Innovation is on tap at Pilot Project Brewing

Childhood friends Dan Abel and Jordan Radke have developed a pathway for young creatives in the brewing industry by combining a startup-style incubator with a brewery.

In 2018, the pair were enjoying homebrews in the garage of Abel’s Chicago home and began talking about what is needed to launch a brewery.

“It’s very capital intensive and the legal and regulatory side of the industry is crazy. And then there’s accounting, marketing, distribution strategy… all of these different pieces that prevent creatives from entering the industry.”

Abel and Radke decided to change that.

Friends since they were five years old, the Minnesota natives planned for a career in the creative arts when they attended the University of Wisconsin. Abel, a musician, and Radke, a photographer, worked for years in their chosen industries before building a scaffolded support structure for brewers that was similar to what already exists for artists.

“There were a litany of resources available to me as a musician to build my business. If I wanted to record an album, I went to a recording studio. If I wanted to tour, I would work with an agent,” Abel explained.

The pair designed a business model that allows emerging brewers to bring beer to market without their own full-scale brewery. Brewers also work with the company to market and distribute the beverages.

Launched in 2018, Pilot Project Brewing began operations in August of 2019. Since its inception, the revenue-generating company has raised $9 million in capital.

Aspiring brewmasters face steep competition for a spot in the company’s brewery incubator. The team has received more than 1,000 applications to date and that number grows daily. Applicants must have more than a delicious beverage recipe to work with the incubator. In a process Abel describes as a combination of a “Shark Tank/ American Idol-style audition,” candidates are asked to pitch the proposed beverage to the team.

“We want to learn your brand story and why you’re going to break the mold of today’s quintessential craft brewery. We also want to know that you have an appreciation for what goes into building a business,” Abel said.

Applications without business or marketing plans are not considered for the opportunity.

Abel reported that the incubator has accepted 15 brands into the program since its inception and plans to add another two brands before the close of 2023.

What the future holds for those brands is as varied as the brews themselves.

“Success is in the eye of the beholder,” said Abel. “Sometimes a brand comes in and just wants to validate and then opens their own brewpub and that’s great. That is what they wanted and that is what we built our infrastructure to be able to support.”

“But, then there is the other side of the spectrum,” Abel continued, “that wants to launch to world domination, which we want to support as well. We’ve had brands that have distributed to over half of the United States. We’ve even had international brands come to us seeking a launchpad for their presence in the United States.”

“We’ve seen people come with different perspectives of what success is,” he said. “An aspect that I really like about our space in the universe is that we ‘call fallacy’ on the idea that you have to have a physical brewery to be a brewery. It costs a lot of money to run one of those facilities. The other is that we lower the barriers. When you lower barriers you see a larger, more accurate reflection of the people who are invested in your industry.”

The company has discovered the people invested in craft brewing are more diverse than has been assumed.

“A third of our applicants are women. We’ve launched the second Black-owned brewery in all of Chicago. We’ve launched an Indian-inspired brewery. These companies bring a new perspective into the craft industry.”

The co-founders always planned on taking his business to Wisconsin.

“When we purchased the Milwaukee facility, it was based off of a need to expand production capabilities,” Abel said.  “We had been teasing out the idea of building our own space. When the opportunity came up to buy (the former Milwaukee Brewing Company facility), it was too good to pass up, which is also why we under-budgeted for acquiring this facility. It was a necessary opportunity that allows us way more growth potential we would have had if we had to build it ourselves.”

For now, the Pilot Project Brewing team is focused on maximizing the efficiency of the Milwaukee facility. The company is also looking to add some Wisconsin-based brands into the incubator.

Expansion plans are in the company’s future. “It’s about expanding our network to other premium cities that are culturally rich and will help further the diversification and innovation of our industry,” Abel said. “If Milwaukee is our scaling engine, then Chicago is our lead generator. It would be nice to have other lead generators around the country or the globe.”

As excited as Abel is about the opportunities Pilot Project Brewing is providing aspiring brewers, he is equally enthusiastic about what the company is offering to visitors of both the Milwaukee and Chicago locations.

In addition to the tasting rooms, where guests choose from 30 on tap beverage varieties, the locations have beer gardens, rooftop seating, food and more. “We want to be a ‘Michelin Star’ for our brands. The public-facing experience is something that we will continue to invest more money, time, and effort into,” Abel said.

The Milwaukee location currently offers rooftop yoga, trivia nights and craft classes, in addition to the standard brewery tour and fish fry that brewery visitors have come to expect.

To plan your outing to Pilot Project Brewing, find the company here.