Short Summary
Leo and Denise are a husband and wife co-owners of the soon-to-be-open Montclair Brewery. Montclair Brewery is a microbrewery and tasting room that was born from the desires of Leo to turn his passion of home brewing and hosting into a successful business. For about 13 years Leo has been brewing batches of beer in his home and gifting bottles to friends and family.
Denise is an MBA graduate with over 25 years of marketing and business experience with large to small/entrepreneurial companies. Denise has the focus, organization and skills to launch and grow Montclair Brewery.
The local planning board is demanding that we make changes to the building exterior and parking lot. Help us pay for these unplanned and unbudgeted expenses so we can open our doors and have our selection of beer brewing as soon as possible.
What We Need & What You Get
Thanks to all of you we have met our initial goal of $10,000. We are finally getting quotes from contractors and have a better idea of our upcoming expenses. See the updated list below.
Whatever we raise will go towards paying for these items. The more we raise the more we can do and the quicker we can get our doors open.
We need:
$5000 for a storefront window & door (the town's requirement is to add glass/transparency to this side of the building; initial roll-up garage door idea turned out to be extremely cost prohibitive)
$7000 to cut the opening through the brick wall for the storefront window and door
$8000 to add 2 new spaces to the parking lot including removing existing island, paving & striping
$2500 landscaping includes adding 3 new trees, flowers, plants and row of wooden flower pots with legs for parking lot shield
We are offering some exciting perks including limited experiences such as creating your own beer recipe and brewing alongside our master brewer. We also have some cool clothing and bar ware.
The Impact
People all around the town and its surrounding areas are extremely excited for a microbrewery coming to Montclair and specifically Walnut Street. The building which we are located has not had a long-term business for many years and have remained vacant. Residents and businesses agree that the Montclair Brewery will help raise the popularity of the area and help beautify it. A microbrewery is a big draw and have helped elevate the economy of many cities and states. Our restaurant and cafe neighbors are excited that we will help bring more people to their business.
Some of the costs listed above are based on actual quotes and others are our rough estimates. The more we raise the more we can do to beautify the area and the building. If we don’t raise enough we will be limited in the amount of exterior improvements that we can make which may impact the conditional parking variance granted by the Planning board. Our original focus has been on getting the brew equipment which costs over 6 figures and the interior of the building in order and ready for guests.
Risks & Challenges
We are in this project 110%! We have already received our TTB (federal) brewer’s permit and our multi-page application to NJ State Alcohol Bureau Control (ABC) is under review. We will receive our NJ Brewer’s license once construction has been completed and the NJ ABC comes out for their site inspection. The amount that we raise will determine how much of the required exterior improvements we’ll be able to make. If we are unable to make some of the changes we will be forced to reduce the occupancy from the planned 50 seats to a smaller seat number.
The business was created about 3 years ago on paper. Lots of planning took place since 2014 including having potential partners and investors who we later found out did not have the resources to participate in this venture. In 2017 a location that we had been in negotiations with for more than 6 months fell through. But through it all we bounced back and like we said above we are in this 110%! This is happening and with your help we’ll be able to do so much more for the community and bring a beautiful community gathering space to the Walnut Street area of Montclair.
Other Ways You Can Help
With your help we’ll be able bring Montclair its first functioning brewery and add a beautiful and inviting community gathering space to the Walnut Street area of Montclair. As residents of Montclair for over a decade we know Montclairites and those in the surrounding area are extremely generous, so please do your part in making the Montclair Brewery come to life. And in the meanwhile, receive some great perks such as limited memberships with free beer and our logo’d merchandise. For those that can’t contribute, help us spread the word and like and follow us on our social media channels.
