Starting Small, but Dreaming BIG: Meet PDX Brewer Karen Sheley

Karen Sheley moved to Portland, Oregon to learn the business of beer. While working at an established brewery in the city, she met her future husband, Joel, who shared her vision of launching a family-friendly, community-oriented brewpub. Now, two years into running their own operation, the Sheleys are looking to expand from a small production brewery with a pop-up bar to the retail space of their dreams.

We talked to Karen about pairing bikes and beer, the challenges of running a family business and the small steps they're taking today that will help them expand their business in the future.

Name: Karen Sheley

Business: Gateway Brewing in Portland, OR

Started: 2015

How did you turn your interest in brewing into a full-fledged business?

I moved to Portland in 2003 to get into the beer scene, and joined Widmer Brothers Brewing on the supply chain side of things. While there, I met my husband and current business partner. We had a joint vision to open our own brewery, so we started working towards our dream two years ago.

We live in the Gateway district of Portland, which has been a big inspiration in launching our company. Portland is home to so many breweries, but there were next to none in our part of the city. We both felt this neighborhood needed its own brewery and brewpub to be the community core that these places so often are.

We started small, converting our two-car garage into a two-barrel brewery. Based on Joel’s brewing experience and my understanding of regulatory needs and supply chain systems, we outlined a very "bootstrappy" business plan. We really started from the ground up.  

How did you know when you were ready to take your business to the next level?

Right now we have a production brewery that sells to bars and restaurants. When many people learn about our business, their first impression is that we’re actually a brewpub: a place where people can go to drink beer. We smile and have to explain that we’re actually more like a small factory — at least right now. 

A big part of our business vision, however, is to open a family-friendly brewpub. To get there, we have a number of small steps we want to take, but we’re getting started!

Last year we were taking part in a local farmer’s market, selling growlers of our beer. We made an effort to get the message out about our brewery and see what the need was for a local brewpub in our neighborhood in Portland. Our assumption that people in the area also want the place we're imagining for our business turned out to be true!

This past summer, we partnered with a local like-minded bike shop that’s into developing our neighborhood and fostering community. We converted an unused area of the store into a patio and created a makeshift bar. Our pop-ups on Saturdays bring people into the bike shop and the temporary beer garden.

What’s been your best learning experience so far since starting your business?

It’s a bit trite to say so, but there have been so many learning experiences! 

I think one lesson was understanding that having a business would take over our lives. For us, it’s the added challenge of starting a family company. It’s great that we’re both from brewing backgrounds and can easily speak in shop talk and shorthand with each other, but we also have to work at balancing the business and downtime.

What are some of the key things you’re changing as you prepare to open up your brewpub?

We’ve tried to be more active on social media, which is something that’s challenging for us as a two-person company. It’s been a bit of work getting people to know where we are and explaining the concept of a bike shop that’s also a beer garden. Some Portlanders associate beer and bikes, but it’s still not necessarily the norm for a lot of people. 

I think we were a tad presumptuous thinking that customers would make that link, so a lot of our marketing and education work has gone into connecting the dots between us and the bike shop. We’ve also included more pictures and customer testimonials in our marketing and in our social media posts.

Tell us a bit about your day-to-day schedule.

I handle the desk-based responsibilities. I enter sales receipts, organize regulatory permitting from federal on down to local and take care of our general bookkeeping. 

Joel handles the brewing in the brewhouse and all the related functions like cellaring, kegging and cleaning — lots of cleaning! He also tends to our customers in between brewing schedules and gets our product out there to potential clients. He takes samples to restaurants and bars and tries to work the beers. Once a sale is done, he handles everything that comes afterwards, from the deliveries to the reordering.

If you could go back in time, what’s the one thing you would do differently when you were starting your business?

I love the geographic focus of our company’s name as it aligns with our brand: we have an arch in our logo, a physical landmark that was once in the area. 

Unfortunately, there are other companies out there who have the same title, which makes trademarks difficult and we can’t protect our name. If we’d thought of other options that also captured the essence of the brand, trademarking might have been less of an issue. But the choice we ultimately made about our name trumps those concerns.

What would you like to learn today from a community of other small business owners?

I find I’m often confronted with new things to educate myself on and I wonder how deep I should be diving into subjects like bookkeeping and accounting. 

How much should I try to learn myself, and at what point do I outsource these services? 

I’d be interested to hear thoughts from other small business owners on this topic.

Do *you* have thoughts on outsourcing vs. DIY'ing some aspects of your small business?

Did you DIY  your business until you were ready to outsource tasks like bookkeeping and accounting? When did you decide to bring on help, and what factors did you weigh when making the decision?

Share your story with us in the comments below!