After retiring from a 25 year career in commercial real estate, Greg Hoffmeister was ready to pursue his true passion: brewing. He and his wife had spent years brewing beer at home for family and friends, and when the perfect location finally became available, the duo took a chance at turning a passion into a business. Nestled near Black Rock Beach near the Hull-Cohasset line in Massachusetts, the couple opened the doors of Doctor’s Island Brewing Co. in 2023. The name is a nod to the brewery overlooking Doctor’s Island, the local name for Black Rock Island.
“We turned a hobby into a small business in a small town, and we’re profitable…I’m living the dream,” Hoffmeister said. But according to him, it took more than a perfect location, divine timing, and brewing skills to open the business. It also took bitcoin.
Bitcoin is allowing me to do this. If I hadn’t gotten into bitcoin in 2014, I probably wouldn’t have been able to shift my focus.’
Greg Hoffmeister → owner of Doctor's Island Brewing Co.
Using bitcoin to jumpstart the business
When Hoffmeister worked in commercial real estate, he and his team rented out desks to a small tech company that paid its rent in bitcoin for six months. In 2017, when bitcoin began to take off and became heavily discussed in the news, Hoffmeister thought back to that bitcoin he had stored up. “I remember distinctly being in a partner meeting as bitcoin began to take off, and we all looked at each other like, ‘Wait, do we still have that bitcoin from three years ago?’” Hoffmeister’s partners ultimately decided to convert their bitcoin into dollars right away, but he opted to keep his stored in a secure wallet and learn about how the currency could reshape his world, ultimately using some of it to jumpstart the business.
In fact, he’s so passionate about the importance of bitcoin, he’s encouraging his customers to try out the currency. “There’s so much value [in bitcoin]. I truly believe it. I’m seeing it in my own business, and that’s why I’ll accept Bitcoin Payments for beer.” Even if customers don’t want to pay in bitcoin, he implemented a rewards program through Square partner, Oshi, that rewards customers in bitcoin. Once customers have garnered enough rewards, they can either pay for their beer in bitcoin or hold their bitcoin and let it gain value over time.
“I love that my business is a conduit toward educating people who are unfamiliar with bitcoin, and suddenly, through their relationship with Doctor’s Island Brewing, they have Satoshi’s in their wallet,” Hoffmeister said.
Future-proofing the business with bitcoin
Beyond empowering and educating customers, Hoffmeister is also hoping to use bitcoin to build a foundation for his business. By leveraging Square to convert a portion of the business’s revenue, he believes that he’s preserving his savings. “I want to take my excess profits and savings and store it in a form that I know will hold its value and probably increase in its purchasing power over time,” he explained.
Because Hoffmeister believes that bitcoin will likely increase its purchasing power over time, he wants to use any excess profits to build up his neighborhood. “If we keep this going, five to seven years from now, people will look at this small craft brewery that is just profitable enough and wonder, ‘How and why are Greg and Michelle of Doctor’s Island Brewing renovating a rundown building on Main Street?’ We’re doing it to enhance the community,” he explained.
He summed it up by saying, “That’s the vision I have of how powerful bitcoin can be. It’s not having the value of what you’ve created over time get less valuable. You want it to get more valuable or at least hold its value over time.”
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