David Satterfield wasn't thinking about leaving his job as a top attorney with Darden Restaurants Inc. — one of Orlando's biggest employers — until he met Luke Pridgeon.
The two both had daughters on the same volleyball team, and they quickly hit it off over their shared enthusiasm for craft beer. Soon, they both started home brewing with Satterfield installing a system in his Lake Nona pool house.
"We starting thinking, man, we can make some decent beer," Satterfield said.
Now, they're preparing to open brewery Deadwords Brewing Co. LLC at 23 N. Orange Blossom Trail by early summer 2021. The converted army surplus store will feature an 8,000-square-foot taproom, an assortment of beers and food and 47 parking spaces. In addition, the duo has hired a head brewer from the Pacific Northwest who will be handling the brewing.
It's a gamble for Satterfield who has invested nearly $450,000 of his personal money into the project, he said. He also had to step away from full-time work at Darden (NYSE: DRI) as the brewery was seen as a competing interest with his job. Plus, many local retail experts see Parramore as an up-and-coming retail submarket.
Not to mention Satterfield will need to wrangle with the challenges of potentially opening in a global pandemic.
"With a startup business you feel two emotions: euphoria and terror. And the lack of sleep tends to enhance both," Satterfield said. "It's a good lesson for my girls to see if you believe in something you go for it and keep moving forward."
Satterfield recently spoke with Orlando Business Journal about the future brewery and how he's planning to operate the business during this difficult economic time.
Why did you decide to open this business in Parramore? I live in Lake Nona, and it was difficult to find space over here. Mackenzie Peatfield was my Realtor, and we talked with the Parramore building owner and negotiated a deal. You're on the bleeding edge of redevelopment in the downtown area. It has great parking and it's a huge space. It's located close enough to downtown where folks can come over during lunch or after work. I love the richness of the culture in Parramore, and it's right in the middle of everything.
What was it like trying to finance this project right now? Lending tightened up during the pandemic, and our original lender reduced by two-thirds what they had previously offered. But we shopped around with other lenders and we're planning to close on our Small Business Administration loan in late October. Construction can start after that.
What's the beer and food situation looking like? Beer has been around for thousands of years, so we want to celebrate beer as it was in the ancient past in addition to having a series of traditional, evolutionary and abomination beers. For the ancient beers, we will use a clay amphora fermenting process like people did more than 2,000 years ago. Traditional beers will be your pilsners, lagers, American IPAs. The evolution series is where beer is going, and the abomination series is something ridiculous like exploding fruited cupcake stouts.
We don't have a set food menu, but we plan to have simple offerings. Potentially that may mean pizza, sandwiches and other handheld foods.
How many employees will you have? About a dozen.
How will you operate your brewery's shared areas during the pandemic? We're spacing out tables and considering a phased opening. We may have a patio window to serve beer to go so people don't have to come inside. If we have seats at the bar, they'll be limited and spaced out. We'll have sanitizer stations.
Do you plan to stay in the brewing business? I'm not talented enough to brew the beer [and the company has hired a head brewer from the Pacific Northwest to brew the beer]. The goal is to go back into my legal career. But for the next year to 18 months I'm 100% going to be getting this brewery up and running.
