Ryan Nosek: We were terrified of food and running a restaurant. It sounds scary. We don't know anything about food. I guess we didn't know anything about beer either, but that is, stop us from that. The band that founded Ghost Town was probably started in 2008, 2009. The brewery came out of the band mostly because we were trying to figure out how we could afford to keep rehearsing, so we thought, hey, might as well offset the cost of this rehearsal studio and start a brewery.
The moment we realized that we were going to invite customers into our space, we knew we needed a rock solid system for our staff to conduct business, get sales, take orders, all that stuff. Square came into the picture for us, day one of our operation. We've brewed something like 300 different beers. We also opened up a second location, which is our Laurel Beer Garden, a taproom and full restaurant.
When we wanted to open our second location, like we should have food because if there's food there, people will hang out longer and they'll drink some more beer. So it was a really easy decision for us to keep rolling with Square. It makes it easy for me as the business owner. I can see what's going on at both locations in real time, even though I can't be at both of them.
We turned on the online capability of Square and immediately started sending beer all over the state. We ship merch all over the United States. There are people who are really excited about our products that have never been here, and they have that ability now to order it and get it delivered right to their door. In addition to that, we also do a lot of wholesale, retail, big chain stores, a lot of restaurants, markets, liquor stores. We opened up a whole subset of sales we didn't have, so it's been really helpful.
We're thinking about opening a third location and Square data has really helped us figure out when and where to launch it. Do you think other POS companies will listen to this interview because if they are, can you have 'em stop calling me?
