Daily Inspiration: Meet Chris Bell of Call to Arms Brewing

Today we’d like to introduce you to Chris Bell.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Call to Arms Brewing opened at 4526 Tennyson St in the Berkeley Neighborhood in July of 2016 with a focus on quality, community, and camaraderie. The founders met at Avery Brewing Company and with a combined 25 years of professional brewing experience have built an Award-Winning Taproom. With the advent of Covid-19, the brewery moved to canned beers and began and started full-scale distribution in April of 2021. Currently, we are in over 325 accounts across the Front Range.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Haha, smooth road? In my humble opinion owning your own business is never a smooth road even for the most successful. There is always a new growing pain or challenge around the corner. But, for me, it’s always like putting a new puzzle together. You start with the borders and work your way into the details. If you have that mindset I think you enjoy it.

Obviously, it goes without saying that Covid-19 has been the biggest challenge the company has ever faced. I think we navigated that well and came out the other side. Of course, I am not sure that we will ever NOT be dealing with Covid-19 but one can hope.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I started professionally brewing in 2008 right in the middle of the great recession. It was really difficult to get a job, but once I got in I knew it was the right place for me and have been in the industry ever since. When we started the company in 2015, the goal was to provide a comfortable unique taproom in the Berkeley neighborhood. I think we have succeeded at that. As far as what we specialize in, we specialize in beer. We never wanted to paint ourselves into a corner stylistically. We just wanted to focus on the quality of the beer that was being produced.

What I have always thought we’ve done well is approaching our brand as taking only the beer seriously. We always like to have fun and laugh at ourselves. Our beer names harp on past pop culture and should always make someone laugh. We have beer names ranging from “Janet Reno’s Dance Party” to “Shirtless Putin Catchin’ Rays.” We love to have fun and we don’t want anyone to forget it.

Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
Don’t take anything for granted. Business plans are so helpful in developing a plan for what you expect but, never an answer for what you encounter.

You know, when COVID started we approached it like everything else, a new challenge. We started canning and moved our comedy spin from beer names and social posts to the canvas of a label. Then can sales started really picking up. Once we knew that COVID wasn’t going away anytime soon, we decided to really harp on who we were before the pandemic, and that was trying to make people laugh. We put a video up on TikTok of our #beerslidechallenge and it went completely viral with 2 million views.

Breweries from all over the country responded. It was a moment that was such a bright light in an otherwise very dark year. You could feel the love from the Craft Brewing community. That camaraderie that we usually feel at beer fests, CBC, GABF, was all missing last year. And this kind of made things feels normal for a minute. We were all connecting in a different way.

We had a couple others, that people can look up for themselves. But, we definitely fell back into the groove of who we were and who we continue to be.

Contact Info:

• Email: info@calltoarmsbrewing.com
• Website: www.calltoarmsbrewing.com
• Instagram: @calltoarmsbrewing
• Facebook: @calltoarmsbrewing
• Other: TikTok: @calltoarmsbrewingdenver