales Manager

For Scott Wells, handling the expansion of his brewery is far from his sole responsibility. To truly be successful in the craft beer industry, one must embrace every single aspect of it, overcome every hurdle, and remember to have some fun along the way.

By Dylan GonzalezPublished 6 years ago 17 min read
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Wells (left), with partner Bob Olson, Jr.Image from Daily Voice

Craft beer has come a long way since San Fransisco's Anchor Brewing was recognized as the first brewery of its kind. In my previous life, I saw the rise of craft beer in the state of New Jersey, which, compared to many other states, is still very far behind. Given that acclaimed breweries such as Ballast Point and New Belgium only just hit the markets a few years ago, this spurred an impetus for local breweries to rise in New Jersey. After the laws were changed to allow the growth, New Jersey is now home to over 80 independent craft breweries.

One of those breweries is Ridgefield Park's Bolero Snort Brewery, operated by Bob Olson, Jr. and Scott Wells. Scott is the sales manager for the company. Bolero Snort took their approach to brewing a bit different, operating as a contract brewery that outsources other brewing companies to allow them to use their facilities to make their beer.

I recall going to the Meadowlands Beer Expo in Secaucus a few years back and stopping at Bolero Snort's booth. My friend and I were both well into being toasted, but Scott and Bob's jovial and friendly personalities drew us in for another sample, along with purchasing shirts and hats. We just could not argue with the logos! As fellow New Jerseyians, the camaraderie felt rife between us. Since then, I got to know Scott more as I moved up in my own position at my old job, engaging with him for both advice and for getting his sought after beer in my hands. His role at Bolero Snort covers many responsibilities aside from just sales; handling social media, allocating items, organizing events, spokesman, the list goes on. When I called him, Scott was driving their truck back from the Wynridge Brewery they are currently housed at in Pennsylvania, showing that it takes a jack of all trades to truly thrive in the craft beer industry.

Dylan: Many brewery founders started out in different careers before they moved into the beer industry. Where were you before Bolero Snort?

Scott Wells: I was a a general manager for Staples for eight years. Most of my career leading up to what I'm doing now was in retail. I was also in security management in the past, however many years ago that was. But yeah, I was with Staples for a long time. Didn't love corporate America or working my ass off for somebody else, so I was very happy to switch into a small business kind of thing.

How did you and Bob Olson get Bolero off the ground?

Initially it was actually three of us. We had a third partner, and I wasn't even a partner yet. It was Bob and the original partner. The two of them founded and got the business started back in 2013. At the time that we got everything rolling, the New Jersey laws were different. You weren't allowed to sell pints to go at a brewery. If someone came to a brewery, they were allowed to take a tour when they got there and have one flight of beer, which I believe was mandated to be free. I don't remember if they were able to charge or not.

But basically, they were able to take the tour, have a flight, and buy as much as two six-packs of beer to go, and that was it. That was the still era that we got our license in. So right after we got licensed, they changed the law to allow breweries to sell pints directly to the consumer for on premise consumption. Now someone could go into a brewery and buy as much as half-barrel worth of beer, if they chose to. The laws changed drastically right after we got our license. Had the laws been different when we got our license, we may have gone about the way we did the business differently. For example, right after we got our license, the next brewery to get licensed was Flounder Brewing. They started on a nanosystem doing very small batches, so one barrel of 31 gallons of beer. They would brew one barrel at a time in their system and, because it was so small, they would only sell it directly to their consumers in their building. Pints and growlers to go.

We took the money we had, which was very limited when we got started, and went larger scale. We bought a 30-barrel tank and installed it in High Point Brewing Company in Butler. We use that barrel to get more out to the public and increase distribution. We added a second tank within a few months to the first tank, so that got us up to 60 barrels for every three weeks to a month. And we've continued growing from there.

Dedicating your life to the craft (pun much intended) is pretty much the concept behind running a microbrewery. What were some of the difficulties you faced making Bolero a reputable brand?

It's funny because we still face a lot of the same challenges. New Jersey is a very weird market. In New Jersey, people that have more expendable income than people that typically would buy premium brands (Bud, Miller, Coors, the discount brands, the cheapest stuff on shelves), people that could afford to spend more on that, especially in North Jersey, tend to spend money on wine and spirits instead of beer. And beer still has a bit of a stigma. New Jersey is still very far behind in the times, even in 2018, than most of the rest of the country. Using 2016's numbers and coming to a generalization, all of the beer made in New Jersey combined, from all breweries, which was 60 and change at the time, made up less than two percent of all the beer consumed in the state.

Versus the rest of the country, that number is significantly higher and the rest of the country also prefers local brands over national brands, even in the craft brewing realm. That is a huge challenge to any brewery getting off the ground in New Jersey. The next challenge, in the five years we've been operating, was that we were a contract brewery. We have never had our own physical building. Without having a place to visit hurts sales and creates some more issues, but it also keeps people from being interested in many cases. In the early days, I had a hard time getting people to buy into the brand based on the fact that we were a contract brewery. Over the past few years, we've seen contract brewing grow far more in popularity. Sole Artisan Ales, Grimm in New York, they're well-known. Evil Twin has been a contract brewer for forever, Mikeller in Europe, and even New Jersey's own Carton (everyone loves Carton) has been contract brewing a certain amount of their beer out of the Two Roads facility up in Connecticut just to add additional product that they can't handle out of Atlantic Highlands. All of sudden, contract brewing is becoming more popular and more people have warmed up to it. The point of origination is always important, as is the taste and quality of the liquids.

The third point that I would bring up is, up until six years ago, the landscape in New Jersey was very different. Originally, there were only 12 brewing licenses for the whole state, so there wasn't a whole lot of competition between those breweries. When the law changed to allow more breweries, you saw Carton and Kane jump right after that and now there are 82 or 83 as of today. But in the earlier days of "our generation" of beer, if you want to call it that, a lot of breweries didn't want to carry New Jersey beer. There was a stigma that New Jersey beer wasn't very good, New Jersey couldn't make good beer. And now they have changed as an industry. Kane is one of the most popular brands nationwide when it comes to their beers, they have won multiple medals at Great American Beer Fest. Spellbound, River Horse, I mean we've seen an influx in amazing quality and sought after beer coming out of New Jersey, so we've finally developed in an area of our own mostly through blood, sweat, and tears. You do have a lot of excellent options right here within the state. Because of that, consumers are interested in supporting local and wanting to support the companies that are here in New Jersey and try the local flavors. Five years ago, it was hard to convince a bar owner to put on any beer from New Jersey; today, it's hard to call yourself a craft beer bar or a successful craft beer bar if you don't support several local brands.

The Bolero Snort Brewery Logo

Image from Twitter

At one point did you know that Bolero was turning into a brewery people wanted in their lives?

It's tough to say. You're never comfortable, let me put it to you that way. It got interesting for me when the business became less of me having to go out to stores and bars to get them to buy the beer versus them trying to get ahold of me trying to sell them beer. A lot of it was predicated on people really liking what we were putting out and were really interested in buying our beer.

For us, we changed. We started brewing at different facilities. We moved the tanks out of the original host facility and today I think we've now brewed at right or nine locations, mostly New Jersey, some outside of New Jersey. But as we've expanded, the places we do our brewing allows us to come up a lot more in terms of concepts, quantity, and varying styles. People are now waiting for a beer to come out and are excited for it. It's very interesting for me to see, because now I have to ration the beer out to make sure I have enough to give out to people as opposed to me trying to move enough product.

A lot of breweries have something that they are known for, like Stone with their gargoyle and West Coast-style IPAs. What makes Bolero Snort Bolero Snort?

That's a very funny and different and interesting question. I've always said that we maintained our focus on approachability. Even when we come up with something that's a little crazy and different, we try to make sure it's on the palette. It's not something that's going to be out of control or polarizing. So we focus on that, first of all.

The most important of [it all is that] we have fun with it. We're not always going after the super connoisseur or the flashiest, most pretentious type of beer. We're two fat guys that run a brewery. Most of our beer is based on different foods. A lot of the beers we've done over the last few months? We did a cinnamon bun beer, a s'mores beer, we're always doing the dessert series like the creamsicle IPAs. We focus on stuff like that because it's what we like and for us, it's fun. For a lot of the consumers, it's refreshing. Beer has gotten so serious and craft beer is becoming the new game for the wine connoisseur-type. It's still beer and we're going to have fun with it. I think that's what sets us apart from a lot of the others companies that are out there.

I always felt you guys' sense of humor and your ability to tap into pop culture was a big part of it.

It's got to be fun. People want fun. We don't drink to be serious, we drink to lighten up and have a good time.

For a time, breweries were trying to stand apart from one another. Obviously the competition exists, but in New Jersey, craft beer is a very strong community. What do you think makes it unique in the craft beer community?

Like I said, we're less than two percent of all the beer consumed within our home state. From one perspective, you could say there's 83 breweries fighting over a two percent part of the market share. From the other side of it, and I think this is where most of us reside, we see it as there's nowhere to go but up and expand our marketshare. And the way we expand our marketshare is by working together. I don't view myself as competing with Kane and Carton and Brix [City] and Alementary. I'm friends with those guys and we do everything we can to help each other succeed.

There's always a certain amount of mutual, professional respect between everyone where you don't want to put a beer out there that's going to be a conflicting style to one of the other breweries. But you want to continue to do something different and find your own style and find your own way. You try to help everyone to continue to improve. The big guys are really the competition. It's Bud, Miller, Coors that are the ultimate competition. It's also the distributors that are bringing in beer from out of state. A lot of the beer that's on shelves at liquor stores and on tap at restaurants might not be as good as beer that we're producing right here in New Jersey. But the distributors push that stuff out there because that's their part of the marketshare. We here in the state need to continue to tell people that we could make a better product and we can get it to you fresher and you're supporting local business that way.

It's kind of a cultural mindset that I truly believe that 99 percent of all the breweries in New Jersey do buy into.

What is the beer you are most proud of?

The beer that I am most proud of is the Moountie, which is our smoked brown ale with maple and coffee. I came up with the concept for that beer in my earlier days with the company and I never really asserted any creative control at that point. I always had feedback to bring back to the other guys. But the Moountie was really the first beer that was my concept, from beginning to end.

To this day, it's probably my favorite beer, if not my second favorite beer, that we've ever made. But it was the first one that was my brainchild and so many people, every year, look forward to that beer coming out now. It's one of our best overall beers and that makes me really excited. That one has been my baby since the beginning.

The Moountie

Image from Bolero Snort Website

As a smaller brewery in the grand scheme of things, where do you see craft beer going in the future? More acquisitions? More dry-hopping?

All of the above. The acquisitions are probably never going to stop. I do believe because of that, there is a certain amount of people that get into this industry because they are hoping to be acquired. They're hoping for that big beer buyout. I think that's a terrible perspective because this is not a industry you go into if you want to be rich. This is a passion industry. If you're good at what you do, you'll make a decent living but you're never going to get rich if you do everything the right way, in my opinion.

At the end of the day, the consumer wants to support more and more local, independent brewing, so the acquisitions kind of work against that. And given how many breweries we have in the country, it's a small percent, a minuscule percent that have been acquired by the big guys, so I don't even worry about it.

In terms of dry-hopping and styles, it's always going to change and IPAs themselves will never go away. But even in the short time that we've been around, the trends in IPAs have changed so dramatically that IPAs have almost become a new annual tradition. Every year there is a shift in what the consumer is looking for. I think it's pretty obvious that we don't consider ourselves traditional brewers. We founded ourselves on tradition, but we don't stick solely to the tradition. Anything can go into a beer as far as we're concerned. If we think it's a favorable flavor profile, we're willing to try it.

Right now, that's kind of what the consumer is looking for. Two years ago, in the IPA game, having your IBUs up high and having the most bitter IPA out there was what got everyone excited. Now, we've gone in the opposite direction. The lower the IBU in an IPA, the more trendy and hip it is. People wanted a juicier beer that features the flavor of the hops without that residual bitterness. The market will keep changing, people's palettes will keep changing, and most of us will keep evolving along with that. That means always coming up with something new. What's the fun of it if you come up with 12 different beers and make these same 12 beers forever?

Good times are often had when in the presence of craft beer. What is one story from your brewing life you love to share?

Most of the stories I probably can't share. (laughs) That's a pretty tough question. I would say, going back to how the industry is, some of my favorite times that we have is when we do a New Jersey centric event. When a bar brings in 10-20 different New Jersey breweries for one night and it's kind of our time, for all of us. We've all been friends for a long time, but we don't often get together and hangout. Those are our nights to catch up and relax and see what everyone else is doing. We do tend to talk shop but usually we have more fun at those events than anything else.

When people call me to do a tap takeover, more often than not, I'll talk them out of doing a Bolero Snort event. It's better as a New Jersey event. It's better for all of us that way. We tend to enjoy them more. That might be the most appropriate response.

Name five beers you would want to be trapped on a desert island with and one that you would break the bottle and use to fight off a pirate that was trying to steal your other beer?

Oh god... that's a dangerous question. Because of what I do, I guess I have the accessibility to try so many different things that it's almost not fair. My favorite beers ever that I could drink all day...

I would have to go with one Kane's Anteads (A Night to End All Dawns), maybe the cocoa variant. Every year, I've been lucky to get that beer and it always blows me away. I look forward to it and I cherish those bottles. Founders KBS, which is one of my all time favorites, and for a big brewery that's had partial buyout, they continue to impress me. That beer has always been a consistent, top quality beer at a reasonable price if you can get your hands on it.

After those two...

Why don't we just make it three?

My next one is going to be total narcissism and it's probably the Moountie, the one I talked about that was my concept. I cherish that beer so much, I love it for what it is, but knowing that it's mine makes it so special.

And what would you use for the pirate?

Do I get to drink the beer before I break the bottle?

Sure, if you want to, or it could be something you dislike and you just want to break the bottle.

I would drink the Antead then use it as a weapon because that thing is a 750. Those things are heavy and sharp.

To learn more about Bolero Snort and the beer that Scott is cooking up, you can visit the Bolero Snort website, and follow them on social media:

Bolero Snort Twitter

Bolero Snort Instagram

You can also follow Scott's personal accounts:

Twitter

Instagram

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About the Creator

Dylan Gonzalez

Usually takes a nap after done sleeping. Twitter: @BeardedPickle

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