(Courtesy TailGate Brewery)

When one thinks about craft beer destinations, we’re pretty sure Nashville’s not the first city that comes to mind. But after hanging with Tailgate Brewery Founder Wesley Keegan, we are definitely re-thinking things.

Maybe it was because we started drinking early, that he agreed to do a “5 Stupid Questions” with us, but we’re psyched to have him because Wesley is doing some very interesting things in Nashville and he’s a super interesting guy.

And because he  was so accommodating, we snuck in couple of additional questions, because that’s how we roll…

ACB: Wesley, thanks so much for making time for us. Can you share a little about your background and how you ended up creating TailGate Brewery? Was the brewing biz always in the cards for you?

Wes: Incredibly, I started at 21 years old. And unfortunately, that was a long time ago! My buddies in college were homebrewing, so I did too. But I was really casual with it. As most young folks do, I saw opportunity and the chance to do something that was super fun. I learned quickly and painfully that it’s a business first. When you have zero money, the finances matter.

The good news is my degree is in Business Finance, so managing the pennies was the natural part for me. Building a business for 19 years was the hard part.

ACB: Any successful brewery starts and ends with its beers, but its business philosophy also matters. What’s can you tell us about TailGate’s DNA?

Wes: Yeah it’s funny, because it’s the bare minimum that the beer is great. That should not be a differentiator. We’ve had our misses for sure, but it’s gotta be excellent over the long term.

Our first Core Value (our operating principles) is: “We’re a brewery first.” And it’s been something that requires explanation. Even to the production team. The passion and curiosity that is intrinsic to beer brewing and creating is that core fabric that we apply to everything else we do. So when we started making pizza in the taprooms in 2015, I’d never made pizza before. But I know recipe formulation, what quality ingredients are and are not, and that bare minimum the *pizza* is great. Same for when we added cider, non-alcs, customer service models…

What’s unique for us is our taprooms are robust, and with 30 taps, we end up making a huge variety of unique recipes every year. And that guest feedback is loud. Positive! But loud. When we have a hit, we know. Further, if we’re thinking we want to take a new style of beer to market – like we did with our Lager Projekt, we had this incredible “test kitchen” to fine tune our processes.

ACB:  “In addition to operating a full-on production facility which services a wide distribution network, you oversee nine taprooms across middle Tennessee and Chattanooga, several of which brew their own beers on-site. That’s a lot. Was this always part of the plan?”

Wes: I’d say yes and no. We always had a strong plan and a true north we lived by, but we were equally committed to staying flexible and adjusting as needed. As we developed and heard more from our fans and guests, we evolved. Did we set out to make thirty different beers constantly rotating at the pace we do now? No. But we always had a lot of rotation and a lot of experimentation, and we kept volumes low so it didn’t demand a huge amount of creativity right out of the gate.

 ACB: Your company operates under a unique “one owner, zero investors” model, allowing TailGate to prioritize high employee wages and full company-paid health benefits. Not many craft breweries take care of their employees that extent. Can you share a little more about your thinking behind this?

Wes: I like to joke with the team that this is something that lets us make decisions other businesses simply couldn’t, because financially they don’t make sense. It wouldn’t pass the sniff test in a boardroom, in craft beer or anywhere else. So it’s a real advantage, but it comes with responsibility. If you’re going to spend the money, you want to make sure it’s felt and actually appreciated. We’ve created perks before that the team didn’t care about, and we’ve had to adjust. The other piece is that, for better or worse, it’s just us. There’s no war chest, no investor group, no silent backer conjuring money out of thin air. Either we earn it or it doesn’t exist. That puts real pressure on us to run a great business so we can keep doing these things. It’s not charity. It’s an exchange we build together, and understanding what it really costs makes the benefit mean so much more when we earn it as a team.

 ACB:  TailGate also runs a cidery, cans cold brew coffee and southern-style sweet tea (Nashville Sweet Tea Co.). Your company is also becoming known for its pizzas. Lots of diverse food and beverage directions. Did you expect to be doing all of this when you launched the brewery in 2014.

Wes: Not at all. In business school, they teach you to run a narrow business. They love the word “widget”: get one widget and do it perfectly. That doesn’t really exist in this industry, or in most industries anymore. There are too many costs everywhere else to be a hyper-focused niche specialist. So when we noticed simple connections, like the fact that we’re already fermenting to make beer, so why not learn to make cider too, we applied the same standards from brewing to cider making. The rule is simple: if it’s great, we do it. If it’s not, we don’t. That’s trickled down into pizza, non-alcoholic drinks, and other products that support an existing part of the business but have to meet the same standards top to bottom. It looks like a lot of different things, but it all fits together naturally.

 ACB: Each TailGate taproom features a massive wall of 30 constantly rotating draft handles. Brewing over 300 unique beers annually. Who comes up with all those recipes and have any of those small-batch creations graduated to your core roster?

Wes: For a long time, that was me. We’ve since benefited enormously from hiring talented people and investing in a real recipe development program. It started out of function and necessity, and honestly, it’s also just fun. These days I don’t do much recipe development myself. I do a lot of recipe talking, review, and quality control, weighing in on what something should be, but thankfully I’m not writing many recipes anymore outside our core lineup.

And yes, definitely, small-batch creations have graduated to core. In fact, that’s the only way something makes it to core: it has to go through the small-batch program first. TailGate Cider was born out of learning to make cider. TailGate Orange started as our favorite wheat beer in the taproom that people kept coming back for, and it’s become our best-selling product in market. Our Wizards’ Order IPA only exists because it went through the full R&D process. Same with Lager Projekt, which was probably a five-year program that ended with all of us agreeing it’s the best liquid we’ve ever made. It doesn’t make financial sense to distribute it widely, so we haven’t. But when the rest of the industry started cutting corners on ingredients to protect margins, we figured that was a pretty good invitation to put our best product out into the market instead.

 ACB: Speaking of “core roster,” what are your bestselling beers?  And while you’re at it, tell us about the “Lager Projekt.”

Wes: TailGate Orange is our best seller by far. Lager Projekt and Wizards’ Order IPA are both relatively new to our core lineup and growing quickly, filling really good spots for us. But Orange is in a class of its own. Everywhere we put it, it sells, on draft or in cans. It’s been a consistently high performer and a true fan favorite. I don’t think wheat beer is a natural core style for every brewery, but for us it’s been a very happy accident, and we’re grateful for it.

 ACB: Finally, and we know it’s not fair to ask, what’s your go-to TailGate beverage?

Wes: I do a lot of tasting on what’s in development, so if I’m in a taproom, I’m usually sampling the oldest beer on the draft line, though fortunately that’s never a long wait since we only brew fifteen barrels at a time and most things are gone within thirty days. That’s mostly quality control. But if I’m sitting down to actually drink, our Cerveza Con Lime is typically my go-to. These days, though, I mostly drink our core lineup, because I genuinely believe they’re our best products, and there’s a reason they’re core. We built them independent of budget and independent of what made financial sense. Wizards’ Order is the best IPA we make. Lager Projekt is the best lager we make. TailGate Orange is a crusher, and the cider is delicious too. I’m always glad our cores are so widely available, because I can get them in any package I want.

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