Gary Fish Oral History Interview, June 12, 2017

TIAH EDMUNSON-MORTON: Ok, go ahead.

GARY FISH: Ok, so I'm Gary Fish. We're here in my office at Deschutes Brewery in Bend Oregon. What were the other things?

TEM: Today's date.

GF: Today's date is June 12, 2017.

TEM: And you were born...

GF: I was born November 7, 1956.

TEM: You were born in California, is that right?

GF: I was born in Berkeley, California.

TEM: Oh. My daughter was too.

GF: Oh really?

TEM: Yes! [Laughs.]

GF: Alta Bates hospital.

TEM: That's where she was born too! Yep, probably has changed a little bit.

GF: Oh, a little. Or a lot.

TEM: So your family obviously lived in Berkeley?

GF: My dad was in grad school. He got out of the Air Force. His last stationing was in Washington D.C. They drove across country, and I think he got into grad school, the MBA program, probably on the GI bill. And I was born there, my 00:01:00sister was born there, but I think I only lived there for a year and then we moved over the hills to Walnut Creek, which is where I say I started growing up. I lived there until I was eight, and then we moved again, just next door to Lafayette. Walnut Creek is a very different place today than it was then. To say that we had actual walnut trees in our backyard back then. And then when we moved to Lafayette, we actually moved into kind of an old pear orchard. And both places are now very, very upscale communities and it's hard, sometimes, to relate to the place I grew up in. With the little Elroy Theater and the Walnut Bowling Alley and all the little places -- Leroses' market, and all that - which are pretty much all completely gone.

TEM: Did it feel rural?

GF: No, very suburban I suppose. You don't think of those things when you're a little kid growing up.

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: You know, there were places for us to play, we were always up in the hills chasing something. We didn't think about it. You know, everybody likes to talk about "When I was a kid, somehow we survived. Our parents all smoked and drank and most cars didn't even have seat belts much less wearing them." There was no such thing as a bike helmet, seems like we all survived that. But that was the way it was. I mean, we played in the streets every day. And a car came, you moved out of the way, and that's it. And when they left you went back to it. 00:03:00That was just the way it was.

TEM: Your dad ended up in wine growing. Was he interested in agriculture at that point?

GF: Well his undergraduate degree was at Oregon State in agriculture.

TEM: Oh right, Ok.

GF: He grew up on a farm. His father actually lost the family farm outside Klamath Falls in Phoenix, Oregon during the depression and was granted a homestead permit in Tule Lake, California, just on the other side of the border. Because he, as a WWI vet, that was another kind of opportunity of the GI bill. And my dad grew up there, working on their farm. And he, with the agriculture degree, his MBA, he sold insurance for ten years and then with another person 00:04:00doing that, they formed a company back in the days of tax shelters that formed limited partnerships that owned and operated California agricultural properties. Most of them were or became vineyards. They also had a lot of almond orchards down by Merced, they had some prune orchards. But most of what they ended up developing was vineyard properties. And that helped inform a lot of why we thought beer would make sense. He was present working in that industry during 00:05:00what I refer to as kind of the modern renaissance of the California wine industry. Back in the early '70s, even late '60s, the American consumer knew of some kind of high-priced European varietals that nobody could pronounce or really understand. And then there was generally Gallo, Shibliere and Burgundy that generally came in a gallon jug.

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: And my first job was working in a restaurant washing dishes, a brand new restaurant that opened up in Arrenta, California. A very, very upscale community, kind of between Lafayette and Berkeley, just on the other side of the hills. And it was a winery themed restaurant. I mean everything was wine-themed. Back in the age of themed restaurants, I suppose. Victoria Station and Hungry 00:06:00Hunter and some of these others that developed back then. And, you know, limited menu. Even there, if you ordered a carafe of the house wine, you got Gallo, Shibliere and Burgundy. So that was the paradigm. All of a sudden, people started catching on to wine, particularly Napa Valley, became the theme, but really was being grown throughout the central area of California, and was able to compete and demonstrate exactly the same quality if not better, than those high-priced wines from Europe that nobody really understood. Fast forward mid-eighties, beer was kind of the same thing. Beer was a monolithic thing. It 00:07:00was light, fizzy, low flavor quotient, typically made by one of three breweries. Bud, Miller or Coors. There were a handful of regional breweries making the same kind of beer around the country. Here in Oregon we had Blitz, there was Rainier and Olympia and Hamm's in Washington. And throughout the Northwest there was a number of them that were struggling but still alive.

TEM: Mm-hm.

GF: But all making the same thematic beer. We thought there were a few little breweries and brewpubs starting to pop up, and we thought that the same thing that had happened with the wine industry could be happening with the beer industry. The difference was that there was this thing called a brewpub. Now my 00:08:00background, my history since that job when I was sixteen, was working at restaurants. I worked my way through college working at restaurants, when I got out of college I didn't have anything better to do so my boss offered to make me a manager, and I learned that part about it. I ended up working my way into a sweat equity position, and after several more restaurants in Salt Lake City (which is where I went to college), I was struggling but got a little piece of equity so it was fine. And the whole idea of a brew pub where you could manufacture and retail all within the same four walls and capture all the margin in that product...meanwhile you had to invest a lot of money in equipment and actually make credible beer. I knew the restaurant side, I didn't know the beer 00:09:00side, I needed to learn that. I hired myself out. My dad's business partner that I described earlier, his son who I had known most of my life, was in development of a brewpub in Sacramento. And we started looking at that model, and this person, Ed Brown, didn't know much more about the restaurant business than I did the beer business, and I offered to help him set up his restaurant if I could just kind of be around to see the mistakes he made. So I left my position, sold my little stake back to my partners in Salt Lake City, left my wife in Utah, moved into my parents in the Bay Area, travelled between Sacramento helping Ed 00:10:00open the Rubicon Brewing Company. Travelled around northern California looking for a place to locate our own brew pub, and building the business at that time and then occasionally getting back to Salt Lake City to see my wife.

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: And, you know, that's what you do when you're starting and you're bootstrapping a business. And we learned a lot. And one of the things we learned was that there really wasn't any place for us in northern California, which is where I think we always assumed we would end up.

TEM: So was that because it was an expensive place to live, a tough place to start a business?

GF: It was a very expensive place to live and grow a business. There were a number of problems. One was that then the California real estate market was 00:11:00peaking. Pricing was off the charts. There were things like building moratoriums. There were all kinds of complications with developing this kind of a concept, which was very, very new and most people had never seen. And a heavily bureaucratic system, where, if it's not familiar to me, I can't do it. It doesn't matter that it might actually be legal or possible, there's a lot of that going on. A lot of communities that we looked at that we thought were good had a brewpub already there or in development, actively in development. And we felt like we needed to go someplace where we could be first.

TEM: Mm-hm.

GF: And there were plenty of places available, just none of them seemed to be available to us. And both my parents were born and raised in Oregon, both 00:12:00graduated from Oregon State and had come through Bend after a college reunion visiting friends. And they couldn't stop talking about what a neat place it was, how much it had changed since they had seen it last. Now remember, in 1987, Bend was still recovering from a horrible recession. Most people say it was worse than the recession we just went through. And as the timber industry was collapsing, the town was in horrible shape. Even then. We came and looked, we got encouragement from everyone we talked to. And we talked to everyone that we thought would have an interest in what we were doing, whether it was real estate developers, whether it was city fathers, planning department people, OLLC, Bend police. Whoever might have an interest in what we were doing, we wanted to talk 00:13:00to them.

TEM: Mm-hm.

GF: And virtually everyone we talked to said exactly the same thing, "Sounds great, I'll be your first customer." And even though Bend was maybe 12,000 people at the time, and half the storefronts were boarded up downtown, it felt better to us here. And remember, the concept was only a little brewpub. 100 seats, 120 maybe. Little brewing system. Our business model said we could make a decent living at this even though the banks we submitted that to were pretty much step farming us all along. And not interested in really talking to us or 00:14:00taking that journey with us. We finally found one that would, and we're basically still with that bank today, almost thirty years later. So, we were off and running. We found a building that we could purchase rather than just rent, and we did. And I think it was September my father and I came here to make that first trip to look at the town. I brought my wife here to look at the town for our anniversary which is October 5th. We moved here before Thanksgiving. And the pub opened the following June.

TEM: You definitely were growing up in an area which is now known for food 00:15:00culture, in the Bay Area. What were some of the pieces that you wanted to bring to Bend, wanted to bring to your business? Or now see as linking the way that you grew up to what you're doing now? What are some of those core early impressions, whether that was cooking with your family or going out to the vineyards, that you now bring to the business that you have?

GF: Well, there were a few things. One of the philosophies I've adopted over the years that really began back then is if you want to be successful, start associating yourself with people who are going to be successful. My very first job at the Vintage House, the people that owned it at the time - the guy who 00:16:00hired me was Rick Krug. Gary Rogers, who recently passed away I understand, and the third partner whose name always escapes me - but at any rate, those guys opened that restaurant 1974. They did one other thing in 1974, they bought Dreyer's ice cream for a million dollars.

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: And their orientation to the restaurant, because it was in such an upscale community and so close to the Berkeley you've got a lot of kids from Cal, working there at the restaurant, a lot of people that had grown up in successful families and were on a path via UC Berkeley or other ways to be successful. And again, it was an upscale place. It had simple food but really, really high 00:17:00quality. That expectation was always part of whatever plan was laid out, that we were going to be the best, we were going to be that successful and so forth. At that time, hard to believe, but long before Starbucks, there were upscale specialty grocery stores long before Whole Foods. And we always grew vegetables in our backyard. And because of what my dad did, we'd terrace the hill behind our house and planted grapevines and dug a wine cellar into the hill, my brother 00:18:00and I.

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: Yeah, yeah. Dad was like, oh yeah, that's good, but it needs to be a little wider, a little deeper, a little longer. Ok, do it again. Dad was a terrific do-it-yourselfer. I mean, he built most of the furniture in our house, did all of that. And together with two teenage boys for labor, he could accomplish almost anything.

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: At any rate, without really realizing it, we were already being exposed to the premiumization of the consumer relative to consumer goods. And again, my father's experience in the wine business, we entered the beer business saying there's only one way to succeed. And that's if the beer is the best. And we will 00:19:00never sell beer we're not proud of. We will run it down the drain without batting an eye. We will always do what is best for the beer. And that's been a challenge over the years at times, but quite frankly that simple philosophy is what's sustained us ever since. And we have often fallen back on that simple kind of credo, that what's in the bottle is more important than what's on the bottle. And that that consumer experience is ultimately what's going to lead us to success more than anything else.

TEM: So you went to school in Salt Lake City?

GF: Mm-hm.

TEM: And what did you study when you were there? And what drew you there?

GF: Well, it's very simple. I was in California. I was smart enough to not have 00:20:00to work very hard in high school and still graduate half a year early, one of the biggest mistakes I ever made.

TEM: How come?

GF: Oh, because I did nothing. I had a car, I had a job, I was making good money. And I was just getting in trouble and spinning my wheels. I procrastinated my way into my junior year of college.

TEM: In the Bay Area?

GF: In the Bay Area. And the one thing that I loved to do was ski. And I remember sitting in the college library working on a paper and looking up and there was a stack of college catalogues, and there was a big fat one right in the middle that said "Utah." Like, "Oh...I've heard of that place."

TEM: [Laughs.] They have some mountains.

GF: Yeah. And it turns out they had a pretty good business school, which is 00:21:00where I had kind of reconciled myself to...where I was gonna end up. And at the time, it was cheaper for out-of-state tuition, at Utah than it was for in-state tuition at Cal, so my dad liked it. And without realizing it, the smartest thing I ever did was leave California. And get away on my own - I didn't know anybody in Utah - and start fresh. And again, I joined a fraternity which was more about partying at the time, but at the end of the day, it was about associating myself with people who are going to be successful. And they're still some of my closest friends today, the guys I met there. In fact, we're leaving for Europe on Thursday to join a couple of them there. So, that's what took me to Utah. I 00:22:00always thought I'd get back to California, and in fact my plan at the time was only to go to Utah for a year, and then transfer back to Cal. Of course, that's a plan that really, I know now, is kind of silly. It doesn't really work like that very often.

TEM: Yeah, but you're nineteen, twenty years old.

GF: When I was nineteen, I was pretty well adrift and not making good decisions. And my parents put me through this kind of battery of tests at UC Berkeley to try and figure out what my path in life should be. And three full days of tests, and these detailed analyses, and the answer was, I should be a forester or work 00:23:00as a veterinarian. I loved animals, I was backpacking all the time. Like as a little kid, we were in the hills all the time. And I spent most of my weekends, those days, in Yosemite in someplace like that. But they left out one thing: I really didn't like science. And it's nice to like animals, great to love the outdoors, but chemistry, biology, man, no, not so much. At any rate, I got my degree in economics and I was on my own trying to figure it out.

TEM: So, I know that east, east bay is probably more conservative than the 00:24:00western side of the east bay, but socially and politically, Salt Lake City must have felt like a different environment. Is that fair to say?

GF: Well, you know, you can't be in Utah, Salt Lake City being the capital, without feeling the influence of the dominant religion. But at the same time, if that's going to bother you, you probably have deeper issues than they do. It's a beautiful place, spectacular. The mountain is right there, you've got an international airport 45 minutes from nine or ten world class ski resorts. And, ignore skiing, anything else you want to do outdoors, it's all there. The people 00:25:00are friendly, the streets are wide and beautiful.

TEM: Clean.

GF: Clean! It's a great place. And if you want a beer or a drink, you can get one. It's not that hard. If you get over your own hangups about it. I never really understood. People would come - I stayed in the restaurant business my whole time there - people would come spend thousands and thousands of dollars on big fancy family vacations. They'd spend their whole time complaining about the liquor laws. It's like, "Dude, get over it. You can get a drink. What's the problem?"

TEM: So you never felt like it was restrictive?

GF: No. I mean yeah, you scratch your head, but it was kind of a running joke. The things that they would do, and it's not just the Mormon population, it 00:26:00happens everywhere. Where public policy and our common sense conflict. It happens here all the time. I mean, you look at the government of Oregon, and you don't think it's as whacked out as the government in Utah? It's a different direction, but come on. There's a whole bank of data we roundly, voluntarily ignore. And that, I think, depends on which side of the debate you're on, but you see it in our national politics now. I mean, it's a messed up place, and it doesn't look like it's gonna get better very soon.

TEM: So my experience of Salt Lake City, which is limited, is that they had really great food. Did you feel like there was a good food scene when you were there?

GF: Salt Lake City has rarely been described as a food scene.

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: I'll just be plain with you.

TEM: Maybe I picked the right restaurants.

GF: You can pick the right restaurants and there are some very good ones there.

TEM: Ok.

GF: Almost spectacular ones. Not a lot of 'em. And it isn't, I don't think it's ever been described as a foodie city.

TEM: They're gonna call me for quotes now.

GF: But they're getting better like everyone else is. I mean, they're discovering the whole food truck thing, and that's kind of evolutionary on several different levels. You know, they've always had some really cool, out-of-the-way places where you got a chef that's creative and exercising their own concepts. But, again, you got a lot of places that are kind of roadside 00:28:00diners and not in the more creative way. But we're all learning about this stuff.

TEM: Did you think about staying there?

GF: I had been there almost twelve years. My wife moved there, she's four years younger than I am so I never knew here in college. She moved there for her senior year in high school. And they moved to Bountiful, her dad worked for the government, and he got transferred. They moved to Bountiful, which is in the county just north of Salt Lake County. Which has a lot higher Mormon population 00:29:00than Salt Lake County. Vast Catholic family, for her senior year in high school it was kind of an interesting experience for her. But we had been there nearly twelve years when we moved out here. And I think we had always thought that we probably didn't want to raise our family in Utah. Again, it's a wonderful place, I really don't have anything ill to say about it other than a lot of children's activities center around the Mormon church there. And there's a lot of stories about kids being excluded just because they were raised differently. I'm sure 00:30:00it's better now. We have friends that have raised families there and have had a wonderful experience. But at the time, we were happy looking elsewhere.

TEM: So you moved back before your wife moved back. And at that point are you committed to the brewpub model, or was there a pull toward working or owning restaurants in California?

GF: No, no, it was always only a brewpub. The margins you could make selling beer were good enough not just to offset the cost of the equipment but also to support the whole restaurant operation in total. I knew the restaurants, I needed to know the beer, so we were working on that. And we also believed that 00:31:00what had happened with wine was just beginning to happen with beer. But the market for beer was ten times the size for the market for wine at the time. So we felt like if this thing goes, we'll be right at the right place. Now we still never envisioned anything more than a very successful brewpub. And, quite frankly, I've always been happier working that way. Never assuming success, always working to make sure it's realized before you start patting yourself on the back. So we did that. And really when we started selling the first kegs of 00:32:00beer outside the pub, it was more survival mode than anything else. The pub wasn't successful. We were making good beer. Some taverns and restaurants in Portland had said, "Hey can we get some of your beer up here?" We found a way to ship some kegs to Portland to a small boutique wholesaler, without knowing what we were doing.

TEM: Was that on the back of a recycling truck, did I read that?

GF: The first palette of kegs we sent to Portland was on the back of a load of recycled cardboard that our distributor friends here were shipping to Portland. Our very first account outside the pub was Mount Bachelor. I went up with a couple of grolsch bottles filled with beer and sold us into their food and beverage director, and then said, "I'm gonna need a wholesaler, who do you want me to work with?" And he said Haines Distributing, so I went down and talked to 00:33:00Phil Hatch, and we had a wholesale relationship without having any idea what that meant.

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: We were so naive. They ended up being great partners with us, but we did the same thing with this little wholesaler in Portland. And I ended up learning a lot from them. But we were in the wholesale business, we had no idea.

TEM: Who were some of your mentors at that point, or people that you looked to as leaders?

GF: Well, we talked about John Harris earlier. I mean, he taught me a lot about beer. And I still have a lot of admiration for that guy, he really has done great and is an incredibly talented brewer. Jim Kennedy, who was our first wholesaler in Portland, who knew John, contacted us and said that these tavern 00:34:00owners wanted us to go up there. You know, he was the one that said "You have these products. If you want to fight for a small piece of the very large light-colored beer pie, you can do that. But," he said, "you have this product here, Black Butte Porter, and I think you can take the albeit smaller dark beer pie, and you could own the whole thing with this product." And I've always been a bit of a contrarian, and I kind of liked that idea. And it turns out, still today, Black Butte Porter is the largest selling porter in the country. And we're very proud of that, we work hard to try and support that. So yeah, there were a lot of people that I learned a lot from.

TEM: There weren't that many, really, in 1988.

GF: No, my father, my original business partner, my biggest supporter, he was my confidant. He was the one guy I could talk to that cared more about me than he did about the business or the money. And you know, I'm working seven days a week virtually around the clock, and just fightin' like mad through this stuff. And he'd call, and he'd walk me through what's goin' on. I mean, he's been my closest confidant for more than thirty years. So, those kinds of people are hard to replace.

TEM: What were your early impressions of Bend? What kind of sticks out in your mind about Bend or integrating into the community?

GF: Well, Bend then was a very blue collar timbertown where the mills had closed. So what did you do if you worked in the mill? You tried to find a job in construction or something else that suits your skill set. There was a much more kind of wild-west aspect about it at the time. And, I mean, the people were genuine. I've always said that it was the most community-involved community I've ever seen. And you build a business here, particularly one as visible as we are, and they ensure that you're involved in your community. Whether that's part of your plan or not. It happened to be part of our plan, but all you got to do is raise your hand a little bit and you've got people all over you getting you involved and making sure that you stay involved. So that was helpful for us. But 00:37:00you talk about politics; this has always been the conservative side of the mountain, but it's the agricultural side, it's the timber side, and it's the self-sustaining side. I mean, these people, they don't need very much from the other side of the mountains. They can take care of themselves very well and they take care of the water and the air and the land, all at the same time because that's what they've always done. And there were some things that maybe didn't go as well when somebody looked up and started realizing what had happened. They allocated 107% of the flow of Deschutes River for irrigation. I don't think that makes a lot of sense to me, buddy.

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: But they're also trying to resolve that in a way that respects landowners rights and respects that resource that is so invaluable to everybody here. So that's kind of the way the town has been. It's obviously changing. I think a lot of those changes are really positive. But not all of them respect what came before. And I think that's sometimes a shame because that's when people stop talking.

TEM: When they aren't looking back?

GF: Well, the decisions are being made without consideration of you and your interests. What's your reaction? Those are the challenges we have now. Nobody's talking. Everybody's trying to run for the fringes and it seems to me like it's 00:39:00completely counterproductive to finding real solutions.

TEM: Fast growth in Bend.

GF: Very fast. I mean, like I said, I think when we came here the sign on the door said 12,000 people, now it's 91. Yeah, that's gonna create some growing pains. I remember when I was a kid, you'd grow fast and your bones hurt. I mean these things are the same way. So I think Bend has worked very hard. It's a very involved community. And there are lots of ways people are trying to figure this out. And we now have a major four-year college in town. We have a lot of advantages over here that are coming. Our regional airport continues to grow and provide better service, roads are still a problem but none of these systems are 00:40:00perfect. So we're working to make it better.

TEM: So when you moved here in '87, had the switch to tourism as an industry started to happen?

GF: It was already happening. Mount Bachelor had been open for 25 years at that time. Sunriver was here, Black Butte Ranch was here. Outdoor tourism was already well underway. And I think even then, the summer tourism season was bigger than the winter tourism season even with Mount Bachelor. So I think that outdoor 00:41:00recreation component of this community has been one of its most attractive qualities, at least up front. It's easy to come here on a summer weekend and see how many kids are in the river floating. If we would have had that when I was a kid growing up, I would have never been anywhere else during the summer!

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: It's incredible.

TEM: So, 1988 you open downtown. And it's rough going initially?

GF: That's a fair statement. Yeah.

TEM: I know Black Butte Porter has been there from the beginning, but can you talk about some of those early beer decisions? How did you decide what to make, who did you bring in?

GF: Well, we started out with three beers. We had Cascade Golden Ale, Bachelor 00:42:00Bitter and Black Butte Porter, because we needed something light, medium and dark. I mean, that's as sophisticated as we were. And again, I said that John Harris taught me a lot about beer. After that he formulated Obsidian Stout, Mirror Pond Pale Ale, and we began to expand that here. But as we began wholesaling, like I said, Jim Kennedy wanted Black Butte Porter primarily in Portland. We made Bachelor Bitter and named it that way for Mount Bachelor. And 00:43:00that was what we originally sold into the mountain up there for them to pour. And we thought Black Butte Porter, Black Butte Ranch. Our original wholesale plans were to get the three big resorts: Sunriver, Mount Bachelor, Black Butte Ranch. And just simply as a way of attracting the attention of the tourists, with the hopes that when they come into Bend, maybe they'll stop by the pub. That was our sophisticated marketing plan. But John began to formulate these other beers as well. Mirror Pond immediately became hugely popular. But we wouldn't wholesale it, because we knew that if we did, if we gave our wholesalers that option, they would never sell any Black Butte Porter. And so we 00:44:00really held that off, and probably had shackles of some kind or another on Mirror Pond Pale Ale for probably easily ten or fifteen years. It was like the fourth or fifth beer we came out with in bottles. We just weren't gonna give people that option because, as I've said many times, we kind of built our business by building our second brand first. We had seen Widmer with 90% of its volume in hefeweizens. Sierra Nevada with 90% of its volume in pale ale. We had seen these other examples, and we thought we needed a more diverse portfolio. And we were never gonna get there if we let Mirror Pond run forever. Then that would be our 90% brand. And we kept Black Butte Porter healthy the whole time as a result. And we had two flagship brands. And that benefitted us tremendously 00:45:00through the middle years of our growth.

TEM: So you're distributing in Portland in '88 or was that in '89-'90?

GF: I don't think we were in Portland yet. That would have been in '89 because we were trying to make beer and we had a run where we got an infection in the brewery and we couldn't make decent beer. And I think we dumped ten straight batches.

TEM: Dark days.

GF: Dark days.

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: We were down to two handles on tap at the pub downtown. Mount Bachelor was coming online for the holidays and we didn't have any beer to fill their order. So yeah, it was a real challenge. And we ended up solving the problem and things 00:46:00got back on the right track. But there were a lot of late-night, deep conversations about, you know, what the hell have I done.

TEM: And at that point, you couldn't have a system delivered to your door. You're still in the weld it together phase.

GF: Well, the system we had was actually custom-built for us in Canada by a guy who had built a number of systems before. Part of our research before we really began this was we found a consultant - Frank Appleton - who lived and worked in British Columbia. As a brewing consultant he had designed and installed some of the first brewpub installations in North America and in Canada. And he had done 00:47:00the consulting for Mario Celotto at Humboldt Brewing there in Arcata. And we got ahold of him, we hired him, he designed and installed the system. But the welder we got here in town who said that he could weld stainless steel maybe couldn't as well as he thought and we had some serious flaws in the system. Part of it was due to our own budget cutting. The milling and mashing system was rife for infection, the way we had it designed. And so we were solving problems madly. And thank goodness we got enough of them solved that we could make good beer again before we completely ran out. And at that time the differential wasn't great.

TEM: Were you in contact with or working at all with the brewers in Portland? And ironically, of course, Carl works here now. [Laughs.] Did you feel like you were part of the Portland early brewing community?

GF: Not really. I knew some of those people. John had brewed at McMenamins in Portland and so he knew most all those guys. Interestingly enough, the person who helped us solve our problems in the brewhouse was Dave Logsdon. And Dave was the original brewmaster at Full Sail.

TEM: Was he still working there when...?

GF: I think he had maybe just left. He left and developed a yeast lab called Wyeast Labs. And now of course he has his own brewery that has become quite well known. He might have been still working a little bit at Full Sail but I don't 00:49:00think so because we brought him down here for two weeks. And we tore the whole system apart and basically rebuilt it. You could always call on somebody, "Hey I've got this problem," and it was a very collaborative industry at the time. Still is, I think, to a large extent. As long as you didn't ask anything that was kind of proprietary, people were very open to sharing information. We didn't know how involved the problem was. Could be a little thing, could be a big 00:50:00thing. I was trying to get Frank to come back down, but he was already involved in another project and so his schedule wouldn't allow him to. We were looking everywhere for a solution. Fortunately, we found Dave at a good time and he helped us a lot through that.

TEM: Yeah, it seems like, to state the obvious, Bend is a ways from Portland. It's one thing to pop across the street.

GF: Well, it's not that it's a three-hour drive or 165 miles, it's a mountain range away. There's a big separation there.

TEM: Yeah, yeah. I didn't want to assume the geography. But we do joke it's easier to drive that way, right, than it is to drive this way.

GF: Is it? I don't know.

TEM: It's the joke that people tell, I think, who are in Bend. That the valley 00:51:00people act like it's easier to the valley than it is for us to drive here.

GF: Oh yeah. You meet with the same people, once a month - and I did this for 20 years with the Oregon Brewers Guild - and the meetings were all in Portland. It's like, why don't we have a meeting over here? Ok, we'll schedule a meeting over there. Nobody shows up. It's like, what is the matter with you people?

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: "I'm leaving the organization." "Don't leave the organization, we need you!" It's like, no you don't, because you're not willing - at any rate, you're right. I didn't get the connection but you're right, 100% correct. People over there think it's way easier to come that direction.

TEM: But I agree, I think it's easier to drive...

GF: [Sighs quietly.]

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: But in the early days, when I was traveling over there, I would never go over there without stopping to make some sales calls. I was always tying other 00:52:00things into it.

TEM: I imagine that you were juggling and wearing all the hats, lots of the hats, in those days.

GF: As many as my head could hold.

TEM: And did you feel more responsible for or more drawn to one aspect? The success of the brewery side, the success of the restaurant side?

GF: Well yeah. I'm a restaurant guy. That was my comfort zone, that's what I knew. I understood brewing. I at one point went to brewing school. I brewed, I spent a lot of time back there. But I was not a brewer. I've never called myself a brewer, I've never thought of myself as a brewer. In fact, John Harris, when he was here - he had been bugging me for some time, he really wanted a job description. I hired him to be the brewer, we called him the brewer, brewmaster 00:53:00wasn't a term I was comfortable with here at the time. And he had been bugging me for this. And we were walking down the hall of the pub, kind of between where the kitchen and the brewery was, and he said, "No, I really want a job description." I said, "Ok, you see this wall?" And he said, "Yeah?" And I said, "Everything on the other side of it is your job description. I'll take care of everything else, you take care of everything on that side." And I said, "Do you need any more clarity on that?" And he said, "No, I think I got it." I said, "Ok, good. Let's go to work."

TEM: [Laughs.] Is that a model that you feel like has continued until now?

GF: What?

TEM: Not the responsibility being with the brewers, but I'm curious how over time, your relationship with the brewing side has changed. Has it changed?

GF: Oh, hugely. In ways that I'm actually uncomfortable discussing. From those days, when it was a very simple relationship, to later. You know, there were people there that kind of had the idea that the brewers were the harbinger of quality and that nobody else in the building was as focused on quality as they were. And it was really a pretty disrespectful thing that I allowed because I was so busy doing so many things. I kind of allowed it to fester. I was always [saying], "Well, I'll get to that as soon as we're through this part." And we just never quite got there until the lid blew off and I ended up firing our brewmaster and we ended up letting go of probably half the brewing staff. And it 00:55:00sent shockwaves not just through this organization but through the industry. Kind of, the untouchable brewmasters weren't untouchable anymore. And it was a situation completely of my own creation, I had allowed it to fester. And with my inability to set a firm vision for the organization. I mean, I was a restaurant manager, I didn't know how to do that. But that was my responsibility, and I didn't do it. And therefore, by the time I got to address the problem, the problem had festered so badly that I didn't feel like I had any choices. And I know to this day, a lot of those people would disagree with that statement. So 00:56:00that was a really, really tough time.

TEM: Mm-hm. And you were growing really quickly, as well, as a company.

GF: Yes.

TEM: So you expanded pretty early on.

GF: But there were a lot of those people that thought making money was really kind of an unseemly goal. And that we really didn't want to be successful, we just wanted to make good beer. And I couldn't explain to them in terms that I understand today, well, that's a home brewer. If you want to be a home brewer, go do that. This is a commercial enterprise and we work for profit. And we do that by making exceptional beer and having good culture and doing all these things, but without profit, you don't get that raise that you just had. You don't get those benefits that you just got, you don't get the improvements we 00:57:00made to the brewing system so you can make cooler beer and have all your friends tell you what an awesome person you are. And today we have a very broad structure where we can detail and connect all of those dots. Back then, we didn't. And again, that was my fault. And there are a lot of hurt feelings that probably still are hurt today from my inability to explain that and give people that choice. If you want to be in for this, that's fine. If you don't, then you need to find someplace else to work.

TEM: And it seems like the mid '90s heading into the late '90s is an interesting time period in the industry, with people getting into the industry perhaps not having the business or the brewing side.

GF: Mm-hm. I knew guys that opened breweries, brew-pubs, as investors just so they could close it one day a week so they could have their lodge meeting.

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: And have their own little private bar. I mean, that's not a way to run a business. And this exists a lot today too. They really don't think the beer is all that important. They want the beer to be clean and everything else, but in terms of being exciting, being adventurous, being innovative, whatever it happens to be - no, no, no, they just want beer that's - they're kind of the lowest common denominator, which is where beer was before craft beer. They want one beer to fit everyone, rather than everybody having their own kind of experience, which is closer to what we have today. And people that aren't really 00:59:00interested in asking the question or trying to understand why craft beer is growing, why has it grown, what is it about this that the consumer likes or doesn't like. They just think, Ah, make beer. My friends tell me I make great beer, because I give it to them for free.

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: And I can make beer in my garage and be a commercial brewer. There are two guys in Redmond in the paper yesterday, goin' out of business. But they never went full time. They were still workin' their other full-time jobs. This business requires more. And it should require more than that.

TEM: It feels like there's a tension between homebrewing - thinking you can make 01:00:00good homebrew for yourself and your friends - and the reality that you're talking about.

GF: Commercial brewing is very different. And the process is similar. I mean, basically, you can use your home brew system today and take that beer and sell it commercially with very little paperwork. And there are a lot of people doing that as a result. The barriers to entry on that side have come down so, so low that basically any home brewer can be a commercial brewer without really upgrading their equipment. On the other hand, there are so many people doing it that competition in the marketplace is intense and those barriers have climbed. It's not unique anymore to go and say, "Hey, I have this cool product that you don't have." It's like, wait a minute, I got fifty taps back there, I've got all 01:01:00kinds of things like this. So that's more challenging. But in terms of the actual production process, it's pretty much accessible to anyone.

TEM: So what was the point where you knew that the facility downtown wasn't going to meet your needs?

GF: Well, we had grown. We were shipping beer. One palette became two, and four, and eight. And so, back then, we added tanks, fermenters, to increase capacity. And we added on to the back of the building. We rented a building across the street and ran a forklift between our building and that building as our first little warehouse. We had a custom-built set of chains on the forklift so we could go between them during the winter.

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: I mean, you've never lived until you got a full load of kegs on the thing and you're goin' down that sloped parking lot with glare ice with chains on the forklift, cars parked on both sides. And then we started getting letters from the city about operating an industrial operation in the downtown commercial business district. We were loading semi-trucks in the middle of the street. We couldn't stay there. We had to move. We couldn't shrink, we had to grow. So that's when we found this piece of property and built the first phase of this facility.

TEM: Did you feel like a success at that point?

GF: I'll tell you one of the happiest days. I walked into the bank, and walked up to the banker, handed him a check and paid off our loan. We had no debt whatsoever. It didn't last. Within a few short months we were back trying to 01:03:00grow again and borrowing again, but that was a moment. The look on his face was just priceless. "What? Nobody ever pays off. What are you talkin' about?" Like, "Dude, this is what you wanted me to do. I'm paying you off."

TEM: [Laughs.] This was the goal.

GF: I don't know about you, but this one works for me! But we were always chasing it. I don't know if there was ever a moment where it was like, "Yeah, we did it." We were always chasing it. And I even feel that way today. We have so many things going on, and so many challenges, and so many things that are high risk that we're doing. We're still right in the meat of it. I don't know that I'll ever feel any different. I think it would be time to go if we did, just 01:04:00because I've always held that fear is a terrific motivator. And you need to manage to that. But when the chips are down and failure is truly not an option, that's a powerful thing in building a business. I think if you lose that, you're in big trouble.

TEM: Yeah. When did it feel like Bend changed, to you?

GF: There's some of Bend that hasn't changed. But it's been constantly changing.

TEM: Boiling a frog.

GF: Yeah...boilin' a frog. I think that's too, too negative an analogy, but I think that Bend has always been growing. And quite frankly, on balance, I think growth has been very good for Bend. It has its challenges, no question about it. I do get frustrated when there are five cars at a stop sign and I can't believe how bad the traffic has gotten. I think it's created unbelievable opportunities for people here. I think it's a better place. There are better parks, there are better schools. Roads are Ok. But growth is one of those things. You can't stop 01:06:00it. And quite frankly I don't think you'd want to if you really thought about what the consequences would be. But you've got to manage it, and if you don't plan for growth, which I think a lot of Bend did not, it's gonna come anyway. Part of the problem, back in the '90s, was they were saying, "Well, if you build it, they will come, and we don't really want them to come so let's not build it." It's like, well, they came anyway. And now we're caught on our heels because we did not plan for it. You know, we don't want the automobile, we want people on bicycles, but people are always gonna drive. So we need to somehow figure out a way to plan for that and make it not so uncomfortable for everyone else.

TEM: Yeah, I think infrastructure [is a problem] in lots of cities, whether the 01:07:00growth happens slowly or quickly.

GF: Whatever happened to those 800 billion dollar shovel-ready projects that we were promised during the recession?

TEM: [Laughs quietly.] I just want a big bike lane.

GF: Well good! You should have a big bike lane. Alongside a big automobile lane so that the automobiles aren't bumping into each other either.

TEM: [Laughs.] Exactly, exactly.

GF: Why does it have to be either-or? Why do we have this conflict? People are not getting out of their automobiles, not anytime soon. I don't care how uncomfortable you make it. So why do you have to do that?

TEM: Is it the Amsterdam model where you have the curb in between?

GF: Sure. But we are not gonna be Amsterdam. Get over it, we don't have nearly enough canals!

TEM: [Laughs.] As lovely as your river is. So you as a company are known for 01:08:00your use of hops. I'm curious about what it has been like for your business to be so close to such an amazing hop growing region.

GF: Well, I mean hops are a key component in craft beer. They're a key component in our beer. It is certainly convenient to be so close to where most of those hops are grown, whether it's Oregon or Washington. And being able to develop relationships with the growers is really terrific. Having OSU there with their 01:09:00hop research facility is great as well. Being able to experiment with new hop varieties that are in development and being able to help the growers in that development, I mean those are awesome resources for us. I know a lot of brewers that live in other parts of the country, brew in other parts of the country, that have similar relationships. Ours are just more convenient because we're three hours away. And we can go over the mountain during the harvest and pick up a truckload of fresh wet hops, start the brew, and by the time they land in our parking lot they're pretty much ready to add them to the kettle. I mean, it's a very, very cool thing. And I think it informs a lot of what craft beer has become and a lot of what we have become, which is a celebration of local, a 01:10:00celebration of the work of farmers. There are a lot of buzzwords - farm to table, farm to glass, whatever. But I just think it's a very natural celebration. And in an industry that had not celebrated hops before this fledgling part of it began to grow. Now there are hops in everything. Now the label on Miller Lite says it's tripled-hopped! Not very much, each one of those stages, but apparently they do it three times. It's like the term craft. Now everybody's using craft! The big guys are using it, the little guys are using it, other industries are using it! Craft is like one of the biggest buzzwords in 01:11:00CPG brands. It's everywhere - cheese, coffee, bread. It's everywhere. I think that's a wonderful thing.

TEM: Kind of related to agriculture, Deschutes is also known for your philanthropy and community involvement. I'd love to have you talk a little bit about that, whether it's from a fundraising standpoint or an environmental standpoint.

GF: I think when we started, we took this model we didn't understand very much. 01:12:00Kind of the European tavern, whether it's Britain, Germany, Belgium, wherever it happened to be. The tavern, the pub, the public house being the center of the community. It's where meetings occurred, it's where people were married, it's where they had funerals. That's where the community came together. And we wanted to somehow emulate that and part of that was we wanted the community to feel a certain ownership over the brewpub. When we started out, we had two potential locations for the brewpub. One was out on Third Street, which was the main drag through town, it was highway 97 at the time. And the other was where we are 01:13:00today in downtown Bend. Downtown Bend was boarded up, there wasn't much traffic, people didn't really want to hang out down there after dark. Third Street was the highway, it was traffic, it was volume, it was numbers, it was all of that. But we still felt like we needed to be in the cultural and community heart of town and we thought that the downtown had the potential of once again becoming that. If we were going to locate where we were, if we wanted the community to feel that sense of pride of ownership, then we were going to need to be involved in the community as well. It was embedded in our very first business plan, we made it part of our DNA from the very beginning to be involved. Now in the early 01:14:00days we didn't have any money, but we could donate beer, we could donate some of our time. I got involved with the Bend downtowners. They were doing all kinds of events and stuff to pull customers downtown because there were two malls in town at the time, the Bend River Mall and the Mountain View Mall. Both are only partially still there. That was the big competition, that was before the Old Mill, before any of that. There was still actually a real mill across the river.

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: So that became part of our DNA, and over the years it evolved and we kind of codified it in different ways. The big step was formalizing how much money we 01:15:00were going to give. Not just, Ok, we're going to stay involved with the community. No, we made a big step, we said Ok, it's going to be volume based. Whatever volume we did last year, we will donate a dollar per barrel into a fund that will be spent this year. And then eventually we made a committee of people within the company. I was not part of it, so no longer would it just be about what I wanted and what I thought was best. Because everything crossed my desk at one point in time, and I said, "Yes, yes, no, no," and did all that. And these people could do a much more thorough job of vetting them. I still have my pet projects or things that I've been involved with, but we talk to them or I talk to them all the time about what's going on and what might be right or wrong 01:16:00about even those projects. So it's become part of what we do, and I don't feel like it's particularly unique to us or unique to this industry or anything else. I think it's a responsibility of business. I think it's a responsibility of anyone that operates in a community to try and do their best to make that community better. We've been involved in most of the major projects in this town, from the Boys and Girls Club to the Tower Theater to the OSU Cascades campus to the COCC, the hospital, and so on and so forth. As well as a whole bunch of little ones. And I look forward to continuing to be able to do that because, just simply, it's the right thing to do.

TEM: And it seems from my perspective - I don't know how this feels from the inside - that there also was a real benefit to the town, to the county, because of your success. That Deschutes being such a successful business brought funding, brought notoriety...

GF: Well I hope that's true! I mean we ran an event called the Sagebrush Classic for 23 years where we raised money. And we raised somewhere around 3 million dollars total over that period of time. But if we've set a good example, I'm glad. If we helped influence others to do similar things, I'm glad. But I only 01:18:00get to control one person in this world and that's me.

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: If people like that and want to do that, that's great. But everybody's kind of in charge of their own space. And we hope they do well, but I don't get to control that.

TEM: Yeah. Personal social responsibility.

GF: Yeah! But fortunately I have enough influence over this organization and the 550 great people I get to work with that I can spread my influence and my ideas throughout that. Again, I only control me. We've always operated with that as the caveat. We hope people want to come along, but if they don't that's entirely 01:19:00up to them.

TEM: What about the larger brewing community? I know you have been involved statewide with the Brewers Guild and nationwide with the Brewers Association more recently. Can you talk a little bit about your involvement at the state and national level and then maybe some of the changes that you've seen over your career in that involvement?

GF: Well, it's interesting. When we started, none of this existed. There was no marketplace, there was no industry. OSU didn't have a brewing school. Regulators didn't know how to regulate us. City planners didn't know how to zone for us. Wholesalers didn't know what we were about, retailers didn't know what we were 01:20:00about. Every call was a cold call. All that has changed. In the early days, if we wanted a market we had to create it. If we wanted an industry, it was up to us to create it. We didn't know how to do it other than initially we wanted to have some kind of political presence to offset the wholesalers who pretty much controlled Salem. We wanted to have a larger marketing voice because none of us individually could. We didn't have any sort of scale to be able to tell the consumers that we were here and that this might be something they want to explore. Because our product doesn't look like that other product that comes in 01:21:00that can that they're used to drinking.

TEM: And maybe didn't have shelf space.

GF: Right, yeah! I mean, we needed to be able to tell retailers that we deserved to be there. The 30-40 tap pub didn't exist. People had three or four draft handles and they were all versions of the same theme. We needed to band together to create that critical mass to be able to affect those things. I mean, it was David and Goliath. We didn't have anything except each other, and quite frankly we weren't the least bit interested in or worried about competing with each other, because the big guys had 98% of the market. We just wanted our space. And 01:22:00that was true statewide when we started the Oregon Brewers Guild and nationally at the Brewers Association of America and later when it merged with the Association of Brewers to form the Brewers Association. Nobody else was going to do it. And because we had grown and just by virtue of our size had a certain leadership position within the industry, it was up to us. And part of what's changed is that there are so many breweries right now. These little guys, they're kind of bootstrapping their way, but they don't have time to take part in this, and yet that's what we were doing when we were their size.

TEM: Because you had to?

GF: Because we had no other choice. Now the 6,000 breweries in the US say "I don't have time for that." Well, you kind of don't have time not to. You know, it's a terrific industry for anarchists.

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: The idea that someone might be involved in politics is really anathema to a lot of these personalities. Believe me, I understand that as well as anyone. And I've explained it to people this way: "When you got into the beer business, you got into a very heavily regulated industry. Therefore you were involved in politics whether you knew it or not, whether you liked it or not. So either you can sit back and let somebody else make all those decisions that affect you and your business, therefore your family and your friends and your coworkers, or you 01:24:00can get involved and maybe have some influence." It's a different kind of responsibility. All of us just want to be responsible for ourselves, just take care of ourselves and maybe our family, maybe a few coworkers. But, come on. The industry? I don't have time for that. Travel to Salem to lobby? Go to Washington D.C.? I could no more fly to the moon.

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: But yeah. If you don't, there are other people that will make those decisions for you. And if that's Ok with you, then fine, don't complain. But anarchists aren't usually much on not complaining.

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: And I say that very tongue-in-cheek. We all need to band together, still to this day or somebody else with their own self-interest is going to make the 01:25:00decisions that affect us.

TEM: And - not to put words in your mouth - but it must be interesting almost thirty years in to have seen the industry to change so much, and have this kind of anarchist mentality where I want to be successful, but I don't want other people to be too successful or too big. It feels like within the Oregon culture of industry, craft scene - and maybe this is true for the rest of the country too - that there is this tension between size and consistency and quality.

GF: Yeah, we like these guys, but don't ever become too successful!

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: We've fallen prey to that ourselves. I don't think we have any different 01:26:00intent than we ever did. I think we execute far better on our intent today, and that's evident in the quality of the beers that we make, the quality of the people that we've assembled, the work that we do in the community, you name it. We're far better at what we do than we ever were, and somehow we get penalized for it. They like the guy down the street whose beer this week is not so good, but last week it was better, hopefully next week it'll be better too. So they're going back over and over and over again because this guy's small and quirky and maybe not so good. You know, you work your tail off in business to try to get to a point of execution where you know your quality is top-rate and reliable. You know that the people around you are doing terrific work and seeing the benefits 01:27:00both in self-satisfaction as well as the ability to house and provide for their families and so forth. It's really discouraging to hear people describe you in ways that you had never thought you'd be described. I mean, I've heard things even very, very recently that make me just wonder who makes this stuff up. Because it's not me, and it's not us. So who is it? Who's creating this stuff out of thin air and viciously spreading it? I don't know. I don't know if everybody our size falls prey to that, but it's a challenging thing when you 01:28:00know the intention of the people you work with and what they do every day to deliver that level of quality both of product and experience to a consumer that most of the time is incredibly appreciative.

TEM: Has there been a difference between interactions with consumers in Bend versus at the Portland pub, which opened in 2008, right?

GF: Well, I mean if it's our Bend pub versus our Portland pub, I think both have been incredibly successful. Both bring in large volumes of customers and they go away incredibly happy. We're like 11th out of almost 3,500 on Tripadvisor.

TEM: But is there a different - not necessarily reaction - but is there a different demand that they have? Do they have different interests?

GF: Oh, I think yeah.

TEM: Has it been a different market? I guess that was my question.

GF: For employers?

TEM: Well, yeah, I hadn't thought about employers, but I was thinking about customers.

GF: Customers in Portland obviously like what we're doing a lot. We work hard at it. But it's a much more urban setting and because we've touched on employees, a lot of them think of themselves as more short term. They're going to school, they're moving on, I'm here for two years and then I'm going on to something else. So they don't think of themselves as long-term employees. A lot of the 01:30:00people in Bend have been here for a long time by virtue of the fact that the pub has been here much longer, and so many may think of their role here differently. A lot of people at the Bend pub have moved up here to take part in the manufacturing process or marketing, sales, administration, etc. So there's maybe a little more direct connection to different career paths. But I think you're seeing what we've seen. The pub in Portland opened in 2008, and I don't think you would have had a single person in that opening crew think they would be there more than a couple of years, and yet almost nine years later a whole bunch of them are still there. And enjoying it, getting the benefits. They're 01:31:00participating in the east op, they're seeing that value grow. So there are a lot of people who have evolved as we continue to evolve.

TEM: Speaking of evolution, you're opening a new facility on the East Coast. I know from a sort of practical standpoint, transportation is a lot easier if you're closer to the facility. But where were those early discussions about expanding into what we now know as Roanoke? Those early East Coast expansion conversations.

GF: Well, you touched on it a little bit. If the first decision was "Do we want to be a national brand?" and the answer to that was "Sure, eventually. There are 01:32:00people in each of those states that want our beer, we should try to get it to them." Then, to the more practical side of it, "Well then, does it really make sense to send beer to Maine and Florida manufactured in Bend, Oregon?" You have to drive three hours to get to an interstate freeway from here. It's a two-lane road into and out of Bend, Oregon. To say nothing of the fact that it's four to five dollars a case to ship beer today to the East Coast markets where we participate, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. Clearly, there's gotta be a better way. From an economic standpoint, from a carbon footprint standpoint, you name it, there's gotta be a better way. So, if we believe we're still on this path 01:33:00and we're gonna grow to X volume, then it really makes sense to manufacture on the East Coast. We looked, and we've spent a lot of time looking for a facility there that we could potentially contract with to brew our beer in their brewery without any luck. Whether it was capacity issues, or quality control issues or something else that kept us from realizing that as a viable option. It became apparent to us that if the answers to all of those things were still yes, then we needed to find a place of our own to manufacture on the East Coast. And after a two year process, we found Roanoke. And so we're pretty excited about it. Design and engineering is underway and ongoing and we look to hopefully be 01:34:00breaking ground early 2019 and have production early 2021.

TEM: Seems like a similar story too. Roanoke had the railroad, is that right? They had some challenges.

GF: They're kind of in their post-industrial era like Bend was when we came here after the mills shut down and Bend had to change its image and how it operated and behaved. And I think Roanoke shares a lot of that, and they have a fairly progressive government and they're doing a lot of the right things to try to create that next economy. A lot of people still haven't really responded yet, 01:35:00but they will. And we're really excited about it. I think we found each other. They need us and we need them. And it felt better to us and to our group. It felt like we would fit in better. We could do more good there and consequently they could be better for us as a result.

TEM: So at this point in your career, you are certainly on the leader side, the mentor side. Do you still have people that you look to as models or leaders that inspire you?

GF: In the industry?

TEM: I guess both, industry, life.

GF: All the time. I have very, very close friends in the industry that I admire greatly. Ken Grossman at Sierra Nevada, Kim Jordan at New Belgium, Steve Hindy 01:36:00at Brooklyn Brewery. The list goes on. Jim Koch at Sam Adams. These are incredibly bright very hardworking people that built companies out of nothing, to these terrific economic and social powerhouses that continue to be relevant today. And yeah, I've been very proud to be able to call them my friends and have worked with them to create this industry that is so dynamic today.

TEM: I read a quote, I think by you, that it also is interesting and important to think about the industry not as an industry that is one thing. As if there is 01:37:00an industry that is not dynamic and diverse. I like that even large companies are not one thing.

GF: Well yeah. And one of the coolest things about craft beer is that it's not one thing. It's 6,000 things. Every brewery has a perspective. Some of them look a lot alike. But there are a huge number that have a very artistic take on what kind of beer they want to make and why they want to make it and who they want to make it for. And I think that's challenged an industry that was kind of stuck in one place for a long, long time. The industry is responding. Sometimes that concerns us, sometimes it inspires us. But it's really a very cool thing to have 01:38:00so many different perspectives on this product that used to be such a monolithic thing.

TEM: It's fun to think too of even the Oregon market, and that all of the early Oregon pioneers were very different.

GF: Yeah!

TEM: It's fun to look at the growth, it's fun to look at where you have overlapped and come together. Well, I think Oregon's special.

GF: No, I agree! Oregon has by far the most mature craft beer market. It is the most developed, it has the highest market share, Bend has the largest number of breweries per capita of any city. Bend is that one that has the highest. I think 01:39:00there are so many things statistically as well as just emotionally that you could point to in Oregon. Why did it happen here? There's a lot of speculation about that, but I think you've got adventurous consumers, some adventurous entrepreneurs. You've got a culture that drinks probably more beer indoors on draft than a lot of places. You could argue that it's because of the rain. They're going into the pub rather than grabbing a six-pack and heading to the beach. I think it all plays into it. The decision to change the law to allow non-pasteurized beer in Oregon. Jimmy Carter changing the law to allow home brewed beer nationally and then subsequently in Oregon. All these things created 01:40:00the perfect storm. Oregon is close to the main ingredients in beer, hops and barley. The people that started it, people like the Widmer brothers and Fred Boeman and Art Larrance and the McMenamin brothers and so on and so forth. I think there's a lot of people that have contributed demonstrably to that.

TEM: So as you are again at this stage in your career, what are some of the 01:41:00things that you are reflecting on now? And I like to conclude interviews by asking people what they are proud of, and that's not just somebody who has matured in their career, it can be people who are earlier in their career as well. But what are some of the things that you are reflecting on now?

GF: There's so much here that I'm proud of. When I see people that we hired here to come in and do a task and then I see them solving other problems beyond that task gladly and energetically. We used to track a statistic that was the number 01:42:00of first homes that people at Deschutes Brewery had purchased and we gave up decades ago. But it's hundreds and hundreds. People are having families and having children and buying homes. Accomplishing their dreams and their personal goals. Deschutes Brewery to a certain extent is kind of the vessel. I think that's the coolest thing in the world. I don't know what else there is beyond that. If people love the beer, that's great. But one of the most overused phrases in this industry is "It's about the beer."

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: It's not about the beer! That's the secret, it's not about the beer. It's about the people. It's always ever been about the people. It's the people who make the beer, it's the people who conceive of the beer, it's the people who 01:43:00ensure that that beer gets to the consumer the way the consumer should expect to have it. It is the people, and it's an awesome thing for me to watch that. I've benefited from it, no question about it. I'm a lucky, lucky guy. But my pride is when they do things that maybe they didn't think they would or could, and then do it again. I just think those are the best times anyone gets. We have our anniversary, which I'm going to miss this year for the second time in the history of the company on the 27th of June. We have a little party behind the pub downtown. We've tried to enlarge it, but I kind of like it small. We have 01:44:00people who have been our customers since day one that come there. People who have been employees on day one come to that party. It's my favorite night of the year because all those dots get connected, all that history gets connected not because people think they get something out of it but because they want to. Because it means something to them, because it has an emotional context for them like it does for me. And I never experience that anywhere else. It's a very, very cool thing.

TEM: What did you think I was going to ask or touch on that I didn't?

GF: Our conversation has ranged pretty broadly! What else do you want? I didn't 01:45:00really have any great expectations. I assumed you want stories of the history of the brewery. What did you hear that maybe surprised you?

TEM: Oh man! I've never been asked that! I don't know that I did hear anything that surprised me. I think one thing that pleases me every time someone says this, is at that moment where I ask about the point of pride, when people talk about employees and when people talk about customers. Especially, I guess, the employees. That there is as a business owner such a pride in providing livelihood, helping with livelihood, I don't know whether other business owners answer that. But in those that I have interviewed, I love it that brewing people 01:46:00almost always say that.

GF: At the risk of being a little maudlin, how do you feel when you see your children accomplish good things? Whether they score the winning goal in a soccer match or graduating from college as my two kids have done and gone on to form careers of their own. That level of pride is not dissimilar to the level of pride I feel when people here grow and develop and evolve and accomplish for themselves those things. People come in and say, "Oh, thank you for the bonus, thank you for the raise." My response is almost always the same. I say, "That's great, I appreciate that, but I didn't do it. You did it. It is about you. We 01:47:00simply respond, hopefully appropriately, when you accomplish things that qualify you for that next position or for that bonus or for the raise or for the benefits or for whatever the material benefit is. But it's your accomplishment."

TEM: I'm assuming at times you feel like the company is one of your children.

GF: Oh yeah.

TEM: The moving parts, the people leaving, the people coming, I imagine that can be challenging at times too. You have to let people go.

GF: You do. There are certain realities of business and not everybody is able to 01:48:00succeed in the same way, at the same pace. Some people aren't willing to do what's necessary for that success. Some of the hardest times in growing a business are when someone who has been important to the growth of that business is either unwilling or unable to continue that growth. And you have to find a way to say, "Hey, this is as far as we can go."

TEM: I imagine too that there are people who succeed and go on. That success for them means leaving, not in a negative way.

GF: Look around Bend, there are lots of breweries. There's a whole bunch of our alumni sprinkled around there and beyond that. So, yeah. We know that people are 01:49:00gonna grow and leave. And we don't begrudge anyone - I never have - looking to improve their life. I left a partnership to start this company because of my desire to do my thing. And I can't therefore begrudge anyone the opportunity to do the same. Oftentimes, I think this person simply thinks the grass is greener; so be it. But again, I don't get to control those decisions. Hopefully, we have a company here that rewards people appropriately. That the good ones will want 01:50:00to stay for a long time. But again, all we can do is the best we can do. And if somebody still wants to go somewhere else, well, that's perfectly up to them and we're going to be supporters of that. I keep saying, we've never lost anyone here that we couldn't take as an opportunity to improve.

TEM: So beyond the people, beyond the beer, what's your favorite part? What is it that you just love about doing this job? The things that it has allowed you to do, the things that it has allowed you to think or experience.

GF: Honestly, for me, it's the creative process. The creative process for the beers, for the branding, for the marketing. I mean I guess I was always kind of a frustrated artist at heart. I grew up in the restaurant business, and as a 01:51:00manager of restaurants I managed several really nice white-tablecloth restaurants. And I spent more time in the kitchen than out in the dining room, and I was always hanging out with the chef and I was always trying to learn new things. The brewery is a lot like that. Trying to create the next new flavor, the next combination that creates the third flavor. All those things. The marketing which can be so interesting and creative and innovative in this industry. I love that process. I still feel like I can contribute to it here, which is kind of rare anymore. It's great. And when somebody comes up and finds 01:52:00out who you are and says, "Oh, you guys make the best beer." It's like, "Yeah, I did it myself."

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: [Laughs.]

TEM: Thank you very much!

GF: Yeah that was me!

TEM: I'll clone myself!

GF: I did that! Yeah, the one you didn't like so much, I don't know who did that one.

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: I've often said that being the head of the organization meant that everybody else does all the work, I just get all the credit.

TEM: I have a hunch you've done your share of work too.

GF: There were moments, I've still got the scars. I love the creative process, I love when you get a group of people together and the tumblers all click into place and things just go. [Snapping fingers.] It's really, really cool. So we're 01:53:00having fun.

TEM: I was just curious to know more about what Deschutes was like in the early days. I hear the funniest stories, not so much from your perspective but from the perspective of some of the people that worked here in the beginning.

GF: Yeah, those perspectives are wrong by the way.

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: I mean, there's tons of stories. Something has to trip my memory to start to go into those. Some of them were funny, some of them were sad, some of them were celebratory. The ones I tell the most, probably are things like Glenn Callender and his experience. He was one of our early, early cooks in the kitchen. I was the only manager, I was running everything. And I had a kitchen manager that 01:54:00lasted two weeks. Got rid of him, and I hired this guy. He was Marie Callender's grandson.

TEM: Oh!

GF: And he had grown up in that business and so he knew the kitchen, and he knew cooking. And it's like, Ok, but he's really kind of a headbanger type. Wanna be a rockstar. This was back in the '80s. And I think he had already spent a lot of his trust fund maybe not wisely. But he'd be back in the kitchen. I don't know if I should be telling this on video or not, but he'd be back in the kitchen and he'd be freakin' out. "Gary, I need some help! I need some help, come here and back me up." So I'd go back there and there'd be two or three tickets hanging. 01:55:00It's like, "Glenn, there's three tickets, what's the problem?" "I know, I know, I'm buried, I'm buried. Help me out, help me out." "Ok." So, back in those days we had a very interesting crew. We actually had a rule - it never made it into the employee manual - but the rule was "being in jail is not an excuse for missing work."

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: And we talked about it openly at employee meetings. And I violated that rule, I admit it. I actually bailed a guy out once because I needed a warm body.

TEM: I thought you were gonna say that you were in jail!

GF: No, no, no! It wasn't me. No, no, no. No, I was the one who went across the street to the jail with the money. But at any rate, it's about three o'clock in the afternoon and Glenn calls. "Yeah Glenn, what's up?" "I don't know if I'm 01:56:00gonna make it to work." "So why not?" "Well, I'm in jail." "Well, you know the rule." "Yeah, that's just it! I don't know why they arrested me. I don't get it, I don't get it." He was a pretty excitable guy. And I said, "Well calm down. Tell me what happened." He says, "Well, they came to my door and they arrested me!" And he said, "But they didn't tell me why!" And I said, "Well, they must have told you something. They had to have said, 'You are under arrest because...'"

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: And he said, "That's just it! That's the part I don't understand!" I'm like, "Calm down, calm down. Tell me what they said." And he's like, "That's just it, they said that I was growing pot in my yard." And I said, "Where you?" And he said, "Well that's the part I don't get!" And I said, "What do you mean?" And he 01:57:00said, "That's it, I don't understand!" And I said, "Calm down, Glenn! Calm down and just tell me! What part don't you understand?" "I don't even smoke the stuff! I was just growin' it to sell!"

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: And I said, "Well if I were you, I wouldn't tell them that."

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: "Have a nice life." There were a lot of those kinds of stories back then when people were misbehaving in a small town. I literally, when I advertised for my opening crew, I got nobody. This is my seventh restaurant I have been involved with opening. And if there's any press at all, which we had a ton of press - the local paper here has always been very good to us - we had a ton of press about opening up. So I'm thinking I'm going to get inundated with applicants and so in advance I'm talking to the contractor and the construction 01:58:00crews and I've got it locked down for this week and they're all gonna work in the back of the building and I'm gonna have the front of the building. So I rent a couple of eight foot tables and I've got my stack of pads of applications and boxes of pencils, and I've got pots of coffee ready. Eight o'clock Monday morning comes around, and I'm in there at seven and I'm steeling myself for the onslaught that is about to happen. Eight o'clock comes, nine o'clock comes, ten o'clock comes. I pulled the paper out again, yeah, the ad is there, it ran on Sunday. Nobody. By the end of the week I think I had had 15 applicants, out of 01:59:00which I was forced to hire 12. And I always kind of surmised that the only reason those 15 people applied with me was because they had already worked everywhere else in town. It was a real crew. Incredible. So yeah, there were all kinds of stories attached to that, and people's behavior. And I'm working seven days a week from 7:00 AM until close, until 11:00 or 12:00. And I did that for a year. And eventually I got to the point where I had to hand the keys off to a bartender and have him close up or I was just gonna die.

TEM: Mm-hm.

GF: And that knowing full well what was gonna happen after I left the building. But it was a choice, it was either that or death. And a lot of stories have come 02:00:00out about that since that. And I'm like, "Oh, my God." I wasn't naive, I may not have known the specifics or necessarily wanted to know the specifics, but that was the only choice that I had.

TEM: What about early customers?

GF: A lot of them still come down there today. A lot of them still come in. I mean, they wanted it to succeed, and they've been long time Bendites. Some of them were there, they moved away, they moved back, they moved away, they moved back. And they always come back to the pub. And that's great. We have a lot of bartenders that have been there for a long, long time as well. That helps. Like 02:01:00I said, it's been about the people. I think a lot of people say they were here the first day we opened, I'm not sure they were. If all the people who said they were there at the beginning actually were, I'm pretty sure we would have had a much easier time than we did.

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: But a lot of them were, and I remember a lot of them. But I said earlier, Bend was much more a wild west town. More fights out in the street, more guys cheatin' on their wives. Carol (my wife) and I were really struck with that early, the amount of infidelity that went on in a very small town. It's like, "Dude, really?" [Laughs.] "You don't think this is going to get back to your wife?"

TEM: We all know each other.

GF: It's like, "You're in a busy bar downtown, and it's a small town. Somebody 02:02:00knows somebody in here." At any rate, there was a lot of that going on. It was an adventure every day.

TEM: I imagine too, that being a lighter bar town, there were a lot of conversations.

GF: Oh, very much. Oh, guys would walk up to the bar and order Hamms in a can. "Yeah, give me a Bud Light." "We don't have that." People have that. People walk up to the window and look at the brew system and go, "That's fake."

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: And mean it! They're like, "You guys are full of shit. That's not real."

TEM: That's an elaborate ruse.

GF: That's what I would say. "Really? Dude." Sometimes the brewers will be back there, steam coming up. "Oh yeah, that's fake." Alright.

TEM: What's the dynamic between the tourists and the regulars back in the day and how has that changed over time?

GF: Well, the regulars have always tolerated the tourists, to the point of even during the real busy time around the holidays, or middle of summer, the regulars will just stay away. But they'll come back. Just because it's so crowded. And I kind of understand their point. They can't get their regular spot where they hang out. People are sittin' there, and grabbin' all the bartender's time tryin' to ask about this beer and that beer and this beer and that beer and setting up all their samplers. They consume differently. But they also know that this keeps the place successful that they love to come. And we were designing it 02:04:00originally, the overriding theme that I had was based on the fact that I knew that I was gonna be spending an awful lot of time there. I wanted it to be a bar that I'd want to hang out in. And that's what we did, and to this day I still love hangin' out down there. Mostly because of the people, but it's a very comfortable place to go to the bar and hang. And there's always somebody to talk to, tourist, regular, whatever. People are generous with their time. I've always talked about the value a pub adds to the health of a society, particularly these days when people communicate on forums and anonymously on blogs. With e-mail and text mail and Instagram, there's no human contact, no human interaction. But it's completely different at a pub. Over a beer, people will talk. Young, old, 02:05:00white collar, blue collar. They talk about current events, politics, your family, my family, sports, whatever it happens to be. They'll agree, they'll disagree, they'll talk some more. And I think that's incredibly healthy in this ever more polarized society that we live in where people are encouraged to retreat to their hovel wherever that is and blast out hyperbole and fake news. And I maintain this doesn't happen at a wine bar. It doesn't happen in a bar where the average drink is served in a martini glass, in some weird color not often found in nature.

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: It is different in a pub, and it is different with beer. And it is healthy 02:06:00for society and it oughta be encouraged and our children oughta be encouraged to go and watch this level of behavior, not discouraged. This is kind of that thing I talked about earlier where our public policy and our common sense are often in conflict. I want children at our pub because everybody behaves better when they're around. And if children are going to mimic behavior, that's good behavior to mimic. And I think that there's a lot of benefit to being able to open up this society and not close it down.

TEM: Did your kids go?

GF: To the pub? Of course! Of course. Never up to the bar where they're not allowed.

TEM: Of course.

GF: My wife would bring 'em down when the kids were little because I was working 02:07:00all the time. If I was gonna see the kids between when I left for the office and they went to bed at night, she would bring them down and we'd have lunch or dinner together, something like that. But yeah, I think our inability to really address the truth in certain is really challenging. It's like, do you really believe global warming doesn't exist? Come on. 95% of the scientists it exists and that humans are largely the cause. How can you sit here and deny that we shouldn't be able to do much better in controlling these gases? That's silly. 02:08:00Well the same thing is silly [with respect to beer]; beer can actually be healthy, but we can't talk about it particularly. A woman might be carrying a child. We don't want to talk about that, because you can't have any alcohol at all regardless of whether it might have any benefit to you, and you become pariah in open society if somebody sees you. That's an awful thing. But lying to women in that way, that's not awful? Making them feel shunned because they deigned to have a sip of beer? That doesn't make any sense at all.

TEM: It's interesting to me to think of the public house as being the space of conversation and maybe cultural or social levelling. That maybe that hasn't 02:09:00changed over time, that that is one of those constant spaces.

GF: The third place. Howard Schultz talked about the coffee house being the third place. I'd argue that the pub was the third place long before the coffee house. But that is that place where people gather, for all kinds of reasons. We talk about the tavern of America. It's a dark windowless room with a bunch of old men hunched over their whisky. This is nothing of the kind. Today, the modern pub is bright open spaces with large windows and we keep the lights up brighter after the sun goes down. There are places where you can see across the room and recognize a friend and meet and collect. I just think it's where society happens.

TEM: Do you think that is the case across the country? Do you think Oregon is special?

GF: Oregon is not special in that regard. I think that culture is still growing 02:10:00in certain areas, but if you go to any of the big cities the neighborhood bar is a lot like that.

TEM: I think having spaces where children are welcome, again that responsible drinking family time [is good].

GF: Yeah, we're not talking about overconsuming. A quart of vodka a day? Bad!

TEM: [Laughs.]

GF: We all agree with that! That's not what we're talking about. Aren't we mature enough as people, individuals and as a society, to know the difference? I just think we are. We should be. If we're not, it's not my fault. We're doing our best.

TEM: That's right.

GF: Alright.

TEM: Are you good?

GF: I'm good.

TEM: Thank you.

GF: Ok!