Have a Nice Beer: Hoppy Brewing Company
Like many others, Troy Paski of Hoppy Brewing Company got into making beer when he received a homebrew kit as Christmas present. Shortly after that fateful day in 1991, he began to routinely brew beer for his friends and colleagues and they encouraged him to enter his brew and labels into contents. Sure enough both his beer and labels started winning awards.
During this same period, Troy was a customer at the Silicon Valley brewpubs Tide House and Gordon Biersch. He looked into the possibility of opening a similar establishment in Atlanta, Georgia. Several factors (such as the weather and laws in Georgia) made him change his mind and instead consider opening a brewpub in San Jose.
Before attempting a brewpub, however, Troy would try selling his product, “T.Roy’s homebrew,” on the market. Like many other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Troy went looking for funds for his venture. But he had advantages unavailable to all those people peddling business plans for semiconductors or database software. “Now being in Silicon Valley, people are raising money on a daily basis by whatever means, but when you walk into somebody’s office with a pitch, and you bring a “real” six pack carrier with beer, with labels, bottle caps as a gift that was hand bottled with homebrew from my bathtub, and this is the product you’re talking about raising money for, you’d be surprised at how many heads turn and give you their attention. Besides you’re giving them beer and there are not too many people who turn down FREE beer. We rounded up enough money to get us into production in 1994, with the idea that if anyone liked the product, and kept buying it, we’d look at raising more money and try to open a brewpub.”
It was during this period the name of the company was changed from T.ROY Brewing Company to Hoppy Brewing Company. However, the plans for a brewpub in San Jose had stalled when in 1999 Troy learned of a failing brewpub located in Sacramento. “In May they called back and said they’d take our offer if we would be willing to take over the place on the first of June. What the hell did I know about running a restaurant? But the thought was, being a Systems Engineer, it’ll be a fun puzzle to put together and make work. Needless to say, with the help of various friends over the years, we’ve been growing consistently at about 8% a year now for over the past seven years.”
In addition, Hoppy’s beer has won many awards, even though Troy tell us, “We typically stand behind a little motto that we don’t make beer to fit into certain styles just to win awards, we make beer that we like drinking and try to find a style from time-to-time where we think a particular beer might have a chance at winning. With that being said, it also puzzles me when we do win an award one year, but a year or so later the very same beer gets no love from the judges…Go figure?”
For those thinking of getting into brewing professionally, Troy doesn’t downplay the difficulties. He quotes what Pete Slosberg of Pete’s Wicked Ale told him when he was starting out, “There are only so many tap-handles and so much shelf space to be had.” As for brewpubs, Troy says “The equipment cost upfront can be an issue with startup costs, and then who’s going to brew the beer, cook in the kitchen, serve the customers, and do it in a consistent manner? It’s not easy, which is why most establishments fail.”
Still, Troy insists that a real passion can overcome the obstacles, “I can’t think of anything else that gives me more satisfaction than seeing people enjoy the fruits of our labor…Passion and perseverance will always prevail over the naysayer, the smart people, and the money people. Lastly, failure is not an option, and if it is and you can afford to fail, you probably won’t succeed.”
