Jason “Jay” Schutz – Co-Owner
One World Brewing Company
10 Patton Ave.
Asheville, NC
http://www.oneworldbrewing.com
One World Brewing has a unique setup in the heart of downtown Asheville. It is located underneath Farm Burger restaurant with an entrance through an alley. The brewery is a small “nano” size at 1.5 barrel capacity with a dozen fermenters. The tasting room and brewery are all in one space. It gives you an atmosphere of a speak easy with history of old Asheville.
The mission statement of One World Brewing is:
“One World Brewing is dedicated to providing the highest quality craft beer possible. We offer light session beers, to super hopped-up IPAs, to the dark, rich malty goodness of stouts and porters and everything else in between. We use only the highest quality ingredients and brew in small batches, which allow us to brew more varieties in a shorter amount of time. With 12 fermenters, we are rotating several of our 10 taps with different beers every week.
We believe that good beer brings good people together. If there’s one thing Asheville is rich in, it’s good people. One World is about community, sustainability, and honoring the diversity of life on this beautiful planet. We put a lot of love into our beer. And there’s a lot of love in this town. We are honored to serve such a great city!”
Jay is from the northern part of Massachusetts and fell in love with Asheville when he came to visit. He met his wife in Asheville at a Halloween party and they decided to stay. He was a rock and stone mason in construction before the housing market crashed. He had been a home brewer for 12 years and brewed his own recipes in his garage. Jay said he used trial and error and threw out several batches along that journey.
For his startup, he only used family funds. His equipment capital was approximately $90,000. He has an electronic brewing system with plastic fermenters. Jay currently has 9 employees: 2 brewers, 2 assistant brewers, 4 bartenders, and one manager. (The manager just so happens to be the manager at Farm Burger upstairs as well). He has used Asheville Buncombe Technical Community College and South College to find talent through internship programs. He requires a “hands-on” interview style where the candidate must brew him a batch of beer from start to finish. The manager has a great “head-hunter” style for finding great employees to add to the team. The head brewer went through the AB-Tech program and completed an internship at Altamont Brewing in West Asheville.
Future growth for One World includes buying a parcel of land and building a 10-14 barrel system for producing their flagship beers. This will allow the current place to brew special, small batch recipes. He also wants to get a delivery truck and start delivering kegs and work into distributing into the local grocery stores. Jay really wants to stay local and within North Carolina. The production brewery will add another 5+ jobs and possible multiple shifts. Jay also wants to get a crowler canner to be able to can some of the beer for sales. He said that the great location in downtown Asheville is key to their business. And of course “people really like my beer.”
Some other interesting facts I learned from Jay:
New recipes are submitted to the ABC for approval. It takes roughly 17 days for a new recipe to get approved.
One World brews ~60 kegs a week and approximately only 6 are left over after the weekend.
They started running in the black within one year of opening. Jay stated that he never knew it would have turned out like it has.
Jay used Mountain Bizworks to learn how to create their business plan and startup
If anyone is in the Asheville area, wants to support local businesses, and have a great beer, then I recommend visiting One World Brewing. The Smash IPA is a top notch brew!
