CBB // Coming from Half Acre, the scale here at Suncatcher is dramatically different. It’s definitely a return to those roots—a small brewhouse, a big patio, beautiful old building, and a cool approach. But the beers that you’re making are, I would say, not an attempt to drive hype in any kind of way. They’re beers that are accessible to people, meant to be consumed socially, designed for two or three of them, rather than just sampling one or getting tasters and flights. What made you decide to take on small-scale brewing for a neighborhood, primarily over the bar in a taproom? What made you, in today’s beer market, decide to do this as a business?
MG // I think being very naive a second time—being like, “Ah, this won’t be that bad, it won’t be that hard!” Yeah, it’s been a struggle. But it’s just something I felt I needed to do—something I really wanted to do and was very excited about doing. And I got the support and the okay from my wife, who’s very involved in the business. So, we just forged ahead, and it came together very organically in terms of finding the space. The people who were involved with this location were very supportive and excited. So, it just all kind of clicked. And then we had a lot of delays, and some things didn’t click. But we got through it and got the place open.
And yeah, opening a brewery right now, not the best financial decision. But the hope is to see if we can—with modest expectations and modest scale—be sustainable, both financially and physically, mentally. Can it be sustainable for years without the need for it to grow volume-wise? So, it’s kind of a little experiment, too, in my brain. Yeah, growth is necessary, both creatively as well as financially. Costs go up every year. Employees want to get paid more as time goes on, so there needs to be growth. But are you able to grow without needing to really ramp up volume-wise, and can you find other ways to grow both creatively and financially?
We’re about a year and a half into it, and I think we have transitioned from just getting open and doing whatever it takes to get open—“What are we doing? How are we going to do this, how are we going do that?” I think now we’re gently getting into the next phase of, “All right, how do we refine this? Who are we? Why are people coming here? What are we doing well? What do we need to work on?”
It’s really knowing that we’re signing up for this for the long term. And a lot of it, too, goes back to building Half Acre. We were in a great neighborhood—great neighborhood support, great community. But I used to live up there, and when we opened Half Acre, we ended up moving down here, so that always kind of nagged me a little bit. Like, “Man, I wish I could go all-in, both in the neighborhood and the business.” And I was always jealous of my friends down here who had businesses and just really wanted to go all-in in this neighborhood. So, this has been that, and it’s been fantastic to be able to walk to work. You have the neighbors zooming by on the street, the neighbors coming in. So, it’s been a fun experience to drill down—really trying to go deep rather than wide.
CBB // I imagine you’ve done some financial planning to look at how you might be able to sustain that over the next five years, and what that means in terms of what you need for meaningful support from the neighborhood—filling up this beer garden, since so much of the outdoor space is also pretty seasonal.
MG // Yeah, we knew it was going to be seasonal—this is a seasonal business. The original business plan was to close January, February, but easier said than done. Especially when you open your business in November, you can’t close in January. If you miss that first shot at closing, then it’s hard to get it back. And talking to friends who have breweries and have tried to do this, they’ve told me it’s very hard to just shutter a brewery for two months. It’s challenging because it’s a business. There are still costs, someone still needs to be here. You can’t just abandon the building for two months. But on paper, it looks great: Fill up all the tanks with lagers in December, walk away for six weeks, come back, and you’ve got a great lager list.
CBB // Let’s talk about your beer approach. The tap list is a lot of low-ABV beers. There are five beers on the draft list. There isn’t an extensive description of anything. I walk in here, it feels like there’s a pseudo-dive-bar vibe, too—I wouldn’t say dive, but it’s meant to be Midwest, honest, simple, uncomplicated. You’re not here to get into weird intricacies of recipe or beer style. It’s just a place to come and drink what people assume is well-made beer.
MG // Yeah, exactly. The lower end of the ABV spectrum is intentional. We sell 20-ounce pints, and we mostly only sell beer here on-site. We’re lucky that we’re where people don’t have to drive here. Walk, ride your bike, hop on the bus, whatever. So, the hope is that you can come in, sit down, and enjoy a couple of beers without ruining the rest of your night or the next day.
And not naming the beers—naming beers is so hard, as everyone knows. We’ve mostly run out of words at this point, so really just trying to stick to the style.
CBB // Pilsner, Cascadian pale, UK bitter, blonde, IPA...
MG // A lot of it is beer-by-color, too. We’re like, “All right, what color haven’t we done yet?” My wife was like, “Copper. You haven’t done a copper ale.” I’m like, “Oh, good point, that’s a good one.”
CBB // Are you back on the actual brew deck here?
MG // Oh, yeah. I’m the only one back there. And that also makes it easy because—and I learned it with my time at Half Acre—I’m not the best manager. I’d rather just do it myself. I’m not good at training people. So, that’s why this is good for me, to just be able to have full control. I don’t have to consult with anyone. If I get upset, it’s with myself, and I prefer that.
CBB // But that’s still quite a move, for someone who has been this deep in brewing since 2008, to get back on the brew deck and brew all of the beer. That’s a humongous commitment.
MG // Yeah. And, again, it’s how can it be sustainable if it’s on a smaller scale? That’s another reason [why] this model has come together. It’s where my interests in brewing and sustainability and profitability intersect. I don’t really want to distribute beer. Selling beer over the bar, the best margins are that way. You can only ask so much of it in terms of volume and growth opportunity, but it is a profitable way to sell beer. Last year I made about 350 barrels of beer—very sustainable for one person to do. But we need to grow volume to keep this business afloat. So, the goal is to be able to make about 600 barrels of beer, but we’ll see if the demand is there for it and how that works year over year.
CBB // I love the idea of trying to build a sustainable back end to the business, which means that you have to wear a lot of hats. You’re not going to be able to hire a separate social-media manager. You’re going to have to have a pretty good team to keep the books but also have a good idea yourself of how to do that. Marketing, all of these things—so many hats for one person.
But you also have to have an idea of editing in some sense—that there are going to be some things that you can’t do and can’t spend time on, but that you might otherwise want to. How do you choose what not to spend as much time on?
MG // That’s a great question, and we’re still sorting that out. I think last year was the year of just saying “no.” Just being like, “We’re not doing that. We’re not taking that on.” We need to keep it as simple as possible and get this foundation built. And then this year was like, “All right, we need to start saying ‘yes.’ We need to start doing a little bit more.” But it’s a daily stress, for sure. It’s like you’re getting a little schizophrenic in your head, just trying to stay focused on “I need to make beer,” but then there’s a bunch of other things that also need attention. And that’s where I think I was a little naive. Like, “Oh, I only need to brew once a week, it’s fine, I could do all this other stuff.” But the other stuff adds up, and the brewing once a week adds up—because obviously it’s more than that, so it’s a challenge. My wife does all the financial bookkeeping, accounting, inventory—I’m very thankful for her to be able to do that because I’m real sloppy with it. You need to know your limits, and you need to know when you’re not doing a good job, and you need to get out of the way.
CBB // How did you get people into this place when you opened the doors? It used to be like, “Oh, a new brewery’s opening up!” But now… You have the benefit of having a story with Half Acre, and that is actually news within the world of Chicago food.
MG // Yeah, there’s credibility because of the association with Half Acre. And we have a fantastic crew—a small crew, everyone here works pretty much full-time. I don’t know what our retention rate is—it’s in the 90s, though. I think that shows that we’re doing something right because a big part of Suncatcher is the people. You referred to this place as a dive bar, and that is a component of the way we think about this place. I firmly believe that people are regulars at neighborhood spots because of the people who work there. Sure, you may like the beer here. But you’re coming back because of the people, and that consistency in terms of service and the people who are working here is huge. That’s how you build a community, by having the people who are here day in and day out. Our regulars come in, they know what day it is and who’s going to be working here, so the people here are a huge component of Suncatcher, and we’re just blessed with a great crew.
CBB // Thinking about that hospitality piece of it is smart, in that people who work and serve beer also have their own regulars. It’s interesting to think about this nexus of people, products, location, environment, vibe, all of those things working together.
MG // And tasting beer is very subjective. People get different things out of it, and the environment has a huge impact, I think, on how you enjoy that beer. So, a key part is trying to match the physical place, the building, how it looks and feels, the people here, and the beers that are being made here, and trying to create an environment where they all work in synergy. That’s why the beers are the way they are, the folks who are working here are who they are, and the building kind of looks and feels the way it does. It just takes time. You don’t just open the doors to a new place, and it’s got a great feeling to it. But over time, as it builds that patina, that energy just kind of stays in the place. If we’re doing our jobs right, it’s like fermentation—the yeast is doing the work for us, but you’ve got to make sure that yeast is healthy and happy. We’ve just got to make sure that the business and the location, the building, the people are healthy and happy.
CBB // So, you need to increase volume, find some growth over the next couple of years to get to a point where it can be sustainable and produce the volume of beer, the number of sales to make it work. Where do you hope to be in three to five years?
MG // We need to increase revenue, for sure. From the beginning, our philosophy was low and slow. Our tagline is “under the radar, above the clouds.” We’re in a gorgeous spot, but it’s a less-traveled section of Chicago. But that said, there’s a five-story condo building going up across the street.
So the location is great, but our goal wasn’t to try to come out and be the super-buzzy, exciting new place that everyone wanted to go to—that crowd can tend to move on to the next buzzy place that everybody wants to go to. The goal was to grow the roots here at this location, then in a few years, begin to flower. We are next door to a plant store, and we have an awesome native garden out there that has been fun to watch grow. So, that is the goal for the next three to five years. I think we’ve done a good job of locking in the sort of energy that we were hoping to achieve, which is like a mix of neighborhood and beer-industry people. So, I think now that we have locked in the energy and vibe, we just want more people to come. Then we can layer people into it, and they can come in, and there’s already an established energy going on here that they hopefully are attracted to and can enjoy.
It’s very powerful when people discover a place for themselves. And if they discover a place for themselves and they enjoy it, then they feel a little ownership over it, and that is super-powerful in terms of getting people to come back. So, that’s the goal—to have people quietly discover it on their own, then be able to make it their own.
We’ve edited this conversation for length and clarity.
For more from Gallagher, including details on his approach to brewing, be sure to listen to Podcast Episode 484: Matt Gallagher of Half Acre and Suncatcher Believes Small Can Be Sustainable.