Russ: This is the BusinessMakers show, heard on the radio and seen online at the businessmakers.com. Have another cool guest here at Doing Business over Coffee at PKF Texas. With me now, I have Rassul Zarinfar - founder and CEO of Buffalo Bayou Brewing Company. Rassul, welcome to The BusinessMakers Show.
Rassul: Thanks for having me, Russ. This is great to be here.
Russ: You bet. Well, tell us about Buffalo Bayou Brewing Company.
Rassul: Sure. Buffalo Bayou Brewing Company is a very, very small microbrewery that we're just getting off the ground here at the end of 2011. To give you a sense of how small - our year five goal is to be like one-sixth the size of what St. Arnold's is right now, so we're gonna focus on really kind of strange beers and really cool ingredients that tell a story.
Russ: Describe a strange beer.
Rassul: Well, for instance, one of the beers that we're developing is gonna be out hopefully in February is bright pink and really questions the notion of what is beer.
Russ: That's the name of it?
Rassul: Well, we haven't really figured out the name but the color is bright pink.
Russ: Oh, wow.
Rassul: We're using a special sort of flower and what we're doing is we're taking this 300 year old recipe from the Belgian wits and a very light Belgian white ale and we're adding a couple of spices and a couple of types of fruit and then this one specific flower that makes it bright pink and it's just crazy.
Russ: What's it gonna taste like?
Rassul: It's kind of a balance between sweet and a little bit of sour and tartness and then it's got some floral notes and then it's also got some spice from the coriander and from the ginger so it's kinda strange.
Russ: Now I know when you're starting a microbrewery you might start with kegs and stuff and eventually get to bottles, but when you get to bottles with the pink beer, is it gonna be in a clear bottle?
Rassul: Well, no, you know light will totally mess up a beer's complexion.
Russ: So you won't be able to appreciate the color unless you poured it out into a glass.
Rassul: Well, we'll let that be a surprise.
Russ: Well all right, cool. So, what's the status of the company? I mean you mentioned early stage and small. What's the status of the company today? Could I go down and buy a beer from your brewery today?
Rassul: Well, I can bring you a beer as long as you don't tell anyone I brought it for you, but it's a really long process starting up a brewery because you've got layers of regulation, both in terms of construction, the health department and just alcohol in general so we started along this path last October and we've been going at a steady pace and we're in the midst of construction right now and we should hopefully be able to have you over for a legal beer a couple of months from now.
Russ: Mine doesn't have to be legal. I mean, when we were talking before the interview, you mentioned another beer that you're brewing that was going to be 11 percent alcohol, right?
Rassul: Yeah, so our first beer right out of the gate - it's our first seasonal in December - is gonna be a huge stout that's 11 percent AVB, which is about three times the size of Guinness and then gingerbread spices on top. So cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves - when you open up a glass of that, it's just - it's Christmas morning right in your nose and it's pretty exciting. But it's an easy drinking beer.
Russ: All right. Well, I'll drink to that.
Rassul: Sounds good. I'll bring some by.
Russ: All right, so anyway, at the end of the day I'm kind of just a business guy and I always know, boy, that's a huge step to get that first sort of customer, somebody to start buying your product. Soon, based on what you're saying, you're not even there yet. You haven't got anybody committed or have you?
Rassul: Well, you know I've been selling beer here in Houston for about 11 years so I've got a lot of connections in the industry which is really fortunate.
Russ: So you've spent some time in the industry.
Rassul: Well, yeah and it would be illegal if I were to have brought any of those samples around to retailers so I certainly wouldn't have done that, but of course we did that.
Russ: Great. Heard right here on The BusinessMakers Show.
Rassul: Yeah, exactly, well, what's nice about it is Houston's full of some really amazing craft beer lovers and it's just starting to bubble up to the surface and it's been brewing for the last 15 something years and St. Arnold's has done a really great job of cultivating that beer culture and so everyone's really excited. Everyone that you say, "Hey we're starting a new idea and this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna bring new ingredients into the mix. We're gonna bring new ideas into the mx" I mean, everyone's excited about that so it's pretty fun. I've brought some of that pink beer around town and people say, "Is that beer?" "Yeah" "It tastes really good."
Russ: Cool, cool. Now there's different forms of distribution, of course. You know there's bars, and then there's keg beer in bars and there's grocery stores but aren't all of them fiercely competitive? I mean it's not just a layup to go in there and get them to carry your beer.
Rassul: It's not. It's not at all. What's funny about the beer industry is everyone says, "Oh, it's so much fun and I really want to get into the industry." Well, we're talking about an industry that's highly regulated in everything we do and extremely competitive and it's really hard to differentiate and it's really hard to get your name out as something different.
Russ: And it's pretty expensive to get started, too.
Rassul: It's been a pretty high price tag for a typical start up.
Russ: Yeah, and so - but you've already got the funding taken care of?
Rassul: Yep, yep. We raised in between half a million and a million dollars and locked that down pretty -
Russ: By just one big venture capitalist or something?
Rassul: No, actually, we did a very different capital raise. We went completely decentralized so I've got about 30 to 50 investors depending on how you end count investors. A lot of people who are here at PKF and in the room and I'm really fortunate to have a great team in terms of just everyone being so incredibly diverse and the skills that they have and everyone just really unified by a love of beer which is really cool.
Russ: Wow, well, that's good. That sounds real good. Now before we leave, I gotta understand what sort of triggered this idea to do this? You mentioned already working and sort of in the distribution part of beer. What got you into the love?
Rassul: Well, right after business school I was working for a startup craft distributor out in Florida and that didn't really work out that well and so I came back to Houston because I hadn't lived in Houston for about two years at that point, but everywhere I went I kept talking about how much I missed Houston. I just love the city. And I was sitting around with my friends and everyone just kind of pushed me into it and just kept going along the way and I kept meeting people along the way, like our Real Estate Agent who found our location and as soon as I walked in, I was like, "Wow. This is it." Or like, Culture Pilot, who you just interviewed -they do all my design work and they're just really awesome to work with and when they first gave me back some of the ideas that they had on their logos that's when it was like, "Wow. This is the real deal. This is actually not just a PowerPoint deck or 128 page business plan."
Russ: Sounds exciting and sounds fun,
Rassul: Well, fun's an interesting word, right? It's absolutely terrifying but it's fun in moments.
Russ: Okay, well, let's say that we have a viewer or a listener right now that's an avid fan of beer and they want to kind of follow you and understand the status. Can they do that today?
Rassul: Yeah. Well our website is BuffBrew.com or BuffaloBayouBrewing.com and then we've got a Facebook page that we keep pretty well updated and we've gotten a little bit of coverage recently so that's very nice.
Russ: Great, great. Well, Rassul, we definitely wish you good luck and kind of want to stay posted and maybe bring you back and you update us on how you're doing.
Rassul: And I'll bring beer nest time.
Russ: All right, fantastic. Really appreciate it.
Rassul: Thanks, Russ.
Russ: You bet. That's Rassul Zarinfar, the founder of Buffalo Bayou Brewing Company and this is The BusinessMakers show heard on the radio and seen online at thebusinessmakers.com
