Urban startup incubators and college dorm rooms don’t have a lock on entrepreneurial energy, as one enterprising sixtysomething couple in rural West Virginia demonstrates.
In Cuzzart, a hamlet not far from the Maryland and Pennsylvania borders, Roger and Crista Johnson have transformed the family farm into a thriving, award-winning small-batch craft brewery, Screech Owl Brewing, and a new taproom, Spent Grain Cafe.
Screech Owl, which received West Virginia’s 14th brewery license in 2015, now employs seven people in addition to its founders, tripled sales last year and expects to triple revenue again this year to reach nearly $250,000, boosted by the taproom, which opened this month, Roger Johnson said recently.
The couple turned Roger’s home-brewing pastime into a business as he decided that 21 years of long-haul truck driving were enough. They started the process in 2012, carefully researching the industry and eventually selling off trucking and farm equipment and tapping into all their savings except for 401(k) plans.
“Just a hobby gone crazy is what it amounts to,” Roger Johnson said. “I wanted off the road from driving a truck.” The couple’s two sons had grown up and while Roger, who turns 66 in late July, was off in California or Canada, Crista, who turns 64 in August, was “here on the farm by herself, and we just decided that was ridiculous.”
In addition, he said, federal regulations made it more difficult to make a living as a trucking owner-operator.
From Hobby To Growing Business
“We have been doing this now full time since July 4th, 2014. That is the day I came home after several weeks on the road and announced I quit. I parked our truck and trailer and never left again,” Roger Johnson said.
The brewery, which sits on a hay farm with horses and chickens, lists its mailing address as Bruceton Mills, W.Va. Cuzzart, a few miles from the Bruceton Mills post office, has a population of 100 “when all the kids come home for the weekend,” he joked.
Screech Owl, which offers 12 beer varieties, has upgraded to progressively larger brewing systems and now produces 800 to 1,000 gallons of beer a month, selling its kegs to bars and restaurants in two West Virginia counties through two distributors.
The company’s Buckwheat Honey Porter took the bronze prize in the stout and porter category in the National Honey Board’s 2017 Honey Beer Competition.
Beer enthusiasts who want to try the winning brew or Screech Owl’s other beers, however, need to visit one of its West Virginia distributors or the more than two dozen establishments selling it, or the brewery’s new taproom, as the product is available only in kegs or on tap.
“We have a huge demand for our product,” Roger Johnson said, explaining that Screech Owl is growing volume as part of its goal to expand distribution into nearby resort areas of Maryland and Pennsylvania.
“He makes really, really good beer, that’s why it’s taken off. Its quality is consistent and he’s demanding of his beer and his employees,” said Crista Johnson.
“I’m not mean, most of the time,” her husband quipped.
“Inconsistency in beer will sink you,” she added.
The company says it produces beer in the old style of farm breweries.
“”I’m not into seaweed, bird feathers,” Roger Johnson said. “I make a traditional style beer. … I guess we’re just old fashioned. We appeal to people’s taste buds for their beer.”
The couple realized they had the opportunity to play “a new ballgame” in West Virginia, which has relatively few craft breweries, said Crista Johnson. The state, with 23 craft breweries, ranks 44th nationally, compared with Pennsylvania, which ranks 6th with 282, according to the Brewers Association.
While the brewery aims to expand, it wants to stay relatively small. “We don’t want to grow into anything mega,” Roger Johnson said.
The Johnsons decided to make beer in small batches, “and have people pull it from us instead of having to push it, and that has worked very well. But the key to it is consistency in product and high quality product. We make a premium beer,” he said.
In four years, the couple have spent only $200 on advertising – to purchase some road signs. “We have not advertised at all. All of this is our Facebook, our web page and word of mouth,” said Crista Johnson.
This past spring, the U.S. Small Business Administration named the Johnsons West Virginia’s Encore Entrepreneurs of Year, for those who start a venture after age 55.
Crista, who helped run the family trucking business after working as an office manager for a Morgantown, W.Va., medical group, continues to dispatch trucks, generating most of the couple’s income since 2015, her husband said. “She also quilts, gardens and raises tame blackberries, which we sell,” he noted.
“Now that we have built up the brewery to the point we can start taking a wage from it, she is moving into running the restaurant and kitchen full time and is also dispatching trucks – no rest here,” he added.
“I do a little bit of everything,” said Crista Johnson, who has developed a bread recipe from the brewery’s spent grain – a brewing byproduct – for the cafe. She uses it for various bread types, including pepperoni rolls, hamburger buns, cinnamon rolls, pizza, doughnuts and bagels.
Taking A Risk, Getting A Coach
Getting the business off the ground required substantial risk. The couple tried without success to get bank loans for their venture. “Everybody thought we were crazy,” Roger Johnson said.
To finance the business, they sold their truck, three trailers and most of their farm equipment, cashed in their investments and borrowed against their life insurance policies. “We did everything we could do to come up with the cash,” he said. “We just self-funded.”
Since they’d lived in a mobile home early in their marriage, they figured they could do it again if necessary. They haven’t needed to make that move.
The Johnsons did receive a $50,000 SBA microloan for equipment purchases. And when they reached a plateau with the brewery, they turned for advice to the West Virginia Small Business Development Center, which put them in touch with a helpful business coach.
“At that point we were beyond either one of (our) experience or knowledge,” Roger Johnson said. With guidance from their much younger mentor, Lindsey Teets, the Johnsons upgraded to a larger capacity brewing system.
“Just because you’re older, don’t think you know it all. Listen to people,” Roger Johnson said, suggesting that other entrepreneurs find a mentor or business coach. “Every decision we make now we run through Lindsey, as far as purchases, new equipment, which way to go, what to do, bank loans, we run through him. He’s been very valuable to us.”
Government- and private sector-backed SBDCs, he noted, provide a variety of services to small business owners, including help with business plans.
One of the Johnsons’ sons holds a full-time job and then works at the brewery in the evening. “He is great with people and a super salesman and also takes care of most of the hiring and is an idea man for the brewery and the restaurant,” Roger Johnson said.
Their daughter-in-law, the assistant brewer, "is being taught everything about the brewery and brewing – our unique methods and procedures,” Roger Johnson said. “We are trying to pass this along to family. We all are working here seven days a week.”
He suggests that others pursue their entrepreneurial visions. “Life is just one big adventure,” he says. “You’re not going to get out of it alive, why not try things?”
Following those dreams, however, takes serious work, the brewer notes.
“If you’re going to succeed at it you’re going to have to eat, sleep and breathe it. You can’t do it as a hobby. If you want to build something that will support you, that will leave a legacy for you, if that’s what you desire, you just literally have to immerse yourself in the business and the culture, no matter what it is. And don’t be afraid to do it because you’re older. You’ve got skills and knowledge that maybe you don’t even realize you have.”
This is one in a series of occasional stories on later-in-life entrepreneurs.
