Nothing stings like a missed opportunity.
Now that we’ve gotten our vague opening statement out of the way, it’s time to drop the news that many of you have feared was inevitable: due to production constraints, we’re not able to throw a Halloween party this year.
As many of you know, we threw a pretty crazy party at Carrie Furnace last year that drew more than 1400 people to the Mon Valley on the night after Halloween. We had a blast organizing and hosting the event alongside our friends at The Independent, and learned a lot about what we’d need to improve to make this year’s event even better. We all really looked forward to it, and had a lot of good plans scribbled down in our respective notebooks. But sadly, due to the expansion of both of our businesses, we have neither the time nor the resources to give this event our full attention. And if we can’t make it a significantly better experience than last year’s party, we’re going to hold off until we can.
Whenever we tell people that we’re running out of beer, we often get the response that “it’s a good problem to have”. While that’s not wrong – demand outweighing supply is obviously a better position to be in than the other way around – it’s a rather oversimplified way of looking at a complex business issue. We’re hugely fortunate for and thankful to all of our taproom patrons. They remain our first priority, and sometimes we have to sacrifice other aspects of our operation to keep the taproom running smoothly. Missing opportunities like throwing a killer follow-up to last year’s Halloween party really does sting.
We extend our deepest apologies to everyone who looked forward to spending this Halloween with us. We assure you that we will be coming back, and when we do, we’re coming back hard. Happy Fall, family.