After a final winter of preparation, the Ramshackle Brewing Company is pushing a final fundraising kick with a plan to open their Jonesville brewery in the fall.
Brewery co-owners Joe Kesselring, Zack Bigelow, and Jessy Bigelow, who have turned heads with their unorthodox crowdfunding strategy, have set a goal of raising half of their $200,000 goal by April 18.
“It’s not a hard-set deadline,” Kesselring said. “It’s just the faster we can get these funds, the faster we can start building, and the faster everybody gets their brewery.”
As of Wednesday, backers had pledged $30,000 of the $200,000 goal.
If the crowdfunding goes as planned, Ramshackle’s contractor will break ground at their location next to Olivia’s Chop House in Jonesville in June.
For Bigelow and Kesselring, crowdfunding tactics are an ideal way to marry the need for startup capital to a desire to ensure that the whole community will profit from their success. Ramshackle is making use of the Michigan Invests Locally Exemption legislation passed in 2014, which allows small businesses to sell equity directly to individual, unaccredited lenders.
“The government’s made it even easier for us since then,” Kesselring said. “We’re now able to accept out-of-state investments, and if people hold onto their equity shares for five years or longer, when they go to sell it is tax-free.”
“When we first started our project, most everybody thought automatically of GoFundMe, where we’re just asking for money,” Bigelow added. “We’re totally not doing that; we’re actually offering ownership of the brewery. And it helps us get the community involved in that way.”
In addition to the crowdfunding, Ramshackle managed to secure a partnership and an additional $200,000 loan with the Brewers Professional Alliance, which provides business and legal counsel to fledgling breweries.
“They’ve taken on 87 different breweries in the states of Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and since 1997 all 87 of those breweries are still open, still profitable,” Bigelow said.
Dan Slate, the founder of the Brewers Professional Alliance, said they had invested in Ramshackle because the brewers’ technical expertise, unique vision, and willingness to learn set them apart.
“There aren’t any other breweries in the immediate area and thus there should be,” Slate said in an email. “The equity offering on the table for Ramshackle is probably the best I have ever seen. People should be running to get in on the deal.”
The community-based financial approach is not the only thing that distinguishes Ramshackle from other breweries. The brewers hope to carve a special niche out for themselves by focusing on resurrecting dead beers from the pages of history.
“I’m a real big history nerd,” Bigelow said. “And the biggest thing for me since we started brewing was, ‘What did they drink?’ Because back before purification days, water was dangerous. So that was one of the big ideas where a lightbulb kind of came on in my head.”
“And then we started finding journal entries and stuff like that,” Kesselring added, “where people might just mention some sort of beverage. And then down the rabbit hole he goes, and then we try to make it a reality.”
The pair made their first homebrew in Bigelow’s garage in 2010.
“We didn’t do any research, and it was one of the worst,” Bigelow said. “It felt like it peeled the enamel off your teeth. So that’s when the library of books started being purchased.”
They’ve brewed a keg or two every Sunday since.
“We first started brewing looking in the recipe books and trying to mimic all the new styles when we were learning,” Bigelow said. “And then once we started coming up with these historical ales, that’s when it really started becoming, ‘We need to do this for a living.’”