Meg Gill co-founded Golden Road Brewing and is one of the few women in the craft beer industry. She stands among ageable beer barrels.
“I would get these meetings and they would say, ‘Well, we look for an exit in three to five years’ and ‘This seems way too capital intensive and way too risky for us to get involved at this point.’”Careful launch In less than four years, Golden Road’s annual production grew to “in the 40,000-barrel range,” Gill said, which works out to more than 1.2 million gallons. “It was one of the fastest-growing craft breweries.”Although Golden Road was fast in launching, it takes time to get each flavor exactly right, Gill said. For instance, Gill wanted the brewery’s Mango Cart beer to taste like the mangoes she used to get from a sidewalk vendor.
Golden Road found itself running into what is perhaps the craft beer industry’s biggest challenge: competing with deep-pocketed giants such as Anheuser-Busch while new entrants to the market nip at their heels.