Hi friends and lovers of root beer or glass or our beautiful world,

It’s been a couple of weeks since our first sales at the farmer’s market, so I wanted to check in. Unfortunately, we haven’t sold any more root beer since then. Here’s what’s going on.

Emily and I have been cleaning bottles, brewing root beer, filling, and capping all at home. We chose root beer as our first product so we could avoid alcohol regulations (and because we have never brewed anything before 😂). In Florida, like many states, there is a “cottage industry law” that allows sales of food products made and stored at home. We read the law and then decided to start with homebrewing to “test the waters” on demand for the concept of a consumer beverage in locally saved, mismatched bottles.

Oops

Unfortunately, a friend found some additional materials related to Florida’s cottage industry regulations that there is an approved and unapproved list that is not covered directly in the law itself, but how they enforce which products are deemed acceptable. Homemade soft drinks are disallowed.

So we’re on pause selling our homebrewed root beer in our ugly bottles for now while we research potential next steps for this project.

The first option that comes to mind is to continue with the same type of root beer formula, but step out of the home and become a licensed operation. We haven’t found any local commercial or commissary kitchens for rent in or near our town, so we’ll either need to secure our own location, or potentially find someone to buddy up that already has a kitchen and climate controlled storage space to work in.

Neither Emily nor I have experience with this type of thing. My work experience is either in an office or online, never working with a physical product, let alone a food project. It’s going to take some learning.

Ooh

Here’s something positive we learned this week!

Emily and I were out in beautiful Rancho Palos Verdes, California (outside Los Angeles) for a few days for the Philanthropy Roundtable. One of Emily’s side-hustles is acting as a Trustee for her family’s charitable foundation, so she has attended this event plenty of times, but I was a noob. If you’re unfamiliar with the idea of a charitable foundation, think of it like a big pile of money that is given out to worthy causes over time. A trustee looks after the money and decides who it goes to.

There were a few different Aha moments for me at the conference, but one that is particularly relevant for this Ugly Beer, Beautiful World movement is the existence of something called a Program-Related Investment (PRI).

Most payments from charitable trusts and foundations come in the form of a “grant” - like an official donation from a foundation for a specific use by the recipient, typically a 501c3 non-profit organization. But there are other ways for foundations to deploy money, and a PRI is one of them. Unlike a grant, with a PRI, the foundation expects to receive back the money it doles out - think like a loan or equity investment. The purpose of the PRI cannot be specifically so the foundation makes money, or else it can’t count toward the minimum 5% that it must give to its stated cause(s) each year. Foundations can invest all the money they are not giving out in stocks and bonds and such, but those don’t count toward the 5%.

Here’s why it matters. We incorporated Ugly Beer as an LLC, not a non-profit. We plan to report on our operations with a “double bottom line”, profit and bottles saved. We may not be the ideal target of charitable foundation grants, but, perhaps, could be a good target for environmentally-focused foundations that are open to making a program-related investment.

So we need to research this side more too.

Yeah

Yeah, so we have our work cut out for us a bit to advance to v2 of ugly root beer sales. Here’s where we could use help if you or someone you know possesses this type of knowledge and skills:

1. Someone with experience in beverages, bottling, and the like to consult with us on next steps for the bottling operation. Have a friend who has gone through this before that would be willing to chat?

2. Someone with experience researching and writing either grant or PRI proposals, bonus points if related to environmental or sustainability initiatives.

Know someone who may give us some solid guidance on one of the two points above? Please call or text if you have our contact info, or email: [email protected]