Show Notes
In this episode of The Localist, host Carrie Rollwagen sits down with Michael Sellers, a key figure in Birmingham’s craft beverage scene and co-founder of Good People Brewing. Michael shares exciting updates on his latest projects, including the revival of the beloved Ghost Train brand and the launch of a new lifestyle-focused beverage line called Porch, which includes light lagers, hard seltzers, and canned cocktails. He also introduces All Good Collective, a reimagined trail-side space that brings together all his brands—Good People, Avondale, Ghost Train, and Porch—offering a welcoming hub for all types of drinkers, from beer lovers to those seeking non-alcoholic options.
Throughout the episode, Michael discusses how evolving consumer habits—especially among Gen Z—are driving diversification in the beverage industry. He explains how his team is leaning into their core competencies of beverage production, packaging, and distribution to stay relevant in a crowded market. With a mix of strategic brand-building, regulatory navigation, and authentic Southern lifestyle branding, Michael reveals how All Good Collective isn’t just about drinks—it’s about creating community experiences that feel natural, local, and lasting.
Episode Transcript
Carrie
Welcome to the localist a conversation with local makers and independent entrepreneurs. I’m your host, author of The localist book and former small business owner, Carrie Rollwagen. Our guest today is Michael Sellers. So if you’re in the Birmingham area, you may know Michael from Good People Brewing, or you may know him from Avondale Brewery, but there is big news, like a lot of news coming from the same people who started good people and who purchased Avondale a few years ago. So we talk about three main things. The first is that Michael and his partners are bringing back Ghost Train. So if you’re a fan of Ghost Trains Beers, then this is great news for you, because some of their most popular beers are coming back. We also talk about Porch, which is a new brand that is launching with a Light Lager. It’s kind of designed to be enjoyed like at the beach or at the lake or just whenever you’re chilling. And there’s more coming in that space too, like seltzers and canned cocktails and all kinds of stuff. We also talk about the all good collective. So you may remember when ghost train moves from Third Avenue down to the Hugh call trail. So that is the space that is now All Good Collective. So All Good Collective is going to be kind of an oasis on the trail where you can stop by and get a beer. You can stop and get a eventually, like a hard seltzer or a cocktail, or maybe even something non alcoholic, like kombucha and you can eat at their kitchen. Trail Magic. So I’m so excited about this space. There’s so much to talk about today, and I really appreciate Michael taking time from his schedule of doing all of these things to come on and tell us about it. So welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I’m so excited. I’m a huge fan of all of your products, but you hear that a lot, so I actually want to talk about what you have going on. That’s new, right? So tell me about ghost train, because I think a lot of people love the brand, then it was gone. And are you want to make a joke about bringing a ghost? Yeah, I think I’m stretching. I don’t think it really
Michael Sellers
works. No, what we’ve done is purchased that area that the building.
Carrie
This is the the newer one, the one on the trail, correct, yes, exactly,
Michael Sellers
yeah, yeah. The one on the trail, 3501 First Avenue. Sound, yeah. And so what we are doing, and plan to do, is kind of, along with other things, is, one is bringing back the ghost train brand, so you’ll see it out in the market again, and we’ll bring back their core items that were super popular with everyone. Some of that’s just, you know, that that brand was held in such high regard, you hate for it to kind of go, yeah, fade away if you have the opportunity to, hopefully not let that happen. So that’s the plan. Is to nurture that brand again, get it back into the market, and give it back to the people who enjoyed it, and then obviously try to grow it and do the best we can with that so. And then that fits into a kind of a larger plan of using that facility to add to the portfolio, but also kind of expand potentially into other categories of products. So whether that is, you know, the alcohol based products, or even non out based products, water, you know, whatever those are, but, but maybe broaden the scope of what we’re doing to more of a beverage industry, um, situation, than into a silo of just Yeah, beer or whatever that is, yeah, so, so that’s kind of the plan. That’s the scope, I guess,
Carrie
Which is nice, because it’s like, when you’re going somewhere with a group of people, a lot of times. Some people are beer drinkers. Some people are not. Some people are sober. Some people, you know. So knowing, I know a lot of times like, I love beer, but I can’t drink as much as sure I would love to, yeah,
Michael Sellers
yeah. Well, a lot of people age out, like, you start aging out of the consumption level you
Carrie
used to, right, exactly to do, yeah. So I know I like going somewhere that’s like, I can have one beer and then I can switch to something else, and it’s not gonna just be water or boring, I guess, right, right, right. I don’t know. I’m probably not supposed to care about how it looks. But so are you thinking that that space will kind of be a home like so are you envisioning that? That will sell ghost train and good
Michael Sellers
people? Yeah, absolutely. So the name of the new facility is all good. There’s, well, there’s two things. There’s all good beverage company, yeah, which is the manufacturing side. And then there’s all good collective and that collective name is really just to encompass everything we’re trying to do there. So that’d be good people, Avondale ghost train, a new brand called porch. There may be other brands that we contract for that will also be represented inside the collective, yeah, but that’ll also mean other things, non alcoholic products, things that we don’t make in the non alcoholic space. There may be kombucha, there may be other things that people can participate in that, you know, maybe you don’t want an alcoholic beverage. And so, yeah, we want to have it for everyone there, yeah. But also, you know, it’s a bit of a oasis on the trail too, you know. So if you got through running and you just want to come in and get water, you know, get a water and Yeah, hang out your friends or whatever, and hydrate. That’s, that’s perfectly good as well.
Carrie
Yeah, well, I’m excited about that reopening, because you can actually walk there from our office. Yeah,
Michael Sellers
absolutely, absolutely. Well, you know, it’s just, it’s, you know, great halfway point between good people. You guys ghost train Avondale. But you also have Cava that it ends, it terminates that. So, I mean, you can make a whole day, yeah,
Carrie
crawl, but yeah, absolutely, you’re actually walking the trail. Absolutely, yeah.
Michael Sellers
And every one of those venues brings things to the table, right? There’s nothing, even though, you know, good people is a brewery. We’re hoping that gay strain is more than, or what we’re calling gay strain, the all good Collective is more than than that. It’s, it’s kind of a like, say, Oh, it’s just on the trail. You got Avenue, it’s a venue, you got a big backyard with things to do with the kids, whatnot. So, you know, like, I say, hopefully people can make a whole day, yeah, of the trail, and particularly, participate in whatever’s going on. Yeah?
Carrie
Well, I think that’s exciting. And the all good collective. I mean, I think obviously there’s a good people connection, which is neat, but it just sounds like a good I mean, it’s a good name for a community space anyway,
Michael Sellers
yeah, I think so, yeah, yeah. I hope that works. Like it’s
Carrie
cool that you can, I mean, if you know, the if you know, okay, there are all these brands, and they’re under one roof, and then there are other like, if you know the backstory, right? But if you don’t, I feel like seeing all good collective, it’s not, it still communicates what it is, sure, absolutely you don’t have to know all the, all the details, right?
Michael Sellers
We kind of build a space. It’s built around, you know, it is built around beverage, but it’s, you know, it’s open for anyone. So, you know, it’s really more of a gathering spot, yeah, that kind of reaches out to everybody, yeah, well,
Carrie
and I feel like that’s kind of what that area was like, Yeah, ghost train was there too, yeah. So I think, tell me if this is kind of a, I think one of the misperceptions maybe about small business, and you guys are like a bigger small business, but is that we see other businesses as like, direct like, as competition, right? And I don’t know, maybe that is accurate, or maybe not. It seems like maybe not, because you had good people, and it could be a temptation to be like, Well, if you’re not drinking good people, then that’s a problem, sure, but it seems like maybe that’s not the case. Since, like, now you guys own Avondale, you own ghost train. Like, it’s like you’re kind of, were you fans of those before you bought them? Were you just interested in what they were doing, or was it purely financial and you’re just like,
Michael Sellers
Well, no, like, I think competition is always a part of it, like you, yeah, would not be in the business. So I do think that’s it. And I do, but I do think you enjoy seeing people’s craft and doing it well. And you do find things some people do interesting. So you do kind of keep an eye on everything that’s going on there. But, you know, like craft beer, it reaches it sometimes, you know, we love things to death, yeah? So, you know, you get concerned about oversaturation. And even if you’re putting out a great product, you’re doing great things when you start dividing that pie up, yeah, it’s no longer financially viable, and at the end of the day, it is all financially Yeah, the issue is a financial issue, right? Yeah, you know you can. You can be the hobbyist as much as you want, but at some point, you know, you have to look at the financial health, or it
Carrie
won’t be there. Yeah? Well, I mean, you can, if you’re a hobbyist, is, it’s almost gonna stay a hobby? Yeah, you can’t have an oasis on a trail. Yeah, that is a really nice building that costs money and have people employed and still run it like a hobbyist, right? You know, no, absolutely, which is, I feel like it’s such a change for you guys, though, because when you started, it was almost fighting to eat. Even get when you started good people. I mean, kind of, I don’t know, famously, but in the news about, like, even fighting to get to be able to legally distribute, and now it’s, like, grown so much. So I feel like that’s a is that, does that feel like a shift, or did it happen so slowly, where you were, like, fighting to get to market at all, and now you’re kind of like, okay, we have to diversify. We have to look at the financial Yeah, I
Michael Sellers
mean it beginning. We were trying to, it’s not really much different. You’re trying to carve out a market for yourself, you know, in the early days, but that, a lot of that went with deregulation, which really helped. And I will say, if we hadn’t had deregulation back then, and we didn’t have tap rooms and things like that. Probably none of us would be in business because the margin side, or the distribution side margin is slim, and it’s tough work. And it’s, you know, you’ve got mandated third parties involved. And you know, it’s, it’s, it’s hard for the it’s hard for the supplier to do it. We, you know, we, we we are a part of franchise law, which is, you know, a whole thing, and so it’s a little more on the difficult side. So if we hadn’t had deregulation in other areas, it would have been difficult for us to continue on. Now, now we’re in with that deregulation, though, comes more people into the market, which then saturates the market and have another pressure, yeah, and so you have to, you have to met, you know, manage that as well. And now we’re into a phase where alcohol, spirits, beer, wine, they’re all going through a bit of a contraction. A lot of enthusiasts are like, want to say, aging out, aging out of the volume that they were involved with. And then newer entries in the market are influenced by other intoxicants. You know, famously the Delta nine thing that’s going on now, or other things. So you get more competitors, just not saturation in one market, but now you have other competitors coming on the side. So, you know, so then that forces you into, okay, well, we have a skill set. We have a core competency of making beverages distribution. How can we leverage that, maybe, into a broader scope of what we’re doing, again, for Financial Health and for the health business. So, I mean, that’s kind of how the circle of it happens. And I
Carrie
don’t know if this is happening in Birmingham so much, but it seems like different generations are not drinking alcohol the same way. So like, yeah, you have some generations aging out of being of their tolerance, yeah. And then the other side, everything I keep reading say that Gen Z is not like, I heard a story this morning saying, like, they’re not even opening tabs anymore because they don’t drink. Because they don’t drink enough to open your tab. So is, like, it seems like the diversification of what you offer is super important for that.
Michael Sellers
Yeah, I think so that’s the Yeah. That’s the bet. We’re saying is, you know, we’re gonna have to diversify out of one category and into multiple categories. And some of this is meeting people where they are too, right? Like, you know, in a beer is kind of a popular thing, and that’s probably because you had people who enjoy that category. Yeah, now you get the category without some of the other side effects of it. So, you know, that’s a category that can be explored on the other side of things, you see things like prime or these energy drinks that younger generations enjoy. I mean, you know, so you kind of have to look and find out where, where markets may start to emerge.
Carrie
You know, Is that exciting or exhausting, or both? Like, I
Michael Sellers
mean, I think, you know, it’s exciting to a certain degree, but there’s obviously risk involved, and it’s a little scary. You’re always kind of betting, betting on the com right, like, hopefully this is we’re doing the right thing. Yeah. So there’s risk involved, which you know, as you get older, you get less, you’re more more and more risk adverse. So, yeah, but it, it is what it is. I mean, again, you just have to lean into your core competency and go, Well, this is what we know how to do. Yeah, we should probably exploit that.
Carrie
So is the core competency, competency more brewing or also just that distribution in the business side,
Michael Sellers
I think it’s both. It’s It’s, well, when you say brewing, really, it’s brewing or manufacturing beverages. Then packaging beverages is another aspect of that. And then then we have the sell side, which is distributions. It’s relationships with chains and things of that nature which we have now. Doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve we’ve gone into other spaces within this market, but at least there’s some level of understanding what has to happen. So, yeah, you know, so we’ll try to use that understanding and yeah, moving those those
Carrie
areas. So Is that easier in a way, than it was when you’re first starting?
Michael Sellers
Yeah, I think at least you know something right. Understand the. Falls in a lot of ways, starting in the the alcohol industry, it’s so regulated that the other categories seem almost like this can’t be real. Yeah, it’s that easy. What? Yeah, you don’t have to do all this stuff. Yeah, no, I’m doing it so some, but I will say that’s that, you know, that also makes that market a lot more saturated. Yeah, that’s the barriers a lot lower. So, like,
Carrie
I was watching, I was watching an interview with the guy that started, gosh, the names escaping me, the water. That’s like, hardcore water. Oh, liquid death, yeah, and his first business was, like, a brandy business that totally failed, and he was just like, so excited about water, because it’s like, there are no regulations. Basically anyone can drink it. I’m so sick of this, right? But it does seem like navigating through all that red tape, at least, like, makes you realize you guys are like, you know, we can navigate through the red tape, at least we know that,
Michael Sellers
right? And there’s less red tape. So it’s you know, to a certain degree, it’s you know something. There’s no governor on it, yeah? So you also got to make sure you don’t get ahead of your you know schemes either, right? So you have to be there’s a balance of being too aggressive or but not being aggressive? Yeah, I think, yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ll see.
Carrie
All right. So as far as ghost train, because there’s you’ve, we’ve basically opened like, several cans of worms,
Michael Sellers
sure, and there’s a lot of cans of worms, actually.
Carrie
So ghost train, was that more like, were you fans of the beer first and then saw it, did it come up for sale? Or did you approach them? Or, yeah,
Michael Sellers
they did their thing. We were not a part of any of that. And to a certain degree, we really like the space for what we wanted to implement. We do appreciate that brand and really enjoy it. That’s why we want to bring it back. Yeah, but it kind of came along with that, Okay, with that bigger plan. So there’s kind of a larger plan there that would allow us to do multiple things, and one of those multiple things was to bring back the guy stream, yeah. So, you know, again, really appreciate that brand, and think it’s a great brand and has a lot of equity, and we need to make sure it gets back into the market and again, like, again, core competency. So we hope we can, we can help that brand grow, yeah, but again, it was part of a bigger like, yeah. Hey, we need to think in longer terms of not only this category, but what other categories potentially are out there for us, yeah. So that’s kind of where
Carrie
that is, yeah. So did you buy, like, recipes from them, or how, like, how do you
Michael Sellers
know? I mean, not necessarily, I think you Yeah, there’ll be, there’ll be people that had worked there before in that scenario. So, yeah, so there’ll be aspects of that that’ll be around. So yeah, it really was just it and that kind of thing. Yeah,
Carrie
okay. Do you think you’ll give the brand a refresh, or is it going to be like, Yeah,
Michael Sellers
I think so. I mean, initially, maybe it will come out as it was, but I think it’s, it’ll get a refresh. But, you know, I kind of think, I mean, unless you’re a classic brand like Coke, and even they get tweaks to get tweaks, yeah, I think it’s important to refresh and, yeah, keep people interested exactly, especially now people’s, you know, we are all guilty of our, you know, our attention span goes, yeah, pretty quick. So yeah, it’s, it’s always something to kind of tweak things, yeah, keep your brand interesting. Yeah.
Carrie
So, I mean, I think that you guys have really great branding across the board, and so it, that’s kind of why, as it seems like you approach it like that’s an important part of the business, I
Michael Sellers
think it’s huge part of the business. I think branding is a real big piece of the business. You know, you have to have quality product. But I think quality product at this point is just a given, yeah, yeah. And so at that, at some point you’re, you’re just trying to catch eyes and, yeah, see if people will give you a shot.
Carrie
Yeah. So is that mostly the logo and the colors and the branding that way? Is it advertising? Is it like branding, the actual brewery, the space, or is it like,
Michael Sellers
Yeah, I think it’s the brand mostly. And, you know, I think we, you’ll see us more, you know, craft beer came up in a time where there wasn’t a lot of need to advertise because it was such a popular thing for a long time. Yeah, now we’re seeing that Wayne, so you are. We’re all having to shift gears and go, Oh, what. How do you market? You see it was, you know, you just put out. And people, yeah, gravitate towards it, and now we’re having to to make sure. And in two you have a lot of brand, like, a lot of branding companies that are just marketing a product, yeah, like hair, yeah. And they’re professional marketers,
Carrie
right? Yeah. So you’re even liquid death was started by a marketer, by marketing for a product. Not the other way around.
Michael Sellers
You kind of have a little bit of a disadvantage. You’re coming from a market where it wasn’t necessarily heavily marketed, yeah, and now you’re coming up against people who really know what they’re doing, even though the product they don’t, but they know how to market
Carrie
it, right? So I think it attracts marketers too, because you can have more fun with it, yeah, like, more than you know, if you’re selling, like dish detergent or something like, you can’t really be subversive. So it’s not fun for marketing companies, absolutely. But I think, like marketing a craft beer is just something that attracts marketing people, because it’s fun to do.
Michael Sellers
Yeah, and look those marketers can go out and raise a ton of money to know how to look like, it’s the best thing ever, exactly, yeah. So, yeah, just coming as is, like, humble, yeah, you know, manufacturers or suppliers, you know, you kind of, yeah, a little bit having to work with that a
Carrie
little bit, yeah. So, so you’re, you’re bringing about ghost train, but you kind of did a sort of similar thing with Avondale. So did you are there things that you learned when you guys bought Avondale about, we’re gonna keep this, we’re gonna change this a little bit. Is it? Do you feel like you’ve been through this before, or like this is gonna be Yeah,
Michael Sellers
I mean, for sure. I mean, I think avid that we can lean on that a little bit. But I think that the big takeaway that Avondale too was you had this huge space that had to work and had to generate revenue. And the previous guys before us, they had already kind of started dabbling into that music space, yeah, and the property just kind of spoke to said, Hey, you got to do this, yeah. And and then it became such a thing. It kind of became the lead thing, yeah? So, you know, one thing we’ll do is just kind of let the market lead us a little bit. Say, Hey, you know this one, it’s obvious, you need to be a venue, yeah, you still have your your brand, but on a day to day basis, you know, Avondale needs to be a and look, the core competency at Avondale is, is events venue, and good people is manufacturing. And I think you’ll see that space, the all good Collective is a morph between the two.
Carrie
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think it sounds like you’re doing in that in a similar way with all good collective, and that you’re responding to the fact that it’s on the trail, people were using it, yeah, absolutely. And that seems to be the case with Avondale. You’re like, this is obviously a venue. Learn to have a venue, yeah? And all good. It’s like, this is obviously kind of a respite on the trail, yeah, so let’s lean into that.
Michael Sellers
But it also has a space to be a bigger manufacturer facility today. So, yeah, you know it if, if good people is naturally more manufacturing and Avondale is more venue based, then, then all get collected, becomes this the meeting point in between the two? Yeah, right. So, yeah, so that’ll be, that’ll be a aspect of it, right? You’ll get both,
Carrie
yeah, yeah. So what is there more build out that you need to do to make it more of a manufacturing space? Is that already there?
Michael Sellers
Well, much like me, if you’ve come to Avondale every year, you’re always, we’re constantly in construction. And I’m sure this will be no different, yeah, some of it’s just funding, like you gotta, you gotta be able to afford to do it. So we’re, we’re big into, like, projects, smaller projects at a time, so you’ll see it more if, like, whatever you see today will not be what it’ll be and, yeah, next year. Well,
Carrie
I mean that first of all, I think it’s practical because, yeah, like, you can raise the funds, do a little something. Yeah, change it. But it’s also good because then you’re responding to what’s actually happening, yeah, and you’re able to pivot. If you’re like we thought it was gonna go this direction, and it’s really leaning more another direction. You can actually change it so it responds to what customers want it to be. No, absolutely. Whereas, if you go in, and I think this is what happens a lot of time with money from out of town, they go in and change a space completely without this is what it is, yeah, and it, I maybe it works in other markets, but it doesn’t really seem to work here, yeah. So I think that makes practical sense too, and that you can evolve. You
Michael Sellers
know, I think that’s a great point. I mean, Birmingham, you know, to a certain extent, we are encapsulated. We don’t, we don’t have a lot of people coming. We’re not Nashville or Atlanta, yeah, so what? So we’re always having to our consumer is the same consumer we’ve had for a long time, yeah, yeah. And so you do need to, you you know, change where is in Nashville. I don’t know what I’ve heard crazy numbers, but, you know, on a weekend, they’ll get 50,000 new consumers, yeah, so that place is new, yeah, absolutely. So we just don’t have 50,000 people, yeah, coming in and going, Oh, this is a great place. Yeah? So we are having to, you know, update, refine, for the same we’re using our, you know, our consumers the same person. So, yeah, you do want to make it interesting to them on a certain level, yeah, yeah. Hopefully, that, hopefully that’s correct, yeah.
Carrie
Well, yeah, but I mean, that seems to have happened good people like that’s evolved and changed over the years, the brewery as well as the product and Avondale, yeah? So it would stand to reason the same thing would happen. It sure. All good collective, yeah,
Michael Sellers
absolutely. So, I mean, that’s that’ll, you know, that’s kind of in our DNA a little bit too, yeah, always doing something,
Carrie
yeah? Um, okay, so we’re gonna switch cans of worms right now. So let’s talk about porch, because you mentioned that. Yeah, tell, tell us, like, what that? What is porch? Yeah, kind of, what’s the concept of what it
Michael Sellers
was? So porches is a line I like to lifestyle loggers or whatever. It’s a, you know, they’re light lagers that are meant to fit, meant to fit in people’s lifestyles. And porch is that porch is a Light Lager that is kind of an out. It has a vibe, and it has an outdoor and it’s meant for specific occasions. But porch is unique in that it will have it’s going to explore different categories as well. So you’ll have a beer category, you’ll have a hard seltzer category. And we’re also gonna have can cocktails, yeah, as well. So, so you’re gonna have all three, so it kind of fits a flavor profile for that consumer, yeah, in one brand, yeah, it’s gonna be pretty interesting. Yeah, we’ll see
Carrie
how it goes. But so you’ll have little different visitors to the point, yeah,
Michael Sellers
and each one of those brands is actually marketed differently and goes to market differently, because beer would go through wholesalers hard seltzers currently and our under our curtain current laws will go through the ABC, and so will the cocktails. So they won’t all be in the grocery beer will but hard Seltzer and cocktail will go through the states, yeah, yeah, unless in different states, obviously, it’ll, it’ll, it’ll go to market in different ways. But yeah, so that that’s a little more of a complexity, yeah, that we’ll be looking at it in that product. So,
Carrie
so is that, is that a law that is, are we trying to change that law, or is that good,
Michael Sellers
I mean, it’s, yeah, I mean, there’s so much going on, but, you know, one of it was, it was a bill this year which would have allowed for certain spirit based products to go into grocery stores based on their ABV or their alcohol content. And that didn’t pass this year. I think it maybe had, you know, a lot of the oxygen in the room was sucked out by the by the Delta nine, yeah, thing. So that didn’t make it through, but maybe next year it does, I don’t know, but we’re gonna go ahead and go to market in our current regulation.
Carrie
So is that gonna all be under porch? So all those, like the cocktails and the seltzers and the what the light lagers will be under the porch brand, porch brand, yeah. Okay, cool, yeah. So theoretically, if the law change next year, and this is maybe me just misunderstanding distribution, sure, but if you have a contract with the grocery store for distribution because you had the logger, yeah, would then it be easier to get the seltzer into the grocery store?
Michael Sellers
Yeah, potentially. I mean, depending on how well the lager did, it’s all based on numbers. But yeah, I mean, potentially there will be familiar, familiarity with that brand. And if you’ve built decent equity, brand equity in one brand, I think you’ll get a shot at the other. So, you know, there’s, there’s that piece. I mean, Bud Light did it with Bud Light Seltzer, yeah? Like, you’ve seen it done before, yeah, maybe not to this extent, but it has been done in the past, so we’ll see. Okay, yeah,
Carrie
so talk a little about porches branding, because I think, like, is it like there’s like a lawn chair, like a lake,
Michael Sellers
yeah? Well, it’s just, it’s a launch. It’s just kind of that, you know, sitting on your porch with your neighbors, sitting on your dock, sitting, yeah, to be, you know, that lawn chair just is the iconic view, yeah,
Carrie
works done. You can’t eat and drink snake handlers all
Michael Sellers
day. Yeah, exactly right. And this chair just kind of represents the day you’re relaxed, yeah, it’s a relaxing time. It’s, it’s a time where it’s a social aspect of it also, yeah, but yeah, that’s, that’s kind of the branding. And, you know, we like say it’s a lifestyle. Logger, yeah, where you’re good parts of life happen, right?
Carrie
Yeah, yeah. So is there like the lager was that was developing that different than the other beers? Or did you look at beers that worked well with good people, or avendale or,
Michael Sellers
yeah. I mean, look, I think, I mean our production people have a great talent and a ton of you know, ton of tools available to them. We have a. A big lab at good people so they can kind of do anything, yeah? And that was just something that we felt like fit that brand vibe. So, and look, there’ll be other products that come out that do different niches, yeah, or different areas that we want to kind of see what happens. And so, yeah,
Carrie
well, tell me about developing like a seltzer. Is that? How is that different? Or are you looking at, when you look at brand like, flavor profiles, are you it sounds like it’s kind of about like familiarity and just chilling and something that you like a really, like a go to, yeah. Is it more that, or is it more like we’re gonna try crazy things? No, I think
Michael Sellers
we, I mean, I think, like, most everything, you just kind of do what you think, yeah, like, yeah, yeah. I mean, I’m not trying to make broccoli, seltzer or whatever. So it’s, you know, we just kind of look at things that we think are delicious, are good, and are things that are, you know, culturally appropriate in our area that we know. You know, we always say, hey, look, we kind of understand the Southeastern Conference, yeah, yeah, because everybody’s obsessed with it, yeah. We all have been since birth, yeah. So we just kind of look in that area for what we want to do, right? So, you know, we’re not trying to pretend like we’re something that we’re not, yeah. So that’s kind of where we go, yeah. Just kind of look around us and, you know, where we are, you know, I mean, we don’t have one, but, I mean, like, you know, there are drinks that are native to our area. You got bushwhackers on the coast. So you just kind of look in those areas and say, you know, what’s the derivative of that product, of that product?
Carrie
Well, I think that, like, in a weird way, it also saves you money on the marketing side, because it’s like, if you’re being authentic to what you actually like, yeah, and who you actually are. It still takes marketing. It still takes branding. That stuff is so important, but you’re not trying to do like a 180 Yeah? And also, I mean, authenticity is, like a kind of ridiculous word at this point, probably, but I think that it is true that people are, they do connect with that more sure, because we’re all we’ve we’ve all been so saturated with like brand messaging, yeah. So I think it does come through when it’s like this, is we just like this, yeah, absolutely we weren’t trying to be
Michael Sellers
cool. Yeah, it’s just what we know. Yeah,
Carrie
absolutely well, and it would it probably also is has a little bit more chance of working. Yeah? Then if you’re gonna try like five really weird trend forward Shavers and like, maybe two of them hit and three of them totally fail, you know,
Michael Sellers
well, I mean to if you look around, you do somehow get to circumvent the trend, right? Because trends are expensive, yeah, yeah. By the time you get to market, it might be done, yeah, yeah. But if you look at things that have been around that form, the culture that you’re in, chances are they’re going to be around, yeah, yeah. They may not have all the flash and splash that the trend does, but they’re going to slowly continue to crank along.
Carrie
Yeah, for sure. So when you’re looking at seltzers or can cocktails. Like, are you doing a little, you know? Oh, we need to do research. We’re going to try all these drinks again that we’re familiar with. Are you kind of just looking at like, No, these are, these are the things we know we want to
Michael Sellers
Yeah, I think so. I think you go and see and then you have to put your twist on it. You also have to get it ready for market. I mean, obviously, you know, if you mix something up at a bar, you’re not gonna can that and then it’s gonna go sit on the shelf, yeah? So you have to get it, yeah, you have to get it, you know, market ready or, you know, so there’s some things have to change in there. So that’s part of the process, is moving it from, you know, a viable product in a package, yeah, can sit on the shelf or, yeah, however long it’s gonna sit. So hopefully not long. But,
Carrie
yeah, well, yeah. But that’s the it is a totally different Yeah, world, right? You know, it’s the
Michael Sellers
scalability of going from, you know, yeah, grandma’s cookies to, yeah, exactly, the cookies packaged in a grocery store,
Carrie
yeah? Which even, I mean, even in the small like, even running Church Street, even the difference between this amount, like we’re making 12 cookies or we’re making, like, 2000 breakup cookies, is completely different, right? And we’re not even packaging them when you take something like a cocktail, right? That is generally, like, the recipe is something that’s usually made in front of you and super fresh. And then how do you translate that into something that? And
Michael Sellers
the tolerance on each one of those drinks is are wildly off, oh yeah, depending on who’s making. So, yeah, there’s not a there’s a wild. Difference on on a handmade product than something that’s gotta, it’s gotta have consistency, yeah, you know exactly from, not only from a taste profile, but from a regulatory standpoint, yeah, yeah. It can’t be this percent, this time, that time. So, yeah,
Carrie
absolutely, yeah. So, all right, can you talk about some of the flavors or drinks that have inspired the seltzers and cocktails?
Michael Sellers
Yeah, for sure. I mean, in the cocktail world, we’ll come out, we will have Azalea, a cocktail called Azalea, and then also a take on what we think’s the yellow hammer. So those be the first two awesome, yeah, and then we’ll move on from there. Yeah.
Carrie
I mean, that’s exciting. And yes, it sounds very southern, very like, yeah, it’s already accessible. You kind of get it, yeah, absolutely, that’s what we know. Yeah, I think it’s easier to try something too. And you’re like, I get the gist of what I’m about to order right now. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Well, have you experimented? Like, are you like, Are people tasting them at the breweries? Are you serving?
Michael Sellers
Yeah, we typically just taste internally and get people’s feedback on what what they like. And that’s a pretty good profile. Yeah, we have, I mean, I don’t know how many employees, but say 6050, or 60 people that we can pull from and get their feedback on. So we got a good little market. Yeah. Segment there, yeah. Yeah. And people are different halls throughout it. So yeah,
Carrie
do we have any idea of timeline, or is it like, are we going to see these this summer? Is it, yeah,
Michael Sellers
yeah, we should start seeing them now. Yeah, you start seeing them. If you haven’t seen them, you’ll see them shortly. Yeah, yeah. So it should be coming out,
Carrie
yeah? So at all good collective. So you’ll start to see these are the seltzers and the cocktails. Will they? Will everything be can? Well, I mean, probably you’ll have beers on tap, but will you have those things on tap too? Or, do you know yet?
Michael Sellers
Yeah, we’ll have some of those on tap, and everything’s more can based, yeah, because we’ll be putting that product out. So we’ll want, you know, people to sample that there. But, yeah, we will have more of a, you know, a small batch, yeah, feel to some of that in, in the
Carrie
collective, yeah, yeah. Are you looking at anything non alcoholic yet? Are you kind of, like, is that? Yeah, we’re
Michael Sellers
exploring stuff right now. We don’t have enough to kind of say where we are, but, but for sure, that’s, that’s something we want to explore.
Carrie
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. What about, is it gonna be like food truck, food
Michael Sellers
or No, actually, there’s, there’s kitchen in there. We call it trail magic and sandwiches and whatnot. Yeah, yeah, there’s a little kitchen in there that we can, yeah, we can cook out. We can put out a good amount
Carrie
of food. So, so will it be geared toward grab stuff, like, while you’re on the trail? And kind of like,
Michael Sellers
yeah, you can come grab it, sit in whatever, yeah? So, yeah, that’ll be, you know, and that’s kind of one of the aspects, like, you know, there’s a bit of an oasis part of that, because I’m trying to think, like, I mean, obviously, you’re on the trail with the the first food place you have is, I’m thinking hero, or somewhere down across the park, yeah, and then at Avondale, you know, Miracle pizza down there, which, you know, we’re kind of involved in that. So, yeah,
Carrie
how are you guys involved in miracle?
Michael Sellers
It’s the kitchen for Avondale. So, yeah, it’s having those kitchen so, yeah, we, we just branded it. Found another brand. But, yeah, it’s
Carrie
doing. I don’t think, I don’t somehow I missed that. But so is that, so is that work. So that’s kind of why trail magic is also branded differently, yeah, then all good, yeah, because you have, like, miracle and, yeah.
Michael Sellers
I mean, look, we just like, I mean, look, I’ve always, kind of, we always kind of thought like, if you have an opportunity to brand something separately. It’s just, it’s just a chance to build brand equity.
Carrie
And, yeah, yeah. So, so how does that branding process go? Are you guys? Are Is it the same group that gets together? Do you bring in different designers? Yeah,
Michael Sellers
we all kind of kick around ideas and thoughts and see what happens. Yeah, get people’s input,
Carrie
you know, in general, and this may change, but it is naming, our naming and things like that. Is that something you typically hire somebody for? Is that something we just, like,
Michael Sellers
brainstorm, just kind of brainstorm, you know, like, again, we have so many people, yeah.
Carrie
Well, then it feels more, yeah. Well, I feel like, then, I mean, there are great reasons to use naming companies too. So there’s nothing wrong with either way, I think. But I feel like naming can be it can be great or difficult. I feel like it’s like, it either hits early, yeah, or you go through months of like, yeah, that’s not right. That’s not right, for
Michael Sellers
sure. And it’s a gut feeling too, yeah. That’s it, yeah.
Carrie
But I do think I feel like people, when they’re thinking of a business, underestimate that, like gut feeling, or what feels right, what do we like? Yeah, and so many businesses are trying to predict. Like, what does someone else like? What is another generation like? Sure, what is a focus group gonna like? But also, I guess you guys, because you have spaces, kind of have your own focus. Groups, yeah? Like, you have your group, yeah, she works with you. And then you have customers all the time, sure, giving you feedback.
Michael Sellers
So, yeah. I mean, that’s it. I mean, we just kind of, you just kind of listen to people, yeah, yeah, yeah. And names. I mean, I don’t know, you see a lot of names out there that are successful, and
Carrie
you’re like, when the world, yeah,
Michael Sellers
yeah. You know, I think it’s just how you execute, yeah, a lot of times,
Carrie
yeah, definitely. Well, this is, like, really exciting. So I think the best place, the best way for people to interact with you is probably just go to the go to a brewery.
Michael Sellers
Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Buy products out on the show. Go the brewery, yeah, yeah. Hit us on social media, yeah, if you’re looking for what we’re doing, yeah, kind of thing. So,
Carrie
so try porch, yeah. And then, so this is, this is our list. We have to try port, yeah, we, we need to, like, celebrate ghost train being back, yeah, absolutely, yeah. And come by all good collective,
Michael Sellers
that’s it, and see what’s going on, yeah, and then we’ll have more things popping off out of that.
Carrie
Yeah, awesome, yeah. Thank you so much. Oh, thank you guys for having me. I really appreciate it. Yeah, the localist podcast is written and produced by me, Carrie Rollwagen, and we record right here at infomedia studios. So if you’re interested in doing a podcast, or even if you just want to come and record some podcasts, like shots so that you can share them on social media, we do that. We also do photo and video for websites and really any kind of digital collateral. So if you’re interested, head to infomedia.com and fill out that contact form. We would love to have a conversation and see if we can help. You can find show notes about this week’s topic@carryrollwagen.com and find me on social media pretty much anywhere at sea Rollwagen, our showrunner is Taylor Davis, our outreach manager is Jen Tucker, and Alana Harmond is our promotions manager. So until next time, here’s to thinking global by acting local and putting small shops before big Bo.