Today we’d like to introduce you to Paul Bushell.
Hi Paul, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Mike and I met in the spring of 2006. A friend introduced me to Mike and told me I had to try his homebrew. He shared a rye pale ale, and I was beyond impressed. Mike ended up sharing the art of brewing with me, and we’ve been brew buddies since.
We started a homebrew club in the Lawrenceville area and grew the club to over 40 members. We all shared brewing knowledge and focused on improving our skill. We encouraged other members to enter brew competitions to get objective feedback from beer judges. Mike and I both received numerous medals over the years including Best of Show in the Suwanee Beerfest and the Peach State Brew Off.
Many of our friends and festival attendees encouraged us over the years to go commercial, which we always tossed around the idea. But it wasn’t until one of our brew club members opened Monkey Wrench Brewing and asked us to help learn the brewing system and start brewing for him while he found a full-time brewer. We brewed for him for several months, enough to open with 8 beers back in 2020. That gave us what we needed to know we could open our own brewery.
It took us a few years to really put our plan in motion and find the right place to open. We ended up choosing Buford for its historic downtown, charm, and strong sense of community.
We designed the brewery taproom to feel like an extension of home, encouraging a strong sense of community by hosting events like trivia, charity and music bingo, artisan markets, and live music.
We do take great pride in our focus of quality craft brewing. We design our beers and seltzers with the customer in mind- and that includes both craft enthusiasts and casual drinkers.
We opened our doors in November of 2024 and have seen tremendous growth in our first year. It’s been fun to meet so many new people and become friends with many of the regulars.
Within our first year, Meander Brewing was voted Best Brewery in Buford and Suwanee by Atlanta Best Media, highlighting our rapid success, and our customers voted us the best regional brewery in NE Atlanta based on the Georgia Business Journal.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Opening the business took longer than expected with construction and licensing delays, but overall it wasn’t too bad. Once open, the community has embraced us and we continue to see our customer base grow,
Any small business experiences challenges, and the craft brewery industry is no exception. We’ve seen probably more breweries closing than opening recently, but we have tried to learn from what others struggled with. We chose a place in a growing community with a thriving downtown and foot traffic. There is a trend, especially Gen Z, with people drinking less beer. We have added seltzers and sours to our lineup in addition to brewing lighter beers.
We are starting small by selling our product out of the taproom. We would like to get into distribution, but we don’t want to overextend ourselves. We’re trying to be very thoughtful and intentional in our growth strategy. We’re also hoping the Georgia Legislature changes the 3-tiered distribution system, so we could distribute to restaurants on our own without having to go through a distributor. Many distributors don’t want to work with smaller breweries, and many breweries have been hurt by the distribution system in Georgia.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Mike and I both are still working our “day jobs”. Mike is a product developer for a large communications company, and I’m a retirement plan consultant. The brewery is our side gig, essentially a labor of love. We’re not far from retiring from our day jobs, and the brewery will be our retirement hobby.
As brewers, we truly focus on the craft and strive to create the best beer for our customers. We take pride in having 20 quality beers and seltzers on tap and continuing to come up with new recipes while trying to keep our flagship beers in somewhat regular rotation.
What does success mean to you?
I think success is doing what you love, doing it well and making a positive difference in the world.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://meanderbrewingco.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meanderbrewingco/#
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/61561907513937
