The next morning, sitting in a little coffee shop in Brevard, I sat across from Marketing Director, Chad Melis, as the tension in his shoulders seemed to take over his whole body. “We don’t operate like this. I hate being in a corner. There’s going to be a lot of pissed off people that just wanted to have a great time." This wasn't what we thought we were going to talk about today.

$2k per brewery is about $60k in travel stipends. That’s an expensive apology. And the biggest problem was yet to come — 1,500 people showing up for a beer fest with 50 breweries, only to find about 17 breweries already available in the state, and a fraction of the beer ready to drink. Knowing that money was quickly becoming less and less of an object, and out-of-state brewers were deciding wether to pack up and drive home, we needed a solution that freed us from the legal and logistical constraints we were getting buried by. And that’s when we started brainstorming.