Advice and Whiskey with Jen Leonard of Tie & Timber Beer Co.

“The universe dropped this in our laps, and it’s up to us to see if it’s going to work out. That’s when we started pulling the numbers together.”

“We could see the vision of what this little area could turn into. The neighborhood I lived in in Denver felt like this with places for neighbors to walk to.”

“What we didn’t know is if [residents] would accept a brewery in their neighborhood.”

“We did the survey and got people we needed to get into touch with. We just had great reception; people were really excited for it.”

“We could see how invested this neighborhood is in their community. That’s what we wanted for our business. We want to be a part of it and grow with it.”

“In Denver, neighborhood breweries are all over. In Springfield that was not the case. It was important to get involved in the community, address their concerns and make them a part of what we were building. That was probably the smartest thing we did.”

“Here, one of the unique things of being in the neighborhood is that we’ve had baby showers here, and we’ve had families that bring their kids here. It’s more intimate than if we were in a busy area.”

“We wanted to do something together. We wanted to be a part of a community and be impactful in a community.”

“Do your homework and understand it’s a lot of hard work. This is not glamorous at all, being a small business owner. Be prepared for the amount of work, but don’t be scared by it.”

“We did go in a little blind, but when we saw all the support and answered questions personally, we could see that this was a good fit for us and what we wanted to do.”