Guardian Brewing Company, Saugatuck, MI Tom Ayres from Sommbeer brings to us the story of two women and how they started a brewery.

The Craft Beer scene is pretty wonderful. The quality beer, the tight ties to the local community, not to mention the entrepreneur spirit all make for a pretty terrific scene. But if there’s one area that needs improvement, it would be that it’s not as diverse as it could be. Women seem to be underrepresented as brewers and as owners. Despite women consuming 32% of craft beer volume and accounting for 29% of brewery workers, just 4% of head brewers or brewmasters are women.[1] Only 17% of breweries have female owners, of those only 3% have a solo female owner.[2] Two women in Saugatuck Michigan are working to do their part to change that. Kim Collins and Kate Bishop gave up their academic careers to follow their passion of opening their own brewery in the picturesque, Lake Michigan community of Saugatuck, Michigan. I sat down with Owner & Head Brewer, Kim to learn more of their journey to opening Guardian Brewing Company.



[1] Sources: Brewers Association, Auburn University 2014 study, Stanford University 2014 study. 2Sources: Auburn University 2014 study, Stanford University 2014 study.

Sommbeer: Why start a brewery now?

Kim: That’s funny because I’ve never considered that question because six years ago…Kate and I left for Colorado, she was a professor and I was just starting out in the brewing industry, so we’ve always had this plan. It takes a long time but I wanted to make sure I just didn’t go from homebrewer to 10-barrel system, I wouldn’t know what to do! Some people can figure that stuff out, they have an engineering mind, I studied recreation. I come at everything from schooling and apprenticeships. So why now? It’s as soon as we could make it happen (laughing). I don’t believe in this craft beer bubble because think about all these great corner bars that used to exist…all these places to gather after the normal dinner-time, they are disappearing and they are becoming breweries. So until the ones that can’t make it are replaced or until there’s a little brewery in every town then we are not at that bubble. There’s so much innovation just bubbling under the surface. The young ones like Cat (Cat Reed, Assistant Brewer at Guardian) who just went to school for brewing, like who knows what they’re going to do?

Sommbeer: Why Saugatuck (Michigan)?

Kim: We looked at 100 properties, from Muskegon to New Buffalo. We drove around all these towns in the dead of winter, so we made sure we liked it…we liked Saugatuck even in the winter. There’s something about the serious focus on local businesses and then art in the community…it just seemed like a good, healthy, very open-minded place for us to be. That was important to us because when you’re two women starting a business you have to make sure you’re safe, your staff is safe, you can’t just choose “willy-nilly” any town. Distance to the lake was important, it had to be within 5 miles of the lake. Why are we moving here, on the west coast of Michigan if we are not going to be close to the lake? And it’s such a beautiful thing to offer for people to visit here. So proximity to the lake, proximity to the highway, it was a really tricky one and that’s why we drove to all these properties.

Sommbeer: What about this particular location…the historic “Red Barn Theater”?

Kim: There’s an age break in that. The young ones are like “the Red Barn, the what?” I’m a sucker for barns and historical buildings. I got up on that stage and just got chills….(she thought) this is the place!

Sommbeer: Is Guardian about the business opportunity or something else?

Kim: For me it’s something else. It’s all about the quality of the experience. Our tag is: Quality, Innovation, Destination. We want to make sure we are providing quality every step or phase as we are moving through this property. We want to make sure we are doing something different. Y’all don’t need another brewery that’s exactly the same, tastes the same, looks the same…same vibe. No one needs the same anymore. We are not trying to be radically different, we’re trying to build the brewery we’d want to go visit.

Sommbeer: What do you wish you had thought more about or anticipated before you started this journey?

Kim: It went really, really smoothly. We have no knowledge on the timeline of how things are built out…that knowledge would have saved me a lot of stress.

Sommbeer: Did you start with a business plan?

Kim: Kate used to teach business plan writing…so yeah we had like a 50-page business plan. We have a business plan that is so solid, with financial projections for 5 years that I walked into the bank and they gave me an SBA loan!

Sommbeer: Did it go as planned? Any surprises?

Kim: It all ended up exactly as it was supposed to be, not in the order it was supposed to happen.

Sommbeer: How long a process from start to opening day?

Kim: We bought the property in December 2017, that’s how quickly it got open. We have the best team!

Sommbeer: Tell me about the unique challenges you may have faced being a woman in this male dominated industry?

Kim: I feel like my largest challenges were in the beginning of my career. As women we can’t complain. If you are seen as a complainer, you’ll be shunned by your brewing team. You have to work harder. I feel like it’s almost like being a female firefighter. I’m sure we have the same sort of physical demands and also we have to step-up , at minimum, to the base level or more. Being an academic, I like to combat that with education. So I spent a lot of time going to different brewing programs and becoming a Cicerone, proving to myself and therefore not being able to be shutdown for not knowing things, because I do. I do know what’s going on. I know why things happen…I spent a lot of time becoming a well educated brewer. Not only so we can make great beer, but so I could give back. Cat started working with me a couple of weeks ago and I told her I’ll teach you everything I know but you need to know why we do things. Its not enough to know how we do things, we have to be able to explain ourselves, all the time, to everyone we work for. I’m not having those challenges here. People that come in, think any bearded male that works here is the brewer. They (some customers) immediately assume so. We keep a tally of how many (laughing). There’s still that stigma in Michigan, which is weird because in Colorado it’s not like that anymore. But past that, for the first time in my life all I have to do is make great beer. I don’t have to prove myself anymore. Early on in the process I was left out of a lot of things and just looked over. And the guys would get really mad when I found a smarter way to do something, that wasn’t as physically demanding. Like, would you rather put 44-pound bags onto a pallet and have a crane lift it and then push it with a pallet jack? Or would you rather take each box, box by box up an entire flight of stairs and then walk it up a ladder? “A” it’s unsafe, “B” that’s like a risk management nightmare. The challenges I’ve climbed. Past then, it will be people recognizing people for their effort and education. I don’t run into that many guys who blow me off now, but if they do then they’re not worth knowing anyway. It doesn’t phase me now because I’m not trying to make it in the team, I’m trying to make my team.

Sommbeer: Who’s your competition?

Kim: Bars. Bars have Bud Light and TVs and wings with blue cheese. People get pissed that our wings don’t have blue cheese. They’re Korean, so it would be weird with blue cheese (laughs). Our competition is mass-produced restaurants with beer and food. People come here and expect that experience. Our biggest ally’s are all of the craft breweries in the area…because we get it. It’s great that we have Mitten, Saugatuck Brewing, ourselves and Waypost…that’s a force to be reckoned with! So our biggest competition is preconceived notions and mass-produced stuff.

Sommbeer: How do you feel you are different from your competition?

Kim: I’m very much focusing on Sessions and really, really barrel-aged beers. But I will also barrel-age Sessions. Not trying to make weird or wacky beers. We’re not trying to be the next Short’s (Short’s Brewery) or Right Brain (Brewery), who are killing it in their own regard. Michigan doesn’t need another brewery like that. I just want to focus on making a very fresh beer that gets sold over the bar. I get very excited about barrel-aging…I just want to see what can get done. I love the concept of when it warms up (which in Michigan, its April), to go out on the patio with the family, have a few drinks and be totally in your mind and space and be able to drive your car home. You can’t go play and watch your kids drinking 7% beer. It’s really focused about the length of the experience. We’re not trying to turn tables. We are trying to get people to come here and make it their “third space”.

Sommbeer: So for you, is that a business decision or did you just have a passion for Sessions?

Kim: I’ve always just had a passion for Sessions. I don’t know if Michigan is ready for “table beer” yet. Table beer is like 2-3%. Jester King (Brewery) is making them and they are doing very well, but they’ve only caught on in certain places. So the idea that I get a full 750ml bottle and you get a bottle and we go sit down and have great conversation. We drink the entire bottle and can still drive home. So it’s full flavor, full experience.

Sommbeer: How big do you want to be?

Kim: This big. We want to be this Laketown Township neighborhood big. We’re not even distributing now. Once you sell your beer out the door, its twice as hard to make sure people are serving it right…that they’ll store it right. You’re giving your quality control to someone else. Bless the people that distribute, my beer frig is full of great beers, our thing is about fresh. We are running our kitchen like that…we’re going to try to do it like that as long as we can. I’d rather just dig into our community and see what they want.

Sommbeer: Who’s your target audience?

Kim: I chase the neighbors. Our neighbors are singles, couples in their early 20s, to older adults into their 80s. So we chase them all or none of them (laughs). They know we are here and are so happy to have a restaurant in their neighborhood or have a bar in their neighborhood. They love the food. They love that they can bring their neighbors and just sit and chat.

Sommbeer: As a customer visiting Guardian, what do you want me to say about this place?

Kim: I’m hoping that they say that the beer was clean and interesting, and the food was amazing…and they didn’t even miss the meat. We are intentionally putting in really good vegan food. I have a lot of people with dietary restrictions in my life and I’m tired of watching them eat side dishes at every brewery they go to. We are trying to be a place that is just fun and just makes good stuff.

Sommbeer: What do you consider your best beer?

Kim: Probably the newest recipe that I’ve never tried before. It’s called “Nahual” (Mexican Werewolf), it’s an English Pale with Simpatico Coffee. I’m very excited about it.

Guardian Brewing Company, Saugatuck, MI

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