CANTON, N.C. — Breweries. Not bars, but breweries.
As businesses continue to pop up in small, former-manufacturing towns outside of Asheville, they seek an identity separate from their late-night counterparts, something BearWaters Brewing Co. co-owner Art O’Neil won’t hesitate to tell you.
“You see more and more families bring their kids to breweries,” he said. “We’re more of a community center than we are a bar.”
It’s not an accident. Rather, it’s “by design.”
“There is a negative connotation that goes with bar — what that might mean, [particularly] in a small town,” he said, “but also it can identify … pretty quickly as to whom your clientele is going to be.”
Breweries such as BearWaters provide an “economic boom” for small towns such as Canton. Moreover, as cities such as Asheville crowd and drive up the cost of living, these bedroom communities provide an attractive location for both families and tourists alike.
“It’s typically Mom or Dad. Historically, more moms staying home with the kids and Dad after work stopped by [the bar] to have a beer with friends,” O’Neil said. “So then Dad started staying home with the kids and mom would stop by and have a beer with friends.”
Enter the community brewery.
“Then, they were like, ‘Hey, let’s take the kids with us,'” he said, “so [we are] making a family thing out of it.”
At BearWaters, there are no chairs at the bar, said O’Neil, who has worked in the food-and-beverage industry for 35 years.
“You have to go out and sit at a table, and that keeps it from being a bear cave at the bar,” he said. “It also keeps there from being a co-dependent relationship between 10-to-15 people who sit at the bar for four hours and the bartender.”
Not only does it free up the bartender, but it also provides a friendly environment for new customers, who won’ t have “to fight through a ring of people just to get to a bartender.”
“We also close at 9 p.m.,” O’Neil said. “We don’t stay open for last call. We don’t want to be last call.”
Bear Waters has attached itself to its small-town model, providing an economic boom and place of unity, so don’t expect it to look back.
“We really see ourselves as a manufacturer, embracing the concept of a small town that still makes something,” he said. “All these little towns in North Carolina — they would make blue jeans and shoes and all kinds of things.”
Continued O’Neil: “Well, manufacturing disappeared,” he said, “so we really see ourselves as a way of bringing manufacturing back.”
Expanding its distribution
When BearWaters left nearby Waynesville for Canton in 2017, O’Neil’s fellow co-owner Kevin Sandefur — who handles the brewing process for BearWaters — worked with a 15-barrel system.
Now, within eight months of the new location’s opening, the demand for the brewery has outgrown its present capabilities.
In early 2018, BearWaters filed a Form D with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Within the filing, the company indicated it had raised $325,000. The filing indicated the company might raise up to $605,000, but O’Neil said the company only raised about $445,000.
O’Neil said BearWaters intends to add a canning line, add two 30-barrel tanks and four 10-barrel tanks in the location’s basement.
“We needed the 10s to really service the taproom,” O’Neil said. “As we begin distribution of kegs and cans into the community, we needed the 30s to help us meet the demand.”
Presently, BearWaters’ beers are distributed by Bud of Asheville, which delivers to the 12 westernmost counties of North Carolina.
“During 2018, we hope to expand to the rest of the state and possibly into Virginia and South Carolina,” he said.
In order to do this, BearWaters has begun searching for another distributor but isn’t yet leaning to any particular company yet.
“[It’s] sort of a marriage for life,” O’Neil said. “It’s real heard to break that, so you have to be careful whom you’re going to distribute with… — that’s the number one thing.”
Next, BearWaters must continue to create demand for itself. While it helps that the brewing company earned a third place at the October 2017 Great American Beer Festival in Denver, it will have to market itself in a more direct setting.
“You enter legitimate competitions and hope that your beer can place and medal,” he said, “and that is one way to help get your name out. The other obviously is to have a sales force that takes the beer and lets people try it, encourages beer sales — both packaged and kegs.”
And, while O’Neil and Sandefur have their sights set outward, feel free to bring your kids over to downtown Canton. Order at the bar, but be sure to sit at a table.
