Episode #5 - Resilience, TPS Reports & Pivoting During The Pandemic With Alex Kurnellas Of Imperial Bottle Shop & Taproom
Listen
Watch
Description
In our 5th episode, Kerry interviews Alex Kurnellas, the co-owner of Imperial Bottle Shop & Taproom which was named one of Draft magazine's top 100 Best Craft Beer Bars in the US in 2014 &15, and recently won the 2020 Oregon Beers Award for best pivot. Alex tells us about what it was like growing up in the family restaurant business, childhood trauma, pivoting his business during the pandemic, and his resilient nature.
About Alex Kurnellas
Alex Kurnellas grew up working weekends and summers at his dad’s diner in Trenton, New Jersey. Through college, he worked as a server, bartender, cook, and restaurant manager, all the while dreaming of getting a “real job.” When Alex graduated, he started an 11-year career as a professional business writer, which he eventually despised So Alex and his wife opened Imperial Bottle Shop & Taproom in 2013. Imperial was named one of DRAFT Magazine America’s 100 Best Bars in both 2014 and 2015, and more recently won the 2020 Oregon Beer Award for Best Pivot.
Show Notes
Imperial Bottle Shop On Facebook
Imperial Bottle Shop On Instagram
Imperial Bottle Shop's Website
Transcript
.Kerry Finsand: 0:10
Hello there. And welcome to successfully depressed. And I'm your host, Kerry Finsand. This show is all about helping solo entrepreneurs navigate mental and physical health. Today's guest is Alex Kurnellas. Alex Kurnellas grew up working weekends and summers in his dad's diner in Trenton, New Jersey through college. He worked as a server bartender cook and restaurant manager all while dreaming of getting a real job. When Alex graduated, he started an 11 year career as a professional business writer, which he eventually despised. So Alex and his wife, uh, opened up Imperial Bottle Shop and tap room in 2013. Uh, and Imperial was named one of Draft magazine's top 100 best craft beer bars in the us in 2014 and 15, and has recently won the 2020 Oregon beers award for best pivot. Welcome to the show, Alex.
Alex Kurnellas: 1:04
Thank you, Kerry. Thanks for having me.
Kerry Finsand: 1:07
Well, your bio there kind of tells a story of you've been in the hospitality business for a long time. So you understand the rat race it is.
Alex Kurnellas: 1:17
Absolutely. It was definitely something, uh, I was born into, you know, my grandfather was a Greek immigrant and, uh, you know, he owned a, a Greek box car diner in the Bronx, in the fifties and sixties. And my dad owned a all night diner in Trenton, New Jersey. He opened over 10 restaurants when I was a kid. And, uh, so I was always sort of involved in that process and working at my dad's restaurants, uh, as a bus boy or, or a dishwasher or something when I was younger was. It was like free babysitting for my parents. They could just sort of put me there, have me work and they knew I would be staying out of trouble.
Kerry Finsand: 1:56
Yeah. That's the thing with the family business. Know you, if you have a larger family, lots of kids, it, uh, let's say it makes for cheaper labor.
Alex Kurnellas: 2:03
Certainly it was a good deal for me. I mean, I, I made, you know, very little, little amount of money under the table for my dad, but you know, when you're a young kid, you know, it's more money than any other kid has. So I felt like I was, you know, rolling big with my, uh, you know, couple dollars an hour that I would make.
Kerry Finsand: 2:20
But I guess growing up in that you, you started learning, you know, the ins and out of the business and what it takes and yeah. Um, I'm not sure how hands on either your father, your grandfather, they were in their businesses. Were they very hands on in just doing everything?
Alex Kurnellas: 2:35
Absolutely. My dad growing up, working for my grandfather, uh, when he would work at his diner, he was the, the cook and the, the server, you know, you'd walk in, he would take your order and then go behind the counter, cook your food and serve it. And, uh, my dad kind of wanted the same for me. My dad is pretty hands on with his businesses. And, um, so as I was younger he really wanted to teach me a lot of the things about front of the house, back of the house. Um, you know, as we opened Imperial, I remember my wife saying like, oh, how do you know all this stuff? And, uh, a lot of it wasn't even stuff that was next, you know, necessarily taught to me by my father, but just, you know, I, I picked up by observing.
Kerry Finsand: 3:15
Yeah, I think that's great about that is that, um, I guess whether you liked it or not, you got to be in their intern or your, his apprentice, or however you wanna look at it, but you were able to learn the fundamental business skills, which then you could apply to a place like a bottle shop, which I didn't know that about you, that you had that background cuz you know, a lot of people obviously start something in hospitality industry, a restaurant or a bar, cuz like, oh this just be so much fun. And so cool. And people ask me all the time, how come you haven't started a brewery or a beer bar? Especially when I was in that world all the time. And I was like, That's a different beast. Like, I could be part of a team, but I don't know the ins and outs of the, the front of the house, the back of the house. I wanna do the marketing and sampling. That's it?
Alex Kurnellas: 3:59
Yeah. It's funny, it's something that you mentioned it sort of earlier in my bio, I talk about, you know, when I was working in, in college where I always wanted a real job and to me that meant some sort of career where I was in an office and things like that. I think a lot of people think about jobs in the service industry and they kind of take 'em for granted really. Um, a lot of people who don't work in the service industry can just, you know, have this dream or idea that they wanna open up a restaurant or a bar or a brewery, or even something small, like a bottle shop. And, uh, it's a lot more involved than you would really think, I mean, even working within, you know, restaurants nearly my whole life. I remember a lot of times there would even be, you know, a manager who's there that does a lot of the work ,on premise and they're not happy. They're disgruntled and they, oh, well I'm gonna quit. And you know, this place will be screwed without me. And you're like, well, no, not really, because there's a lot more as an owner, even on top of just the day to day management of a place. So it's not as easy as you think basically.
Kerry Finsand: 4:59
I guess there's two ways you can look at that one. There could be truth to that, and maybe their employer is tough to work with, you know? Yeah. And they truly are. And then there's other way where it's probably not a good business. Yeah. It's definitely not a good business if they're that key and, and there's not the processes in place. And that's what I've learned a lot in working from, at startups and other businesses. It's just, you go in and the lack of processes. If someone leaves a position you're kind of outta luck, cuz there's no playbook or anything.
Alex Kurnellas: 5:30
Yeah. I mean back in more of my sort of my corporate world, when I was trained to do some supervising and management and stuff like that, uh, one of the things that I was always told was a really good sign of a good boss is that their replacement is right underneath them. They're training the people beneath them and showing them the way. That's something I've always known too, that is something that a lot of people who are successful and getting promoted within a system, um, you can't get promoted unless you're replacements there. You know, it's, it's pointless for, in a corporate environment. if you promote one person and you don't have to replacement, then you're still having to hire and train a position. So it's not really a beneficial thing to the company.
Kerry Finsand: 6:08
Yeah. And you want people to grow in the company. If you don't want people to grow in the company, then it's not a good place to work and you don't have the right. The, my mindset. And I know for me at a college, I try to get into, uh, dental equipment sales and it was really competitive marketplace. And they said, you. you should go work for Enterprise Rent A Car. So I did, and because they had a great training program and it really was, and you kind of work your way up through the system and, you know, you have mentors and all that kind of stuff. Shout out to all those Enterprise Rent A Car people will pick you up.
Alex Kurnellas: 6:37
Yeah.
Kerry Finsand: 6:41
So then over time you became this technical writer, mm-hmm, tell me a little bit about what that was and you know, what kind of thing, what projects did you work on?
Alex Kurnellas: 6:49
Well, it, it was certainly an interesting career that I had. I started out sort of very entry level. Actually. This is down in, uh, Santa Barbara. I graduated from DC, Santa Barbara. Uh, 2004, if I'm remembering correctly. And there was sort of a, a slight recession at the time and a lot of unemployment. And so it was, I kind of had a hard time finding a job. I mean, when you graduate with a English Lit degree, there's, you know, limitations there. Um, so I ended up getting my first just sort of, you know, office, desk job type of thing, um, doing just basic administrative work at this company, because I had seen them hiring a writer and they actually had just hired a writer about the time they came in. And, um, I ended up just taking a random job cause I had to take a job. I wasn't writing at first. Uh, my boss was writing, uh, some, you know, SOPs standard operating procedures for this chemical manufacturing plant, uh, within sort of quality assurance. So it's like writing out procedures to standardize things. One day, you know, she knew I was an English major and handed me something, you know, an SOP that she wrote and asked me to proofread it. And I handed it back with just like tons of red writing on it. And then slowly over time, she just kind of started having me do her writing for her, um, without even really telling her bosses. And then I actually got moved out of that job and out from under her. And when I moved out from under her, they notice. you know, all of a sudden the writing wasn't as good. And so then they hired me as a writer cuz she was like, oh well he's been writing. Amazing. So they hired me as a writer.
Kerry Finsand: 8:15
Okay. That's good. You, you got recognized.
Alex Kurnellas: 8:18
So I started off writing, writing standard operating procedures in this company. And then I had to, uh, proofread a bunch of their product profiles with some marketing documents that I sort of did the same thing. I actually ended up like revamping their entire format and stuff for the marketing department. So they hired me part-time too. And slowly I, I spent seven years at my first job and slowly but surely I just started taking over more and more writing responsibilities. Um, and then pretty much I was in charge of all, you know, and then I had, you know, I was made a supervisor. I had employees, I was in charge of almost all the writing and then I was also running meetings. I was running a product design you know, scaling up meetings and, uh, I wasn't writing anymore at all. And I had all these responsibilities and my salary didn't really increase to reflect that, of course. I sort of worked that job for years and years without a promotion and got tired of it. So just quit outta nowhere and moved to Portland. And then in Portland, I got a similar job. I worked for a civil engineering and environmental consulting company. Um, and again, I started off just writing primarily entirely marketing and communications. Uh, it was an international engineering firm. So there were certain fun things about working there, but then again, uh, you. Eventually, I just started taking on more responsibilities and spending half my day in meetings. And, you know, it was totally sort of a TPS report type of situation where I had like eight bosses where if I maybe did one thing wrong, I'd hear about it from eight different people.
Kerry Finsand: 9:45
I've been there with maybe two or three.
Alex Kurnellas: 9:47
Yeah, well it was basically, you know, anyone with a VP in their title was my boss. So, um, and I would have to write, you know, one, one thing that I would write would have to get approved by eight different people and with all sort of different competing objectives. And, uh, so it was just, it was a little frustrating and
Kerry Finsand: 10:05
It was time move on what, when did this, this idea of creating Imperial bottle shop and beer bar? When when was that?
Alex Kurnellas: 10:13
It, it really started, you know, I moved to Portland in 2010. I started, you know, frequenting, uh, some other beer bars, bottle shops. I, we used to go to Bridgetown. We used to live in north Portland, so it was like Bridgetown, Saraveza, hop and vine. And, you know, I, I really started getting again, sick of sort of the corporate world and sort of longing for this more simplicity and sort of, you know, working with the general public and having sort of a defined space, um, of where your work was. I never really wanted to enter the restaurant world, uh, because I knew how much time and stress that added to my father's life. And, uh, it actually really, really affected sort of how my father could parent me when I was younger. Um, he was always busy, you know, he'd be working on birthdays, things like that. And, um, I really didn't want that and I didn't wanna have to manage a kitchen and a front of house bath and all this. And so I saw this, you know, bottle shop sort of tap room model as this really sort of simplified, uh, narrowed down sort of version of, of operating a restaurant. So it became, you know, really attractive to me in terms of, you know, the startup costs were low, overhead costs were low, things like that. I sort of made the mistake of thinking like, oh, it's gonna be really easy to operate this place. But certainly there's even more complications than I thought initially.
Kerry Finsand: 11:34
Yeah, no, I mean, there, there always are. It always, uh, takes more time and more money. And now from the idea of concept to actually the day that you first launched, how long did that take you to do that?
Alex Kurnellas: 11:46
Like eight or nine month. I wrote the business plan, you know, I had, you know, a long Thanksgiving day weekend for my job off. And so I wrote my business plan over that Thanksgiving weekend. And in two days I wrote up on really long business proposal business plan basically. And so, yeah, that was in Thanksgiving. And then I worked on, uh, finding, you know, funding and stuff like that through the year and planning. And, um, I think I signed a lease in like April or May of that year. So it was a pretty quick turnaround.
Kerry Finsand: 12:16
Well, being on Southeast Portland division street, uh, that Street's changed so much. And especially since you've been there and it used to be a street where I live close to like North William street in Portland and that's totally changed. Um, and, and division street, it just popped up with all these new places and it became this amazing kind of Mecca for restaurants and bars and just kind of people hanging out and so stuff. So I think that was, you know, a good kind of up and coming location. Being passionate with craft beer, one thing that was important to you was to curate a very good taplist. I think I was reading an interview you did with a mutual friend, Andy, uh, Pruitt who writes from Willamette Week about, uh, you know, pivoting your business and everything. And that article you were talking about, you know, driving out to, to the Gorge and getting Double Mountain's fresh hop, uh, red and green. But because back then there wasn't many fresh hop beer. So you brought in some unique things and it kind of started building that culture. So tell me a little bit about, you know, With your kind of marketing, your kind of concept is place of how you kind of build up the the culture of what your business is.
Alex Kurnellas: 13:20
Yeah. I'd like that you use the word culture because, you know, it's something that I've, uh, always sort of, you know, really focused on too with my business is about that culture that, that we have. When we opened in 2013, um, you know, craft beer, certainly wasn't quite as big as it was now. Um, but I, I certainly didn't feel like there was, uh, necessarily a need for another bottle shop and tap room at that time. In fact, opening it in the Southeast, I was, uh, really, really sensitive to how close and was almost didn't move into my location cuz of how close it is to beer mongers and Belmont station in particular. Um, but sort of the one thing that, you know, we really wanted to do and we really wanted to start off with, and you know, again, I opened it with my wife, Shawn, and one of the things that was really sort of important to us is that, you know, craft beer in 2013 was still. Slightly esoteric in a way, um, you know, where, you know, if you get a person that doesn't know about beer and, you know, they walk into, you know, a bottle shop and they don't know what a, what a wit is or what a, whatever is, you know, they don't need to get necessarily necessarily someone rolling their eyes at them. And, and that's really kind of where we saw that niche of really making that bottle shop and tap room and really making it welcoming to everyone. We also saw, you know, a lot of bottle shops and craft beer world, really dominated by, you know, male, you know, as being a very sort of male centric, um, you know, being a very sort of white male heterosexual centric business. We really, really wanted to open it up and be more friendly, uh, to everyone, um, to, to have them feel more welcome. Um, so that's something that, that, you know, my wife and I, you know, worked on, you know, a good amount as we opened our.
Kerry Finsand: 15:08
I think one thing that works with your business in a lot of places that build the right culture is if you're in a good neighborhood and you build an inviting culture, then people will support it. And it's really important to have that, uh, that kind of local sense of you know, you walk into the bar and it's, it's it's oh, norm, you know, everyone, cheers, everyone knows you. And it's nice to have that feeling. And, and nowadays it's much harder to have that, cuz there's so many different places to go to, but it's, it's I think more than ever important now to kind of support a local place that's been there for a while, not just have that sort attention span. Oh, look at this hot newness and then move on to the next thing. And that's unfortunately that's, as we both know, and as someone that was in the craft beer world for a long time professionally now, just as a consumer. It became just like, yeah, Ooh, look what I can do. You know? And, and, and that, doesn't, that's not a long term business strategy. So that kind of leads me into with your business. You've, you've tried a lot of different things out and, you know, during the pandemic, the one thing that I always tried to encourage you with and, and appreciated was the fun things you would do, especially at your, uh, the previous location when you had your Imperial Bottle Shop on Alberta, cuz that's fairly close to my house. During Covid you kind of came up with this idea, let's do this Glu Bar, which is this concept of warm spice, ciders and wines and beers and creative cocktails and things like that. So can you kind of talk about kind of just. Trying these different kind of creative ideas out and kind of where the, what's your process of coming out, coming with these ideas and actually, how do you choose which ones to kind of bring to for fruition?
Alex Kurnellas: 16:55
Ooh, that's a good question. In terms the creativity I mean, a, a lot of things that have been, you know, that drive my, uh, creativity are, uh, this isn't very exciting, but a lot of it has to do with necessity and available resources. Through the pandemic obviously there was, you know, necessity of making money and things like that. And keeping our business alive and keeping, keeping people coming through the doors. Um, but again, because money was so tight and there were so many different supply issues, working with the resources that you really have was sort of, you know, really, really important to me basically. With the glue bar, um, what happened with that basically was, is. We had a second lockdown, basically it was 2020 things had started to sort of get a little normal towards the end of that summer. And then we had those fires with the smoke and then we had a pretty mellow fall. And then you have another sort of surge, I believe that was the Delta surge. Maybe I think that happened towards the end of 2020. So we had another lockdown. They told us we were gonna be locked down for a month. And then they, after two weeks they said, oh no, we're gonna open again. Um, but there was no inside dining. Allowed. Um, and that was just pretty killer through, through the winter, obviously. And what happened basically is, you know, we reopened for the holidays and right after Thanksgiving and it was just slow. Nobody really wanted to be outside in the cold. It was just completely kind of dead at the business one night when I was bartending. And so I just decided to, to mulled some cider, I heated up some cider and I blasted the music out the front. And I actually just went out there and was dancing and talking to people on the street and sold some hot cider. And the, you know, the, the street was pretty barren and there was nothing going on. And I ended up getting a crowd of, you know, maybe seven, eight people drinking at the end of the night and just listening to music and little dance party broke out and and, and so I basically. Started thinking about how to, you know, integrate hot drinks. Um, you know, if, if people were gonna be outside instead of, you know, really trying to warm the entire outside area, you know, give them something warm to put into their bodies instead. And I did have at the time, this massive seller of strong barrel aged beers and barrel aged sours, and, um, you know, really high quality beers, but, you know, they didn't really sell as much as they used to a couple years ago. I just sort of started putting these ideas together and, you know, with glu glu wine in particular, it's something that I had heard about. I, I had never even really had it at, you know, in Europe when I had traveled there, you know, it was something that I had only heard about from friends, traveling in Europe, friends, skiing in Europe, friends who had done, uh, you know, study abroad in Europe where they talk about glu wine as this magical thing, you know, it's this warm spice wine. And, you know, you drink it in these magical environments that, you know, at the ski lodge, outside at the slopes or at a Christmas market in Germany. And it, it just had this thing that resonated people and, and, and, and, you know, carried with people. And then, and, um, so it all just kind of added up to where I could open this little tiny glu bar thing. Something that you mentioned was how short of attention span people have these days, um, in terms of, uh, you know, people always wanna run to the new place and they figured about the old places I call it, basically I call it the Instagram story lifestyle, basically where something's around for 15 seconds, and then it disappears in 24 hours and people move on to the next thing and sort of absorbing that too. Uh, instead of just trying to sell drinks at my bar, I completely rebranded it and launched it as, you know, being this new bar, this glue bar, this pop up. And, um, and it was interesting. I mean, you know, just, just sort of that marketing and having its own Facebook page and Instagram page and its own logo. And, um, you know, there were people that were coming to the bar and didn't even know Imperial existed and just thought it was glue bar. Um, and, and. You know, so I've done that a couple times now in terms of, uh, essentially opening up what our kind of like fake popups, um, where I'm doing just a kind of something different with my business and I'll just remarket it.
Kerry Finsand: 21:25
What I liked about that was, um, you know, I definitely was all about, you know, supporting local businesses and you, you did a good job actually, you know, packaging everything together. And I like that smart that you got these beers from the seller and kind of put them out there and said, Hey, you know, it's it's wintertime and stuff. Uh, um, but what I liked about it was for me was it was an ex uh, experience. And that's what more nowadays, uh, especially the typical craft beer drinker, you kind of have to give him more of an experience to get him excited. So it was something unique. Uh, you had covered heated area. Uh, and you had Christmas music lights, and yeah. It just had a good vibe. And like you said, kinda like those, those winter markets in, um, in Europe and everything. Yeah. So, so that was cool. So you did that and then you reinvented it again and made the, the Fizz bar.
Alex Kurnellas: 22:17
Yeah, you know, necessarily, uh, it wasn't quite as popular as, as the Glu Bar. But with Glu bar, basically, uh, you know, one of the things we did was, sort of capture a new audience, um, you know, one of the things yeah, you mentioned it was sort of about, you know, the whole experience and that's something actually that I I've always really focused on is the experience, the customer experience. Um, which I think for particularly in craft beer world is really important these days, because you know, when I opened, you know, nine years ago in 2013, just being a craft beer cap and bottle shop was unique enough. To bring people in since then craft beer become sort of grossly oversaturated, you know, particularly in Portland and especially with tap rooms. Uh, you know, there seems to be, you know, a tap room in, in every neighborhood, you know, if, if not more than one and subsequently like, You know, every tap room's gonna go and curate a good taplist hopefully, you know, um, it, it, it's pretty hard not to have a good taplist now with so much great beer out there, you know, so really it's, it's, you know, the friendliness of your servers or your environment, you know, that overall experience, like you mentioned. Um, so with Glu Bar we were really intentional about that. You know, like you said, we, we put out a bunch of feel, good music, Christmas music, we had lights, things like that created this experience. We really, like I said, captured this sort of new audience of people that were more interested in wine and sort of other things. And so, you know, headed into, you know, spring summer, obviously hot drinks were gonna be too popular. So, you know, we really wanted to look at how we could capture that and, and what we could do. So we came up with Fizz, which was, you know, sort of a champagne cocktail bar where we using lots of sort of fund different ingredients, with the cocktails. And again, that would capture that sort of. You know, second audience, and bring them into the bar, and just provide sort of another sort of unique, fun offering.
Kerry Finsand: 24:11
Yeah and that trend of sparkling beverages with alcohol in them has become very popular, obviously, especially to the kind, uh, the 20 and 30 year olds let's say, uh, and craft beer is
Alex Kurnellas: 24:23
yeah.
Kerry Finsand: 24:23
Not quite as popular to them. At least in what I've seen, um, the industry has changed as well. You can get beer at gro grocery stores have their, you know, and Oregon, we're very unique for that. You know, everywhere you, you can think of there's, there's a place to get a beer. So that's more competition there. And you, then you obviously got, um, breweries open up their own satellite tap rooms. So just, just, you know, more places to go to, but a, a place like you, that's where that. That culture mm-hmm, having kind of unique events is very important. I know you've had some with Portland Beer Week, The New School, new brewery showcase, uh, happened there last month. Things like that brings people in that, oh, this is kind of fun idea. Then also makes it kind of fun for the regulars. Then I also know nothing thing you did was that the bagel pop up. I checked that out too, so, you know, always try to support the hustle there. You've learned a lot from that. You've tried lots of different things out and there.
Alex Kurnellas: 25:21
Yeah.
Kerry Finsand: 25:21
I found a quote that I wanted to share with you from Thomas Edison. I have not failed. I just found 10,000 ways that won't work. So I think that's very true. And I know in my own career, there's been many times of failure with Taplister or too many ups and downs and stuff. Speaking of ups and downs, when I was in a close Taplister down, then ended up getting a lot of people in the community who wanted to get help out and the ways they can, then I ended up selling a majority of somebody else and I worked with them for a while. So it turned out to be a good thing, um, for a number of years. Now it's gone rest its soul, but, uh, it has day, um, for you, uh, obviously the pandemic. Yeah. Like a lot of people was very difficult. Uh, there's this, you know, collective trauma, especially for, for business owners who don't have mm-hmm, uh, a steady paycheck to go to, or, you know, a sounding board. Uh, for kind of your own mental health during those times who is your like sounding board? Who did you talk to kind of work through ideas or just, or just work through challenges that you had or frustrations?
Alex Kurnellas: 26:26
You know, my pandemic say situation was slightly unique in that. Um, I mean, as you know, my wife, Shawn had cancer before the pandemic, so, um, you know, 2018, 2019, she was very ill and then, you know, recovering and, um, and, and so those years were really, really trying on me more so than the pandemic years. Then, you know, we, we hit pandemic as well. So in terms of, you know, you know, for one, you know, especially talking about mental health, you know, for one thing, I'm sort of a stubbornly independent person, um, you know, in terms of mental health issues, I had suffered from depression anxiety from the time I, I was 12. Basically, you know, when I was 12, my, my mom got in an accident and she became mentally handicapped. And, you know, my father left us and, you know, from the time I was 12, through my adolescence, into my adulthood, uh, I, I was very much on my own in terms of emotional support, mental support, uh, you know, things like that. You know, when I was 12 and on my own, there was no one there to, you know, send me to a therapist or anything like that. So through my, uh, wife's cancer, one of the things. Um, you know, I really relied on for mental health was actually a physical exercise. I mean, you know, you saw me, I think in that first year, I lost about a hundred pounds. Um, but that was something that, that kept me very stable. I was able to strap up for really good, you know, every morning I'd wake up and, you know, I'd exercise for 45 minutes an hour, and that would start my day. You know, I was eating very healthy. I wasn't drinking very much. I was staying pretty focused and that helped me out a lot through those years. Then eventually, you know, the pandemic happened and actually about literally a month before the pandemic started, I started seeing a therapist. And so, uh, she really was a sounding board, um, for a lot of, you know, my frustrations and, and sort of more emotional and mental issues. Uh, and then in terms of, you know, more of my creative side, um, I run a lot of ideas. Find my wife and, um, you know, I, I don't always take her advice. you know, she, she can be a little bit more critical of my ideas or think my ideas are crazy or, or whatever. Typically, once she thinks my ideas are crazy, I know that those are my best ideas. and then, you know, the ideas where she offers more like direct criticism on I, I can, you know, I know like, oh, maybe this is sort of bad and, and, you know, um, but yeah, a lot of what I've worked on with my therapist and sort of what I do anyway is, um, not take failure. Too, too harshly. Um, you know, you know, it's kind of, you know, I always try to look at failure as an opportunity for success or a learning experience. And, and sometimes it's just not at all, um, too, and you just have to accept that and, and move on from it. Um, but then the other thing that, that I really concentrate on is, not worrying too much about the things that you can control and really focusing on the things that you can control. In terms of my failures over the last years or lack of success, no matter how you wanna look at. Um, you know, I've, I've really had to focus on not getting frustrated that, oh, you know, my wife had cancer and not feeling like a victim or sorry for myself, but, you know, using it as motivation to exercise more or get healthy and focus on my business. And, you know, in terms of, you know, the, the pandemic, again, like every every other day there was something happening that was out of our control with regulations or, you know, people just acting like people So, um, you know, again, that was something I really focused on. I said, you know, what do I have control over? And, and really focusing and going after those things and believing in myself and having, having that confidence, that was something that, uh, very early on in the pandemic, I was throwing a lot of things at the wall trying to see what stick. And, you know, after, you know, a few months of it I really started to gain confidence in terms of, you know, seeing myself and seeing my work ethic and my creativity and sort of my push and, and feeling confident that if I just kept on believing in myself and working hard, that things would work out.
Kerry Finsand: 30:46
Yeah, I definitely appreciate you sharing your story and your, your mental challenges, you know, it's, it's not easy and that's something that this year I didn't know how in the beginning of the year, I wanted to like share my struggles with, with mental health and then this podcast kind of emerged from that. So, you know, it's all about showing, sharing stories with, with my stories and hearing other people's stories and, you know, finding ways that we can help each other out. So I appreciate that. I wanna say, well, first of all, it's awesome that, um, Shawn, your wife's doing great now. That is yes, it does. You know? Absolutely. That makes life much easier. Uh, so that's, that helps. The other thing I like is that, you know, the sounding board with your spouse it doesn't always work for some people, but for me it works quite well. I'm definitely that kind of guy is the idea guy. And, and a lot of times I'm like, you gotta, this is it, this is it. But a lot of times my wife I'm just like, let's, you know, let's maybe just sleep on that first and stuff. So, I think it's good to have that as advice. Um, and it also can be hard getting. She might gimme great advice, but someone else will gave me that advice and it makes sense. And she was like, I told you that like 10 times, and I'm like, well, it's weird because like, well, um, it didn't, it came from you, which, you know, nothing against you. You're great. But for some reason in my mind, how it process, you know, from other people and that's just how it works for a lot of us and everything. I do remember watching you on Facebook, getting out there, running doing different things and losing all that weight, cuz that obviously that helps with everything like getting healthier and stuff. So physical fitness is great for that. Um, another thing I wanna bring up is some other things you talked about where, you know, During the pandemic, this terrible thing happened to everybody and caused more anxiety and caused issues. I have a lot of friends. Yeah. Hospitality industry or fitness industry that lost their business, or their sales are way down. So they're trying to pivot mm-hmm So it's pretty tough to be in a space where it's not your fault and there's not a lot you can do with it. So it sounds like something that might have helped you with that process was obviously there's counseling and talking to other people. But I think your mindset of that kind of technical writer and creating these processes that probably helped you, do you think that, has that helped you out out?
Alex Kurnellas: 33:03
I mean, absolutely. One of the things that I learned or early in school, uh, when it came to writing was that it's kind of not necessarily important how you write, you know, a lot of people when they're writing concentrate on the words they're using and they want it to sound pretty or intelligent and use big words or, or whatever. Um, but, but really it's concentrating on what you're writing, which is more, I. Um, of really early, you know, basically I had a professor very or early tell me that, you know, like War and Peace is considered to be, you know, one of the greatest, if not the greatest novel ever written well, it's been translated into 50 languages and it's still an amazing book in every language, even though the words aren't the same, because the content is really good, the plot, the characters, it's not how you're describing something. It's what you are describing. So as a writer, I've always spent more time on my research and planning and having the information and the basis there. And so I think that, you know, I carried that in into life as well, basically. When you put that time into, to do the planning and the research and to put that structure behind it, the process that you said, uh, behind it, before you start doing that actual process I think it's just, you know, really invaluable. Especially in business world and through COVID. You're, you're having to turn out a lot of things and, and react really quickly. Um, but I, I think it was almost more important to stop for a second, you know, not knee jerk, react to every little change and, uh, to actually stop and, and come up with a process and a plan and, and to think things out in advance before. So that's something that has been very valuable to me. Imperial, when we opened, we really hit the ground running, you know, we were sort of instantly busy and, uh, a lot of that. How much planning I put into the business. I mean, like I said, my business plan was, I think 40 or 50 pages long. I mean, it was, it was a lot, you know, my wife and I, you know, before we opened Imperial, went around to all the different bottle shops, tap rooms, breweries, and we would sit there for two hours at different days at different times of the day and we'd play Yahtzee and I'd sit there and actually record every sale that was made. And so I was able to predict, you know, sales pretty accurately and things like that. I mean, it was, you know, I, I put a lot of work into it. That's interesting, you know, all the time it's, you know, it cracked me up. I'll have people contact me saying, oh, you know, I wanna open a bottle shop, tap room. Can you tell me this information? It's like, oh, I'm not gonna tell you that information unless you pay me because I spent hours and hours figuring out that information on, on my own when I open my, my business.
Kerry Finsand: 35:35
Yeah, it's where you kind of give them kind of the high level, like, you know, this is what I would do, you know, do, like you said, do your research. This is kind of the common sense thing. And, uh, but not everyone does a business plan. And what I like to do is do a one page business plan, at least a starting point, cuz you can, really kind of break things down and least you have a place to work from cuz it can 50 page business plan. Like I definitely all the numbers are so important and over the years I've gotten better at the numbers, but still that's harder for, for me to really focus on, I like kind of the sales and the marketing and the, the creation of the concept and everything. But, but a detailed plan like that, makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And that helps a business be more successful if you have some data to work off of.
Alex Kurnellas: 36:19
We're just coming off on our nine year anniversary and, I think one of the best reasons to have some form of business plan at least is as you go in time, you know, a business plan isn't just to open your business, you know, really you should go back and revisit it every couple years, see how you're meeting your objectives, what you wanna adjust. I just recently, you know, we closed our second location, our Alberta location. And so I've been sitting down and trying to figure out sort of, you know, what I want to do more with my time. And one of the things I did was revisit that, original business plan. And so I'm making adjust. Um, at Imperial to realign us to some of, with some of our initial objectives and, and to even sort of push those a little bit further down too.
Kerry Finsand: 37:01
Well, that's a great segue and something that we kind of touched on a little bit before, but to kind of get back into is mm-hmm, obviously closing down the, uh, Alberta location and before I get, I have to, I had to get my product placement, uh, uh, bottle here. So there's, there's a nice little product placement for the, for your bottle shop. But anyways, uh, making the decision to close a business is so difficult to close a location is so difficult, but it's so necessary as in certain circumstances. Especially if things aren't working there, cuz you'll start losing more and more money. And even if you have a lease, you have to look at like the, the long term, like what's gonna happen on, on here. Yeah. Where can we put our, our, our resources? Does it make sense to do this thing? So can you tell me about the thought process that you had to kind of to close that location down?
Alex Kurnellas: 37:57
Well, I will say that, you know, for this specific decision, it was slightly pushed on me because the the lease was up. Through the opening of that location, my wife got sick right after we opened. We never really had much of a chance to build that business. And, um, and then, you know, pandemic started, you know, once pandemic started selling the business became really hard. I mean, especially with so many tap rooms, having disclosed, they had, you know, turnkey places that you could just walk into in an open with just the lease, not having to really put much investment in it at all. So, you know, selling and subleasing was a difficult prospect, you know, through there. Um, I mean, easily, the hardest part of the whole thing was just sort of, uh, accepting. Sort of the failure and, and sort of the financial loss of it. And really my only advice would be, you know, is basically what, you know, some cost fantasy. I think a lot of business owners, you know, you have this dream, it's an issue of your pride at a certain point that it's hard, hard to let it go. Um, but yet at a certain point, you just have to realize that you're the costs that you've put into it are, are sunk, anything more you're gonna put into it is just gonna possibly dig you into a deeper hole. I think a lot of business owners I think go into business, um, because on some level, you know, you do have some sort of ego. You don't necessarily want a boss. You want to be control over your own situation, your own creativity, your own, whatever it is. Um, and so I think a lot of people, you know, hang on too long. When, when I made the decision not to, uh, you know, renew my list, my lease, and to close this location, uh, it weighed on me heavily for a few weeks. And, uh, pretty quickly I started, uh, becoming excited to close. You know, there was, there was months before I decided and actually closed, and I sort of got excited for it. And, and since it's closed, it's been a huge weight off on my shoulders and, and, uh, opened up some other opportunities for me. I would say. You know, for any business owner or anyone who's invested in something that, they're working in, you know, for years, um, to really focus on the future and more of what's better than yourself than what you've put into it in the past.
Kerry Finsand: 40:16
Yeah. That, I mean, that definitely makes sense. And I can see how, obviously it's tough to closely me down, but then you have a, you have some relief cuz you're like, yeah. Now I have one location to focus on instead of, instead of two.
Alex Kurnellas: 40:29
Well, I mean, first off, I'm excited to be able to spend more time on it, more than anything. And that's both, you know, time with my staff and getting them set up to be able to serve our customers the best. And then also time just there to interact with our customers. You know, we, we very much. Uh, you know, grow a neighborhood business over the years and that's sort of really our bread and butter. And so being able to spend, spend time there and see our, our regular customers is more valuable than anything. You know, we, we work a lot with our community. You know, we do fundraisers with local schools and different sort of non-profit organizations. So just being present is is something that we're really excited about. Then going back towards my business plan, um, you know, one of the big things in my business plan again, was the customer experience. And so we've been working a lot with that, you know, making tweaks adjustments, sort of modernizing our space in a way almost, or just changing things up a little bit to give us a little bit more of a homey feel. And I'm really excited with this time. I've been able to spend more time on my beer buying. In particular. Uh, and one thing that I'm really, really excited about is, is having more time to be able to work with, you know, the small local breweries, um, you know, getting out there, you know, tasting more beers, you know, working with the small sort of upstart breweries to get them some sort of notoriety and things like that. Um, supporting the local beer scene is like one of my sort of primary objectives. Um, and then another one of, you know, my big objectives with, uh, Imperial was also creating a more environmentally friendly beer experience, um, and sort of, you know, what would be more referred to as sort of reducing your target. Footprint. Um, and like the bottle that you just held up earlier was that was a big part of our initial plan. That was something that didn't actually take off a lot, but what, you know, we, we use those liquid beer guns as our caps, and it allows us to fill fixing ounce bottles to go. Now, the idea behind that was is that reusing bottles is considerably more environmentally friendly than throwing them out or recycling them. You know, recycling actually uses a lot of energy, you know, you're shipping trucking around the cans, actually doing the recycling process, things like that. And, um, so one of the things that, that. A lot of the reasons why that, that program that I did didn't really work out is because, um, you know, a lot of times kind of like what Al Gore said that a lot of times, uh, being environmentally friendly is just inconvenient, you know? And. You know, especially when, you know, the popularity of cans started coming around and more craft beer started getting available in cans. Um, you know, people didn't want to have to carry something to a store to fill it then to carry it home and remember the bottle or whatever. It's a lot easier to just throw the can in the recycling, beginning a pandemic we've we, you know, we were delivering. And, and so basically one of the things that I'm really looking forward to now is, is actually restarting a delivery service. Uh, I'm gonna be doing hopefully delivery just specifically with refillable bottles. Um, so if, you know, kind of imagine sort of like a milkman, but for beer type of type of situation. And so the idea behind, you know, that is, is that we're really hoping, you know, again, to reduce people's carbon footprint, take a lot of, sort of the, the can recycling, you know, out of the equation and providing really, really sort of fresh local, hyper local craft beer to people and, and delivering it to the door to make it a convenient thing for them. So. I'm looking forward to that. And I'm also looking, you know, really looking forward to, uh, doing things outside of craft beer. I'm hoping to get Imperial and sort of my, my craft beer, uh, or, or at least writing the bottle shop down, uh, to, you know, maybe half my time. And, and I wanna get back into writing as well. And whether that's working in some of the fields that I used to doing some freelance and contract work, um, or, you know, looking for new topics, I mean, I kind of have some interest into going to doing some beer writing as well. For the last four years in between, you know, the white cancer and the pandemic, my life was, you know, dominated by my business and, and, and my responsibilities. And, you know, I didn't really have much room, uh, for, you know, personal goals or growth. And so I'm really happy just to be sort of having the time to, to get back to.
Kerry Finsand: 44:44
Well, it sounds like there's a little bit of that kind of full things are coming full circle. You're getting back into what you used to love to do was to work with the small brewers and learn about the beers and support them. And then you're getting your business, uh, back to where you're getting the systems back in place. Everything kind of built up, you know, cuz of the pandemic, getting things figured out in this new world that, that we live in. And then you're trying to work towards having that, you know, your baby grow on its own. You're still involved, but then you personally want to start writing. So that sounds like you've come into a very healthy place, you know, from a dark place to a healthy place. And it just kind of took a while to kind go through that journey.
Alex Kurnellas: 45:21
Through that dark time, um, You know, I was working a lot a ton, but just, you know, in that time period, really understanding the parts of my work that I really loved basically, and, and sticking with those and really sort of just rocking on those things and, and really concentrating on doing those. And, you know, also recognizing the things that I don't like about my job and subsequently delegating those things to other people, um, whether it be outsource seeing that to another company doing, you know, my payroll or my books, or doing whatever, um, you know, luckily my wife's come back to work. So, I I've really moved away from bartending for as much as I love working with the general public. I also hate working general public. And so, you know, I've learned that, you know, doing that a lot is not good for me, you know, it's not good for my mood and my stress levels. um, so, you know, I've learned to, you know, um, Instead of working a bunch of bartending hours to, to save a little bit of cash here in there, just to say, you know, no, I should just pay someone to do this and I should concentrate on the things that I enjoy more.
Kerry Finsand: 46:26
Yeah. And that that's the hard part is when you are a business owner and it's your baby yeah. Is, is for growth. You need to let go at some point of, of the reigns on certain things. Uh, and, uh, you know, bookkeeping definitely is one of those ones where for most people it's not the most fun, sexy thing to do. So maybe that's one of the first ones, but obviously it's very important. Um, I guess I still have a few more questions for you. This is kind of a unique thing I just kind of thought of on the spot as we were talking here to kind of help people out. So two questions, one. If someone wanted, I guess, make a case for someone starting their own business and then make a case for someone. Oh, well,
Alex Kurnellas: 47:06
I mean, starting your own business. Uh, I mean, it's great. Uh I mean, you know, again, you know, One of the frustrations that I had at my old job, again, as I worked as a writer and you know, it wasn't the most creative writing, but it's definitely, I'm creating something and having then to have, you know, something that I would create and work on having to get filtered through eight different people who would approve it and change it and might have to modify this and revise that and change that. And then, you know, in the end, the writing that I was producing, wasn't even mine. Because it was getting changed so much by, you know, the process. Um, and so that's by far, like to me, one of the most rewarding things about, um, you know, having a business is just having that complete ownership of something. Um, and, and that creative freedom, um, that is, is, you know, really the most compelling aspect of having the business to me. Another thing for me too, is, you know, again, like I said, we work with the general public. There are aspects of that agree that I love. And, um, you know, if you, if you are opening a business, um, you're gonna be producing a product or service that is gonna make people happy or, or, you know, Kings through lives in some way. And so, you know, you know, It's easier to imagine with a bar because you know, we've had people come back and say, we met at your bar five years ago and got married. You're so thankful that you were here and, and things like that. And you know, we've seen friendships form. People meet, become friends and hang out, and those are really rewarding. Um, and, but, you know, we can see it very obviously, but I think no matter what business you have, um, the idea that you're improving people's lives with your business, I think is, is something that's great. Uh, a case we're not opening your business. those, those ones are probably pretty easier. I mean, obviously, you know, I, I would say the one thing is, is that, you know, while you have complete ownership, you are also the end line of responsibility. You know, when push comes to sub, when there's no one else there to do something you're doing. You know, um, my wife and I have always likened our business to sort of like having a child. Um, obviously it's not quite as I intense as a child. But it's there. I mean, you have to take care of it when it cries you, you have to give it attention. You don't have a choice or you lose it. Um, so that level of responsibility is tough. And then, you know, by far the other aspect that I've had, and this is something that I think that anyone at opening in own business should be mindful of is, um, having employees is, um, I think a lot of people, um, when you open a business, uh, you don't think about sort of all the aspects of the business and the responsibilities. You know, for example, my, my, I have a cousin that became a dentist and I know, you know, when she eventually opened her own practice, you know, she didn't, you know, she wanted it to just be a dentist. She didn't realize she was gonna have to run this business. And, um, and so it was a lot. And, and for me, That's been by far, the hardest thing was, has been the employee thing. You know, when we, when we hired our first full-time employee and he was reliant on our money to pay his rent and things like that, that was a lot of pressure. Um, and through COVID obviously, um, employment issues were, uh, you know, extremely stressful, you know, making sure my employees were taken care of able to live. You know, some of them had kids making sure that their kids were taken care of, um, you know, the level of responsibility there is going outside of yourself and your business. Now, all of a sudden you're responsible for other people's lives, too. Um, so that was, you know, that's kind of the hardest thing for me.
Kerry Finsand: 50:38
I think that's a really good point. It's. Pops up to my, my mind when I, when I took investment in Taplister, uh, then all of a sudden it got more real cuz I had to make sure I reported earnings and you know, weekly meetings and making sure which was very helpful, but the same time ads more pressure. I wanna encourage people to start their own project, their own hustle, whatever it may be. But I also want people to have both sides of it, cuz I know for me in the past, there's this kind of balance and I'm a resilient person too, but it's that resilience meets burnout. You gotta be careful, you gotta make sure you're in the right spot cuz I've definitely burned myself out for employers as well as. Um, for, for Taplister, just you go all in or nothing sometimes, and you just, you live and breathe what you're doing and stuff. Where can people find you online?
Alex Kurnellas: 51:30
Uh, our website is www.imperialbottleshop.com. And that's gonna provide you just some basic info. We keep it updated taplist and bottle list. So people can see what we have in there. And we keep some information on our events and things, different, different happenings. But also our Facebook page and Instagram page are really the best place to keep up to date. We're at Imperial Bottle Shop on Instagram and then you can just look up Imperial Bottle Shop and Tap Room on Facebook. We're, we keep pretty active on social media. We try to.
Kerry Finsand: 52:05
Well again, I wanna thank you, Alex Kurnellas for your time today. Check out Imperial Bottle Shop. You can check out me online at kerryfinsand.com. As I always end this show, I have a little tagline. I like to say, remember you're not alone in life or business.
