On the lookout & Tim's new newsletter

Hey Ugly Beer friends!

It's Saturday morning, but there’s no Ugly Beer at the farmers market today.

As you might know, we’re still on pause for now—both with Ugly Beer and Ugly Brew coffee. With summer winding down and cooler temps on the way, you might think we’d be getting back to washing bottles in the driveway, filling them up at the local commissary kitchen, and setting up at markets to share our story and trade six-packs for cash.

But the truth is, we probably won’t be restarting that way.

What we learned from selling at farmers markets:

1. Will people buy beverages in "ugly", mismatched, re-used bottles? Yes! 😋

2. Will people praise the mission and spread the word? Absolutely! 📣

3. Can we scale to meaningfully address this environmental problem this way? Unfortunately, no. 😞

Those "yeses" are incredibly powerful—but they’re not enough to outweigh the "no" to question #3. The hard truth is, solving the problem of unrecycled glass waste requires more than selling out of a tent. We need a new game plan for operating and distributing at a larger scale. And right now, we don’t yet have the team or expertise to build that new playbook.

Emily and I have never worked in large-scale industrial operations, let alone led one, so we’re on the lookout for someone who can help us bridge that gap.

Co-founder Search

As I mentioned in my last newsletter, we’ve been thinking about bringing in another person to help grow this movement. We're now formally on the lookout for a Co-founder. If you or someone you know might be a fit, here’s more info on the role: Co-founder for Circular Economy at Ugly Beer.

What’s Next for Ugly Beer?

In the meantime, we’re still collecting bottles from a local establishment, cleaning them, and stashing them in a storage unit. When the time is right, we’ll run more small-batch experiments. But for now, instead of hustling to keep selling at farmers markets, we’re focusing on building the larger plan.

Tim’s other newsletter

While I haven’t scaled a physical product business (yet!), I have a bit more experience scaling online businesses. From 2016 until early this year, I was the Co-founder & CEO of a commercial real estate lending platform called StackSource, which I sold in early 2024.

I recently started a new newsletter where I share some of the painful mistakes I made as a startup founder—and the lessons I learned along the way. If that sounds interesting to you, here’s my first post: How (Not) to Win as a Founder: Holding Bad Expectations. I’ll be posting there more regularly than here for the time being, so feel free to check it out if that’s your jam.

Thanks for being part of this journey with us!

Stay Ugly (and awesome),

Tim