Brewing, Cideries & Spirits  August 31, 2020

Bootstrap Brewing gets personal investment from Oskar Blues founder amid strong wholesale

LONGMONT — Oskar Blues Brewing Co. founder Dale Katechis has joined fellow Longmont brewery Bootstrap Brewing Co. as an investor and adviser as it prepares to add thousands of barrels’ worth of additional brewing capacity.

In an interview with BizWest Monday, co-owner Leslie Kaczeus said she and her husband already knew Katechis through their sons, who played on the same baseball teams at Niwot High School.

Katechis offered early mentorship to Bootstrap, she said, allowing it to store cans at Oskar Blues when Bootstrap wasn’t able to store them in its first building in Niwot, and later connected the company to what is now the brewery’s 42,599-square-foot building at 142 Pratt St.

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“One day, I think we were all talking, he said, ‘Why haven’t you guys blown up?,” and we were just saying we’ve just been doing what we can with our limited resources,” she said. “And so (Katechis) made a personal investment.”

The amount of Katechis’ investment was not disclosed.

Kaczeus said there have not been discussions about CANarchy acquiring Bootstrap, but she didn’t rule it out.

“It’s not anything that we’ve pursued, but I guess you always have to keep an open mind about it,” she said.

Geoff Hess, a former CANarchy regional sales representative, is also joining Bootstrap as the brewery’s first-ever dedicated sales director. Before then, Kaczeus said the brand grew by word of mouth and tastings at in-person events.

The investment comes as Bootstrap anticipates the arrival of several new fermenter systems in late September. The brewery made just more than 7,000 barrels in 2019, but Kaczeus said it is now on track to produce between 9,000 to 10,000 barrels by the end of the year.

At full capacity, Bootstrap’s additional brewing systems could make as much as 15,000 barrels annually, placing them right at the Brewers Association’s threshold for a microbrewery.

On-premise sales in the taproom were weak for much of the year as Bootstrap and craft breweries across the country dealt with stay-at-home orders and continuing restrictions on how many people can be in a primarily alcohol-serving establishment at once, along with earlier last-call times.

That also includes sales to restaurants, an industry that continues to try and balance the need for social distancing against a mostly in-person service model.

But revenue losses in the taproom have been offset by off-premise sales to grocery and liquor stores, she said. 

Bootstrap benefitted from releasing a new line of hard seltzers and a “party pack” mix of beer and seltzers weeks before the pandemic went into full swing, along with recommendations from store owners to buyers, as alcohol sales swiftly moved away from bars and into retail.

With the new equipment and a new sales manager on board, Kaczeus said the brewery is planning to keep growing with demand generated by current accounts and potentially begin distributing out of state.

“We’re not going to grow too fast. We’re going to do it as demand dictates,” she said.

LONGMONT — Oskar Blues Brewing Co. founder Dale Katechis has joined fellow Longmont brewery Bootstrap Brewing Co. as an investor and adviser as it prepares to add thousands of barrels’ worth of additional brewing capacity.

In an interview with BizWest Monday, co-owner Leslie Kaczeus said she and her husband already knew Katechis through their sons, who played on the same baseball teams at Niwot High School.

Katechis offered early mentorship to Bootstrap, she said, allowing it to store cans at Oskar Blues when Bootstrap wasn’t able to store them in its first building in Niwot, and…

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