A sneak – peek into the Bootlegger Brewery Production Facility Tour!
Having to keep our reputation as the awesomest club at UCI, we were wondering what the first site visit of the OMA could be. We were talking about it at our local watering hole. Few beers down, we all knew where to go. We scouted for breweries in Irvine and finally decided on Bootlegger’s brewery (http://www.bootleggersbrewery.com/) as our first OMA site visit location.
The business model of Bootlegger’s brewery is driven by its motto : “Drink Fresh, Drink Local”. Its distribution channels are focused on serving the local community the freshest beers. Located in Fullerton, Bootlegger’s brewery is a mid size brewery employing around 35 employees. Its focus on building a family of patrons in its locality was what attracted us to the brewery.
We are extremely grateful to the head brewer, Robert Margalis for being our guide at the brewery and for walking us through the entire brewing process. Robert started his career cleaning barrels at the brewery. Within a short span of 7 years, he had become the head brewer. It was no surprise he had this rapid career progression as we could see his passion for beer in the way he talked about it.
Robert walked us through his research and prototype development space, where he brewed new recipes. A lot of his recipe inspirations came from his friends, family or surroundings – his backyard! Robert had come up with one of his recipes at home when he scraped yeast off the peaches from his backyard and had let the yeast grow in a small container. The beer brewed using this yeast had gone on to become one of the seasonal beers at Bootleggers. That sounded so cool!
One of our goals with the site visit was to get a first hand insight into operations in the real world. We were all curious to see the brewing process and the challenges and risks involved in the business. As Robert was showing us how the entire process worked, it was great to relate what we had learned in business school regarding operations to an actual operational facility. An operational challenge that the brewery was dealing with, was having the canning facility online in time for shipping. The canning equipment can be quite expensive and the brewery was leasing canning equipment from third party vendors. There were also operational challenges relating to personnel management and inventory control. A lot of planning is involved to ensure that the beer doesn’t stay out for too long, the suppliers have the supplies in time and the buyers get the products in time. Since the shelf life of beer is determined by temperature, inventory management was vital. The amount of planning and supply chain management required in the brewery was beyond what we had imagined.
Onto more fun! After the brewery visit, we decided to top it off with a few drinks and headed to the tasting room which had a nice laid back vibe. We headed to the outdoor seating and had some nice conversations over the locally brewed Bootleggers beers.
Next time we have an El Chango Lager or Far out IPA, we sure are going to remember the good times we had at Bootleggers! Cheers!