10 March 2022
You may know River Rat Brewery from their Astronaut Sauce IPA. Or from their tourist-drawing taproom next to Williams-Brice Stadium. Or possibly you’ve stopped by the punk brunch event they’ve put into their calendar this year. Regardless how you’ve heard about them, it’s actual no secret the city’s oldest distribution brewery includes a long history in Columbia — and it celebrated the eighth year in business this particular month. It’s a milestone designated by drunken ambitions that will started almost a decade ago. The concept started when owner Paul Tourville began brewing from his house as a pastime. His friends liked exactly what he was making plus, according to Tourville, he has been “silly enough to listen to a lot of drunk people” and open his own brewery. Silly delete word, the spot worked out for Tourville as he reflect on eight many years of brewing beers. From growing taproom offerings and occasions to offering regional submission to states like New york and Georgia, the brewery has weathered the outbreak and Tourville is planning to sustain what the brewery does for years to come. Free Situations: So you’ve been on River Rat for 8 years now. Tell me a bit about how the last eight many years have been for you. Mike Tourville: It’s been long. It’s simply been, you know, it’s simply been a wild ride, since probably most people you’d speak with in the brewery business. Whenever we started selling beer away into the community and whatnot there were 3, 400 breweries. And as of today, there’s fifteen, 000, going on 18, 500 breweries just in the United States by yourself. So the beer bubble offers busted. It’s not the heyday it used to be. So to be able to survive, most breweries need to have a taproom, food and develop kind of an atmosphere. And lots of money that the brewery can make is usually from the taproom in addition than outside sales. Right now with the pandemic, and the rest, you know, it’s just, from the survival game, basically. A minimum of for us it is. A lot of times it looks like the market drives what breweries are doing. How does that type of affect what you guys perform and what you sell? I actually don’t know if that that will fits our motives. We are going to making the beers all of us make and we got we have a niche into the hazy IPAs. Our Astronaut Sauce has become a real big seller for all of us and we’re just performing what we do. We’re simply kind of working hard and getting people into our taproom and producing beers which are enjoyable. It seems that most people nowadays, and what I’ve witnessed through bottle shops and whatnot, is ‘What’s new? ‘South Carolina distributors keep getting new beers from away from state. I think that’s unhappy, because most, most towns and whatnot are hyperlocal. And for some reason, Columbia is just not that way. I want it wasn’t like that. I believe everybody’s trying to stay in company, making money and it just can make it more difficult for local breweries who are just trying to create Columbia a cool place therefore we’re trying to survive upon tourism and loyalty plus repeat business and stuff of that nature. With everybody always kind of wanting something totally new. How do you continue to carve out your own niche in Columbia? Properly we’re trying to do things in the brewery. We have an excellent food program. On Wednesdays, we do a “hit this and quit it” (menu) so that basically is where we all take our core drinks and we add other adjuncts to them, as we brew all of them, and we’ll put several beer aside and we’re going add flavors to them plus whatnot and put them on this hit it and stop it (menu) on Wed. Like right now, we’re carrying out a Mexican chocolate brown, the Hazelnut brown, that kicked in less than 24 hours. So wish bringing it out once again because it seems like people loved it. I’m not stating we’re going to make cans (for those) and that’s an expensive opportunity. We try to get specific beers that are only available inside a taproom to keep people returning. And we’ve also began a jazz brunch. Therefore brunch is big within Columbia, there’s not a lot of locations to go. And if you go to these places, everybody’s inundated. And we decided to join the 03, be part of it and it’s already been pretty successful for us, especially because we’re doing some thing very unique with the punk. Do you kind of have expectations or plans to continue growing distribution to other states or even are you comfortable right now concentrating on South Carolina, North Carolina and Atlanta? Nobody’s picking anybody upward. There’s so many breweries within so many states. I mean take a look at South Carolina alone, look the number of breweries there are. The curry keeps getting smaller plus marketers are picking up out of condition breweries. I mean, if someone came to me and stated, “We want your drinks, ” we’ve got to look at strategies and shipping. And delivery is expensive. And now consider the gas prices, that hard disks everything up. It’s a a bit more complicated than it was previously unfortunately, but and that’s why I actually say everybody’s grounded plus looking at their taproom with regard to for net sales. So what do you see for the future of your brewery and tap room? Exactly what I’d like to see is the laws and regulations to change because they’re really antiquated in South Carolina. All of us do not have the ability to self deliver. We (could) easily deal with Columbia ourselves and minimize the middleman and create more profits and also the drinks would be cheaper, but I actually don’t see that changing in the near future. South Carolina is just very old. We’re one of the very few declares like that so we can’t obtain our beer into ale clubs or anything else to obtain our beer out there. It is extremely frustrating that it’s like that and it is been like that forever. And am don’t see it changing in the near future.