It wasn’t my intention to address today’s Metro Times piece about Ypsilanti’s Corner Brewery. But, as several people have now asked me for my thoughts, I feel as though I’m obligated to say something.

First, and probably most importantly, in spite of owning half a share, I know next to nothing about the inner workings of the Corner Brewery. I’ve never seen the books. I’ve never been involved in a single business decision. I’ve never even been behind the bar. So, I’m afraid I can’t shed much light on the money side of things, or what might have been said during the staff meetings noted in the Metro Times article, or why certain decisions may have been made. I can however, share a few things with you.

Before we get into that, though, I should probably tell you how Linette and I came to be involved as investors about a decade ago. (I can remember that Clementine was sleeping in her crib when Matt and Rene came by the house to sign the paperwork, so it must have been about 9 years ago.) I guess I’d heard through the grapevine that Matt and Rene were hoping to open a brewery in Ypsi, and I’d reached out to them to see if I could help in some way. I’d been a fan of their operation in Ann Arbor, and I wanted to see them open something here in Ypsi. Ypsi, I thought, could really use a family-friendly brewery that would be big enough to host the kinds of events I was starting to put together, and I wanted to help make that happen if I could. And, to be honest, I liked their politics. They were big supporters of Howard Dean, and I liked that. (This, of course, was before they threw their support behind Rick Snyder.) So we talked. And, eventually, Linette and I decided to cash in our savings to help make it happen. We thought it was a good gamble, given their success in Ann Arbor, and the fact that Ypsi was desperate for the kind of place that they were wanting to open, so we decided to do it. We weren’t the most savvy of investors, but we liked the vision, and we wanted to help make it happen. And we figured that we’d rather invest our money locally, in Ypsilanti, with people that we trusted, than in the stock market. So we bought half a share, making us the smallest investors in the venture.

And, aside from no longer having any savings, things were good. The Brewery opened, and we started doing things there. Some friends and I held our first Shadow Art Fair there that summer, and it was a huge success. Thousands of people came. And other events followed. We’d apparently been right about Ypsilanti needing a flexible indoor space where people could do interesting things while drinking beer. And it grew. We thought we’d helped make something good happen in our community, and that made us happy. And we figured that, eventually, we’d get back out what we’d put in, plus some percentage of the profits, which we could channel into other things we were passionate about.

The money never came, though. According to the initial projections, if I recall correctly, investors would start to see dividends after about three years… It’s now 2015, however, and we’ve yet to see the first dollar distributed.

In spite of this, no one complained. None of the investors went to the press. No one, to my knowledge, pressured either Matt or Rene. We still loved the Corner, and continued to drink there, host our events there, etc. We figured that, eventually, we’d see something. And we believed Matt and Rene when they said that, in spite of the crowds, and the booming distribution business, the Brewery had yet to turn a profit, as revenue was being funneled back into things like bottling lines, geothermal coolers, and the like… We were resigned to be patient.

Then came the online fundraising campaign at the heart of the Metro Times article. And that’s when things started to fall apart. I began getting calls from other business owners, who knew of my association, asking why Matt and Rene were trying to raise $75,000 online for a new kitchen instead of just building it themselves. I, of course, couldn’t tell them much… While most folks were satisfied with just whispering and texting, though, there was one local bar owner who felt obligated to confront the Greffs head-on. In a late night private email, written after having consumed a few drinks, this business owner told Matt and Rene that he was pissed about getting messages from them, asking for money, while also seeing photos of them drinking on a beach in his Facebook feed. He told them, among other things, that he’d just built his own kitchen, without asking for contributions, and hadn’t taken a real vacation in three years.

And this, from my perspective, is where things began going off the rails… Rene copied this private letter to Facebook. And, as you might expect, her friends came to her defense, calling this business owner names, and noting all of the positive things that Matt and Rene had done for the community. Rene, I’m sure, felt vindicated by the outflowing of support from her friends. What she didn’t see, however, is that, at the same time, this other business owner was getting flooded with texts, all thanking him for having said what he said. (Many of them, by the way, came from employees of the Brewery.)

I wrote to Matt and Rene. It was a long letter, but here’s the gist of it… “You may not like what this other business owner had to say, but you should know that he’s not alone. People are talking, and I’m afraid this campaign may ultimately cost you more than the $75,000 you’re hoping to raise.” I suggested that they remove the letter from Facebook, and offered to set up a meeting between both of them and the other bar owner. They declined. And things, as I predicted, got steadily worse. According to Tom Perkins, who wrote the piece for the Metro Times, one of their employees, shortly after this, reached out to him, asking that he please write about how they, the employees of the Corner Brewery, had been asked to contribute toward the building of the kitchen. And, here we are, several months later, with what someone described to me as, “The worst article ever written about two people not going to prison.”

And it looks really, really bad. The image painted in the Metro Times piece is one of jet-setting owners vacationing around the world, only to stop back in Michigan in order to ask their employees, who are making $9 an hour, to donate back part of their pay so that they might not have to work in an outside kitchen come winter. It’s truly terrible stuff. And one hopes that it isn’t true. Regardless, though, I feel genuinely sorry for everyone involved.

Here’s a clip from the article concerning the Indiegogo campaign, that I think should give you a sense for the tone of the piece, and why it is that Matt and Rene’s friends are so upset today.

The thing that really bothers me is that this was all so avoidable. If that private letter hadn’t been shared, and if the online fundraising campaign had been quietly suspended, all of this could have been dealt with in private. But, now, the whole thing is going viral, and I’m afraid that it may negatively affect the Corner Brewery, which, in my opinion, is still an incredible asset to our community. And, more importantly, it could affect the staff, who, through all of this, have kept right on going. (If business takes a hit because of this bad press, it’ll be them that suffer the most.)

As I told Tom Perkins when he called me for a comment last November, when all of this began, the thing that really sucks is the thought of what might have been. The Corner Brewery started in such an incredible place. I’ve never seen a local business open with more goodwill. And who’s to say what they could have accomplished if not for all of this stuff that we’re now talking about. I know my quote in the article wasn’t terribly articulate, but that’s what I was getting at. I was trying to say that I hoped all of this didn’t cause that goodwill and positivity to evaporate. And I meant it.

The big takeaway for me in all of this, as someone who would one day like to own his own business, is that transparency matters, and it’s important to be aware of how one’s actions are perceived. I know that Tom Perkins, in his piece, used the term “unethical.” From my perspective, though, it has more to do with tone-deafness than ethics. These trips taken by Matt and Rene, I’m sure, weren’t paid for out of the Corner Brewery till. I suspect they were financed by their venture in India, which is a completely separate, and considerably more profitable, entity. It’s difficult, however, to disentwine the two in one’s mind. It’s hard to see the photo of Matt and Rene drinking in first class, on their way back to Paris, and process it alongside their requests for donations. And I’m sure, from an employee’s perspective, it must be infuriating to work for a business owner who asks you to help raise money for a kitchen, so that you don’t have to continue working in the cold, when said owner has just posted photos from a hot tub at a spa on the Indian coast. Maybe something like this would have happened regardless, but I have to think that it could have played out differently, with a much better result for everyone involved, had more thought been given to communications.

For what it’s worth, I’m still a supporter of the Corner Brewery, and I wish Matt and Rene all the best. As an investor, I’d still like for them to be successful, as I’d like to eventually help my daughter pay for college. More importantly, though, I still think our community needs a space like theirs. Regardless of decisions by management, the place is still important, beautiful and vital. And, thankfully, nothing has been done that cannot be undone. Ypsilanti, if nothing else, is a forgiving community, and this can still be turned around.

UPDATE: Matt Greff just posted the following response to the piece in the Metro Times.