With beer sales at less than half of what they were before the pandemic started, Naughty Oak Brewing Company is in survival mode to make it through to the other side of the stay-at-home orders.
“We’re seeing most of our support from the membership club. And we’re just trying to be there with to-go stuff, and we’re bottling and canning like crazy to stay on top of it,” said Emily Kitts, who owns the brewery with her husband. “Since everything is now basically sold in a to-go package, it’s just us trying to package everything.”
The whole business model has shifted toward to-go, since the state and county stay-at-home orders went into place in mid-March to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Similar to other breweries, Naughty Oak is beefing up its to-go offerings and doing some delivery—delivery is available to the brewery’s club members.
Kitts said that business varies from week to week, and the only major issue they’ve run into is with crowler cans, which are hard to come by on the supply side of things. She said some members send her an email when they want to re-up their supply, while others are ordering via social media or over the phone. But mostly, people are coming into the brewery and placing a quick order.
“Most of the people are stopping by when they’re out running errands or finishing up a walk or something,” Kitts said.
For now, it’s doable, Kitts said. As long as nothing else major changes. For a while there, everything was changing daily on the public health side of things, she said. They were just trying to keep up with what officials were asking people to do, but, she said, “I think we’re settled now.”
“If regulations don’t get changed, we can sustain this for as long as we need to,” Kitts said. “But who knows what will get changed in the future.”
Naughty Oak decided to furlough almost all of its employees. Because so many of their employees rely on a tip-based income, Kitts said, even if the brewery could have kept them on and they filed for reduced wages, it wouldn’t have come close to what they were making before the pandemic. Plus, many of the employees didn’t want to risk getting exposed to COVID-19 and then expose their families to the virus.
“It seemed like it was in their best interest to file for unemployment,” Kitts said.
However, the brewery was told it received approval for a Payroll Protection Act loan. Kitts said they haven’t received the paperwork to sign yet. Once—and if—that money kicks in, she said she would love to be able to start bringing some people back to work.
“So we’ll see, hopefully,” Kitts said. “We fully intend to get everybody back, hopefully in June. In May would be amazing, if we could get them back in May.”
In the meantime, Kitts’ husband is still busy brewing, and Naughty Oak is even releasing some new beers during the pandemic. They recently started selling a new Belgian ale, a new double IPA is on deck, and a new sour is going into the tanks soon.
“We’re partly trying to work with what we have, and we’re partly trying to make—my husband always likes to make something new,” she said.
Rather than ordering anything specialty, Naughty Oak is just using what’s already in store, she said, the grain and hops that are already sitting at the brewery. When they ran out of double IPA a few weeks ago, she said they were initially hesitant to brew a new one.
IPAs are tricky, Kitts said, because you want to drink it while the hops are still fresh and beer takes two to three weeks to ferment. They wanted to see how sales went, so they waited a little while before starting one because they didn’t want the beer just sitting in the tanks.
Although everything is a little wacky because of the quarantine, the brewery still has some fun in store for its loyal customers—including boga (that’s beer yoga for all you newbies out there). Courtney Iverson, who’s been teaching boga at the brewery once a month for about 2 1/2 years, is continuing to lead Naughty Oak boga. It’s just online.
The way Iverson explains it: “Beer yoga is basically doing yoga and drinking beer at the same time while incorporating your drink into the poses. Either with your hands or your mouth,” she said.
Iverson said that she wanted to continue supporting the business and help people feel more connected. She’s taught two virtual classes using Zoom and said the responses have been great. It’s a little more challenging than teaching a class in person, she said, because it’s more difficult to correct everyone’s form. But it’s fun for her.
“I thoroughly enjoy doing it as a way to stay in touch with my regulars and meet new people while trying to encourage support for Naughty Oak,” Iverson said. “It’s like being in everyone’s living room and kids and pets always end up getting involved.”
Editor Camillia Lanham is already striking a pose with a beer in her hand. It’s called “down the hatch.” Send food and drink tips to clanham@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Apr 23-30, 2020.