A Huntington Beach craft brewery that started with a crafty way of getting its beers to consumers is expanding its bricks-and-mortar location.
Riip Beer Company is adding a larger brewing system and more tasting room and patio space.
It’s the next step of an operation that started in a garage in 2014 when Ryan Rasmussen, 36, and his brother-in-law Ryan Hopkins, 30, started home-brewing.
The brewery generates $40,000 a month that Chief Executive Rasmusssen said he reinvests in the company.
“I have not made any profit since I started,” he said. ‘I have put so much back in, so I keep my day job, although this would be my dream job.”
His day job is running Riip Digital, a digital ad agency he created in 2014. His office is the brewery.
The side business tries to provide a “community vibe,” and avoids competing “with 200 other beers” on a shelf somewhere, Rasmussen said. It’s dog-friendly, and food can be ordered in.
“Every single person here has a smile on their face,” he said. “That’s the motivating factor.”
Garage Project
Friends and family were so enamored with the two Ryans’ beer when they started home-brewing that they asked where they could purchase larger quantities. The brewers figured out what public sales would entail and started looking for a warehouse to make the beer in bigger batches.
Around the same time, a coach made for beer delivery became available through Brewbakers Huntington Beach Craft Beer & Brewery. The owner was retiring and moving to Germany. His only stipulation for selling the coach to the Ryans was that they keep it in Huntington Beach and use it to deliver craft beer to the local community, Rasmussen said.
In June 2014, the brewers signed a lease on a 1,000-square-foot warehouse in the industrial part of Huntington Beach to make the beer and started selling to bars and restaurants. They finished their first batch, Riip Jitsu Session Ale, in March 2015, but the brewers concluded they needed more sales to survive. They couldn’t afford to lease and build out a tasting room at the time, Rasmussen said, so they got creative.
They learned from an attorney they were working with, Candace Moon, that they could deliver beer to anyone who placed an order in advance, under California law. It’s the same law that allows direct-to-consumer alcohol delivery, but Riip’s “is a unique approach for small manufacturers seeking to establish a reputation and demand in the craft beer marketplace,” Moon said.
They started home delivery in April 2015, using the beer coach, which holds four kegs, and growlers as containers.
Word spread quickly through social media, and the business took off. That’s when the first investor, Michael Shorey, founder and chief financial officer of Huntington Beach-based Good Life Mortgage & Investments Inc., was brought on board. He invested about $50,000 to become a partner in the company, Rasmussen said. The investment, along with some money from the Ryans, enabled Riip to lease and build out its own taproom.
Tasting Begins
In July 2015, the Ryans signed a lease for a 1,200-square-foot spot in a strip mall on Pacific Coast Highway, and the tasting room opened for business that October. Riip acquired the new 1,350-square-foot space last June but couldn’t take possession of it until January. Permits in hand, they ripped a hole in the roof to place the new brewing system. There will be capacity for 20 taps, up from a dozen. The expansion was facilitated by another investor, Don Orr, himself a homebrewer and an early customer of Riip’s taproom. He liked the beer so much that he invested $250,000 for the new brewing system.
“I wanted to invest in something that I am passionate and excited about, something that could be expanded and grow and something that involved people and fun, and Riip is just that. Plus, I really like and trust the way the Ryans operate the business.”
