Get Right. Drink Bright.
Bright Ideas Brewing is a small brewery based in North Adams, Massachusetts. Located at the stoop of the world’s largest modern art Museum: Mass MoCA, Bright Ideas is a favorite stopping point of museum patrons, locals and beer tourists alike. The brainchild of Orion Howard, an oncologist turned entrepreneur and Eric Kerns, a developer, and partner of Tourists Hotel. We interviewed Orion Howard, and Taproom Supervisor + Marketing Director Makayla McGeeney on what makes Bright Ideas tick.
Why did you create Bright Ideas Brewery?
Orion: We created Bright Ideas to try to transcend the MASS MoCA/North Adams barrier that some people perceive exists. There were tons of people in North Adams who stepped onto the MASS MoCA campus for the first time to go to the brewery and said “This is the first time I've set foot on the MASS MoCA campus since my parents lost their jobs here in 1984.” There is a populous in North Adams that was wounded by Sprague Electric closing, and leaving, and firing a couple thousand people. Some said the city would never be the same and they wanted manufacturing back in North Adams, and when an art museum came instead, they translated that into MASS MoCA hurting the city.
Bright Ideas is right at the entryway of MASS MoCA, so we are a meeting ground between the museum and North Adams. We actually looked at the place where Tunnel City ended up going, which was farther in, and we purposely chose our current location predominantly because we want to be the transition at the edge of North Adams and the MASS MoCA campus.
It all started when Joe Thompson and I were actually having a beer over at a little brewery in Stephentown, New York. We'd been watching the tourists coming up Route 22 from New York City to go to Vermont to ski. We'd been watching the tourists come into this little brewery, that had like 10 seats, and sit down and talk to the locals about what there was to do locally. Joe remarked, “This is what we need at MASS MoCA. Something where these tourists and these locals can interact. That's the way we bridge this gap.” And that discussion led to the opening of the Bright Ideas. I never said I wanted to open a brewery. The brewery was a means to an end.
Bright Ideas Taproom Entrance
What makes Bright Ideas different?
Makayla: Bright is different because everyone who works here gets along really well and hangs out outside of work. I've never felt more confident about a group of employees, especially how well we communicate with each other and how hard we work together because we are all working towards the same goal. Orion is an open book and I can talk to him about anything. He frequently reminds us all that we're in an industry that's supposed to be fun. We sell a product that makes people happy. Don't sweat the little things. That's really encouraging.
Orion: The main impetus for opening Bright Ideas was to have fun. I mean, it was basically a hobby gone really amok, so when that's the impetus for doing something is: “everything is possible” and standard motivations are gone; that's what makes it so interesting. The goal has been to be self sufficient, not “hey, I need to figure out what to do with my life to make money.”
What is the most difficult thing about running the business?
Makayla: The most difficult thing, at least for a young professional who is new to a lot of these operations, is navigating how to problem solve or deal with confrontation. Every day is not blue skies and rainbows, so it's been a process of learning how to do the right thing and figure out how to communicate with staff members about important or sensitive issues, especially because we're all so close. Sometimes you have to take off the friend hat and put on the manager hat.
Orion: People problems. My medical career is run by logic as the predominant driver. Many times the logical option is the solution. Sometimes people's problems can interfere, and cancer patients don't always choose the logical option medically; it turns out the same thing is true with beer.
You would think opening a business with the objective to “have fun and to do something that's great for the museum and for North Adams” would have easy interactions with patrons. But boy, beer, it turns out, is as emotionally driven as anything else. At the end of the day, people just don’t make sense. When Danny [our brewer] is all excited about a new beer, it’s great. But then, the first review comes in and it’s three stars and the comment was “great brewery, great vibe, had to walk through a thunderstorm to get my beer today.” So literally the beer review is influenced by the thunderstorm and the fact that the person didn’t bring an umbrella. Now that beer looks like it’s terrible, and Danny had to wait three weeks for the beer rating to recover because someone forgot an umbrella. What do you do? Do you reach out to that person and say, “Hey dude, Danny really likes this beer and you just demoralized him. Our team has invested all this time and effort into this beer. This is the first review that this beer has received. We have to live with that and stare at this rating until it recovers because you forgot an umbrella?”
I've known for 30 years how to deal with people in the medical world. I’m still learning how to deal with the human element of this business even after being open for five years.
What challenges have you faced previously that Prix Fixe was able to help you with?
Makayla: Prix Fixe has been an incredible support system for Bright Ideas. We've had three managerial transitions in the last year and it's like they've been working alongside us in the office the entire time. When the COVID crisis hit they were open and generous about unemployment information to staff members who didn't feel comfortable working anymore and they’ve helped educate the management team in the same vein. I've always heard that QuickBooks was a difficult program but Prix Fixe has helped me navigate it really easily. They also take a large load of accounting off our backs to the point where we just have to forward bills and docs via email. Overall the help is super convenient and allows the on-the-ground staff to pay attention to other issues that may be otherwise pushed to the side.
Orion: I'm not a typical owner. I don't have a retail business skill set. I opened this for all the reasons I said before, so I really need to delegate all of my CFO/COO responsibilities to somebody that I trust. I want to hire people that are fun, not just because they are good at a different skill set than I am. So with Prix Fixe, I was able to leave all the difficult decision making to PFA and just be the fun guy and let PFA be the hard asses. I like being able to say “sorry my accountant won’t let me.” I also love being able to trust that PFA understands what my mission is. Prix Fixe treats the brewery differently than my other endeavors. I have a different set of goals for the brewery and finding an accountant that understands that profitability isn’t an easy thing to find.
What is our favorite part about owning Bright Ideas?
Orion: Having a lot of fun with my staff and being known as the “weird beer-doctor-guy.” As far as I'm aware, there are no other physicians that own a brewery. My partner, Teresa, and I have also learned to love “beer tourism.” We make brewery visits a part of like 50% of our trips.
What do you love most about the craft beer industry?
Makayla: I really enjoy the camaraderie behind it and how there's not much competition – at least for us because we're the only brewery in the Northern Berkshires. It's also a nice group of young people that I fit in with. I think after college it's hard to find your niche and you tend to have fewer friends but traveling and visiting different breweries and geeking out over styles of beer is a unique hobby. Some are into the science and some are into just the flavors, etc. Plus, who isn't happy sitting in the sunshine sipping on a beer? It's literally my ideal day.
Orion Howard, owner of Bright Ideas Brewing
Orion: The camaraderie. The fact that I can go to a brewery in Indiana and I can sit down and try their beer and they will recognize that I'm like a beer guy. They will send somebody out to sit down and talk to me without even saying to them “Hey, I own a brewery.” I can carry myself as somebody who understands the nuance of the industry and create these great, fun partnerships. It's just a blast to create camaraderie between breweries. For example, there's this little brewery in New Jersey that produces one fifth of the beer that we do and every time we go down to Philly, I go by Trillium and Treehouse and pick up some beer for him. He's this world-class brewer who’s beer you simply cannot get. I have a key code for his brewery, and there's a fridge in back and we do this exchange at 11 o'clock at night.
Next steps for Bright?
Makayla: In the short term, we're focusing on canning as much beer as possible and having fun with different hops and exploring new fruited sour beers. Without having folks in the taproom we're trying to spread awareness through social media and wholesale distribution. We want people to know we're still here and brewing. The 16 oz. cans/4-packs increase exposure in the pioneer valley and south county so that helps with marketing. Once people feel comfortable, and we reopen for onsite consumption, we know they didn't forget about us and can still visit.
Orion: Long term, we need to expand. We’re limited in our capacity and we can keep doing exactly what we're doing and everybody will be happy but there's a tendency in this world to keep growing in some way and the question now is: “how?” It may not be volume, it may not be revenue, it may not be a bigger footprint.
At this point when we basically have our audience maximized. We have a beautiful revenue model producing all the beer we can for our taproom, but what next? Do we start producing weird beers? Do we start producing something really exotic? Do we try to generate super highly reviewed beers?
We need to find a way to grow that is mission compatible. That’s a question that I am still trying to mull over.
What was the first beer you had that made you appreciate craft beers?
Marketing Extraordinaire Makayla McGeeney sips on the Mack Attack IPA, the first of many beers to be dedicated to a team-member
Makayla: I'm not sure what my first beer was because I went through a Coors Summer Brew (orange) phase followed by a Bud Light Platinum (7% come on) phase. A few beers that really set me off into the craft beer world were a variety of Long Trail IPAs, Ballast Point Sculpin IPA, and Flower Power IPA from Ithaca Brewing. Now I wouldn't touch those beers unless it was from the source, but man they were good when I was in college.
Orion: Whoo hmm. That's a really tricky question! I keep coming back to the same beer, and each time it’s popped into my head, I tried to put it out because I said “that can't possibly be an important beer to me.” With that said, it's probably the right answer even though it's not that exciting. It's “old brown dog” by SmuttyNose in New Hampshire. I had just graduated from medical school and had an internship in residency in Boston. It was the first beer that I had had that was different from anything I had had before and now we would look at that beer and say. “It's old, it's nothing fancy, it's just a brown ale,” but at the time, it was revolutionary.