Meet Davin Helden of Lafayette, CO

Today we’d like to introduce you to Davin Helden.

Hi Davin, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
All three owners were working together in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry for over a decade. After a long meeting where the only action item to come out of the meeting was to have another meeting to talk about what we just talked about, we decided we had enough of the corporate world. After a year and a half of business plan writing, searching for real estate, and market research, we were ready to beg banks for money. We opened our doors in August 2014.

We believe in slow and thoughtful growth. We started the brewery with just three employees and no off-site distribution. Everything we sold was in our tasting room. By 2016, people would walk in most Friday and Saturday nights and have to turn around and walk out because there was no place left to sit. So we underwent an expansion and added more tasting room space, more brewery space, and bought some more tanks and a canning line in 2016. The added space was a welcome relief for the tasting room seating situation, and the canning line allowed us to ramp up distribution to liquor stores. From there, it was just gently nudging the ship in the right directions to arrive to where we are now. We now employ 14 people, are in 40 liquor stores with cans, and about 20 bars/restaurants with kegs. However, even with distribution, our main focus is the tasting room. That’s where people can get a feel for who we are, experience the brand, and it also happens to be the method to get the highest profit margin from the beer. There have been wild successes throughout the years. Hosting baby showers and wedding receptions, see people meet for first dates, and donating to philanthropic endeavors make me smile. There has also been crippling challenges. COVID anyone?

As a business, we focus on what we call the three S’s. Suds, Space, and Service. We try to have a Space that is welcoming, clean, and comfortable for people to enjoy. While the product we sell is craft beer, our business is hospitality, so you have to have the best people serving beer. The Service has to be professional, safe, and fun. The Suds of a brewery is also what can make or break it. The beer has to be great to world class. We will dump full batches of beer if we don’t think it represents our brand. Over the years we’ve won 80 professional beer medals at competitions ranging from the Great American Beer Festival to the U.S. Beer Open Championship. We’ve also won 13 peoples choice awards for best brewery in publications like Boulder Weekly and the Daily Camera. Most importantly though, the amount of people in our tasting room let’s us know we are doing something right with all three S’s. Because in this saturated brewery environment, having drop tile ceilings, a server with an attitude, or an average beer on tap will put you out of business real quick. We strive to be our customers “third space”. The place where you go outside of work and home where it feels familiar and special. Heck, if you come in enough, chances are we will greet you by name and have the beer you like poured for you before you even sit down.

Beer wise, people know us best for our hoppy beers (both West Coast and East Coast style) our traditional light lagers, and our barrel aged dark beers. Our best-selling beers in cans are Lucid AF (west coast IPA) and our West Coast Cartel collaboration series (also west coast IPAs). But with 16 beers on tap, we usually have something for everyone in the tasting room. Yes… even smoothie sours, seltzers, gluten free, and Non-Alcoholic options.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
COVID sucked. How do you run a business where people come in and drink beer if people can’t come in? As an owner, that was one of the toughest times of my life. It seemed like every day there was a new guideline to follow. In order to make more seating, we expanded temporarily into a vacant space next to us and took over our entire north parking lot for beer drinking. On the first day of closure, where we could only sell to-go beer (March 17, 2020) we decided to start a nightly virtual drinking session with Liquid Mechanics on video on social media. We committed to doing them every night until people could resume drinking inside the tasting room. What I thought would be 2 or 3 weeks turned into 74 nights straight. That was tough on me personally because I had a kindergartner and a middle-schooler at home that I had to make sure were doing all the zoom schooling correctly (particularly for the littlest guy), then drive to the brewery at night for the virtual drinking sessions, and then figure out how to fit in actually running the brewery. But when we say we are going to do something, we do it, and we will always do the right thing, even when it’s hard. So people tuned in and really got to know us. We did virtual brewery tours, played Pictionary, highlighted our staff, updated people on the guidelines, and generally laughed our butts off. To this day, people still come in and tell me that our virtual drinking sessions helped them get through everything.

On the first day of closure we (the owners) made one of the biggest decisions of our time in the business. Our staff were worried about their jobs obviously, because you don’t need a whole lot of servers if there aren’t people to serve, and servers made a good portion of their pay on tips. So we decided that the business would pay everyone what they were being paid before the shutdown until we no longer could. We were ready to sink the entire ship to give them some sense of security. Good business decision? Hell no, it was a terrible business decision. But what it created was an army of the most dedicated staff members I’ve ever been around. Because what kind of business risks everything so that their staff can pay their rent and feed their families? Liquid Mechanics does. In the end, it all worked out. During COVID our sales dropped by just 7.5%. People showed up and we got through it. Would I do that again? Yep.

Our tasting room went through multiple configurations, our staff went through 11 schedule changes, and we had to deal with people who really didn’t like masks. I think COVID brought out some of the not nice parts of some people. We didn’t like masks either, I’ve never met a single person that LIKED wearing masks. But it’s what helped keep us open, and it was temporary. If someone came in and decided that they wanted to put our business at risk, don’t let the door hit you on the way out, you’re not our kind of customer anyway.

COVID sucked

Currently, the challenge to us and other craft breweries is people are simply drinking alcohol less. What’s true (Brewers Association study) is that the amount of people that say they drink alcohol has only dropped a little bit, and of those people that drink alcohol, they drink roughly the same amount each time they drink. What is shrinking though is the number of occasions that people drink. There is a myriad of potential reasons for this. It could be that people have switched to cannabis or substitute cannabis for alcohol. It could be the rise of GLP-1 medications. Those medications lower the craving for food AND alcohol. It could be the increase in the sober lifestyle, or sober curious lifestyle. However, I believe it has more to do with social interactions. The generation that really helped craft beer get cool (primarily Gen X) grew up with no screens. If you wanted to have fun as a kid, you found other kids to be with. That way of interacting with others followed Gen X as they got older and beer is a great thing to experience with other people. But now that generation is aging (myself included) and their doctors (mine included) are saying “Hey man, maybe don’t drink 3 IPA’s every night, maybe stick to one or take some days off”. So the consumption amongst that age demographic is shrinking. Younger folks, say 21-35 grew up where you didn’t need in-person social interactions. They had smartphones, zoom, and facetime. Instant connectivity with whomever they wanted without the need to be in person. Don’t get me wrong, the younger generations still hang out in person with each other, but not as often as older generations, which leads to less occasions to have a beer. Because having beers by yourself is pretty boring.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
My undergraduate degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder was in Biochemistry. I worked for 13-ish years in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries in roles such as manufacturing, Business Development, Information Technology, and Training as both an individual contributor and leader.

Midway though my corporate career I got my MBA from the University of Colorado at Boulder (evening program) graduating first in my class. I took all the entrepreneurship classes that were taught. I think I always knew that I wanted to start a business. I just didn’t know it would be a brewery.

Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
Mine is pretty simple, work hard and be nice to people.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.liquidmechanicsbrewing.com
• Instagram: Liquidmechanicsbrewing
• Facebook: LiquidMechanics

Image Credits
Liquid Mechanics Brewing