Jester King, for example, would see sales completely shift from selling literally no beer at its brewery to selling nearly 70% of its beer on-site. The Austin brewery also changed its license to a brewpub so it could sell beer to-go. That extra revenue was huge for them—they reinvested in their barrel program, hired, expanded.

“The work Freetail helped do in 2013 basically made our business viable,” Jester King founder Jeffrey Stuffings says. “We were essentially breaking even prior to the 2013 legislation. When it became legal to sell our beer at our brewery, our margins doubled overnight. We’ve been able to hire several more people and purchase land and equipment as a result.”

Freetail wasted little time, too. Metzger had impressively cleared the “THIS IS ILLEGAL” hurdle in his business plan. Immediately after the bill was passed, he purchased a new building in San Antonio and began building a production facility and tasting room. It’s a huge spot for them, and it’s built for expansion. In their first full year of production, Freetail did about 3,000 barrels at the new facility, in 2016 they’re projected to do 6,000, and they’ve got a future capacity of 40,000. It’s a slow-and-steady growth plan, building out their market presence in Central Texas—San Antonio, Houston, and Austin. It’s distribution built off of the local reputation of the beers earned at the brewpub. Sam Calagione would be proud.

But there was also a learning curve that came with the transition. The brewpub-to-distribution shift isn’t easy, at any level. “You’ve got production scheduling to worry about, managing inventory,” Metzger says. “Now we have obligations with wholesalers and retailers. As a brewpub, we just kept making beer, and it didn’t matter as long as the beer was good. Today we have commitments, we need to fill a lineup, keep the pipeline full, keep our retailers happy.”