Phase Three Brewing (2019)

I'm loving this debate about who is the bad party here. Really, More bet their business on Shaun being their head brewer - smart move. But the 1) Didn't offer him any share of the business to keep him? 2) Didn't include him in decisions at all levels regarding the beer and business? 3) Didn't even have him sign a non compete clause? I guess there is some people saying there was a two year contract, but did More take any steps to re-up it when they were planning their big expansion? Hell, Toppling Goliath is suing another brewery in Iowa because one of their brewers, who signed a non compete, went to work for a brewery started by his family. They at least had the foresight to get a non compete.
I'm sure there are both sides to the story, but in my mind More made some short sighted or bad business decisions here.

 

No, that was me. I called every few minutes in case they got new information.

 

I love a good lot of speculation and gossip as much as anyone. But I did want to pipe in about the TTB confusion here.

If P3 is going to do the traditional contract set up, they need a wholesaler's permit and LZB needs a permit amendment to add DBA P3 to their original permit. This will normally take on the order of 3-4 weeks, but with the backlog the TTB has from the government shutdown, it could take as long as 8 weeks.

P3 can't apply for their state permit until they have everything in order with the TTB.

With regards to Shaun brewing or not brewing, a contract brewing setup is defined by, you guessed it, the contract. As long as the host brewery is willing to assume all of the tax liability, paperwork, bond coverage, etc. there is nothing to say that he can't come in and brew his own shit. It will just all be tracked inside of LZB's permit and reporting.... until it goes out the door when it becomes property of P3. Alt-props are so complicated because you're trying to split the operational responsibility, mainly the tax liability and the bond stuff among two operating entities and the TTB wants to look over your plans to make sure you're not potentially screwing them out of tax dollars.

You can also sometimes significantly speed up all of the permitting up by hiring expediters. They exist for both TTB permits and state permits and they are basically private practice lawyers who used to work for one of the above. They review your permit to make sure there are no errors and when they are sure it is approvable, they call their contacts in those agencies and get your stuff moved to the top and approved. This is possible because the vast majority of permits have errors that cause the specialists to briefly move on to the next permit in the stack until they encounter an error and move on to the next one, etc.

 

Finally. An initiate worth a shit.

 

I doubt he takes the job if they required a non-compete.

 

Well....are they?

 

Call’em
Let us know!

 

Aliens need someplace to put their subliminal OBEY messages?

 

"Enjoy" might be a stretch.

And besides, how else are Iowa State coaches going to move up? I, for one, am eagerly anticipating the Steve Prohm era.

 

Props to @3xAnthony for actually dropping some real knowledge in here. I’ve now learned about expediters, and feel like The Expediters is a tv show or movie ready to explode...or maybe just a new version of Frooted.

 

Going to play devil's advocate on some of these points.

I don't actually see this as being all that unusual. The Patels seemed to be putting up all of the capital and assuming the risk. If things went south, Shaun would have had other options. Even if it was offered, would Shaun have taken it? The vast amount of control would still have been with Sunny. Heck, it might have been a worse situation for Shaun if he did have a small level of equity. What would happen if he wasn't able to divest his ownership interest?

Well, TG did get some backlash for trying to enforce the NCA, and they eventually reached an undisclosed settlement that allowed the guy to keep working on his brother's brewery, so...was it worth it? Given Shaun's standing among his fans, I would think it'd be a lose-lose situation for MoRE. They'd be spending $$ on a case they might not be able to win (given the IL courts' recent reluctance to enforce NCAs) and they'd generate a lot of bad blood in trying to go after Shaun.

I mean, there's already a lot of people primed to bash MoRE on the speculation of some unsubstantiated "shady" behavior. I can only imagine the pitchforks and torches that would turn out if they filed suit against Shaun (though in that situation, I guess bad move #4 would have been putting the brewery next to a garden supply store).

 

The assistant brewer John who has been brewing under Shaun has been named head brewer

 

Good points. I'll add that Shaun's case isn't analogous to the TG brewer so it's tough to propose a non-compete for a new business venture.
1- I don't believe the TG brewer was the head brewer
2- TG had existing, proprietary recipes they were worried about being duplicated by the brewer leaving
3- Shaun created all the beers at More, he wasn't brewing existing, proprietary recipes.

 

This isnt shocking, promote from within. Like Ram did with Justin

 

And what has Justin done since?

Oh, yeah, killing it with HB.

 

Congrats on being so enlightened, your parents must be so proud.

The simple point is people for thousands of years have enjoyed gossiping, especially gossiping about things they enjoy.

 

Exactly, he seems to do pretty well with taking these guys under his wing.

 

Even my parents don't like me, guess I need to gossip more.

 

Foreign Exchange did this with some BA product that was sitting at Ram Schaumburg. And made a very delicious beer out of it....

 

I exclusively read Bodhisattvas.