Minneapolis-Based Brewery, Indeed, Expands Business in The Good Land (Milwaukee)

The Minneapolis-based brewery, Indeed, is expanding its business…in Milwaukee, which we all know is Algonquin for “The Good Land.”

Indeed will open a 10-barrel brewery and taproom that will serve as a Wisconsin outpost for the company. According to Indeed co-founder Thomas Whisenand, ‘We were looking in Milwaukee and were sold on Walker’s Point pretty quickly.’ Milwaukee, he says, offers an opportunity for growth, but the kind of small-scale, steady growth Indeed is seeking.

‘In Minnesota we can only have one taproom,’ Whisenand explains. ‘And 95 percent of our business, volume-wise, is outside of the taproom. But the taproom is a very high-margin, high-revenue part of the business, and so as we looked at our business we said, ‘how can we grow and do it in a way that’s smart?’ And we said, ‘first of all we would like to have more taproom business and we can’t do it in Minnesota, so what about Wisconsin?’

This is yet another example of how bad regulations in Minnesota are driving economic growth out of the state. Allowing breweries to have more taprooms, or maybe even embracing the crazy idea that they should be able to open as many taprooms as they want, would allow for more breweries to have more of these high-margin outlets for their product.

Although bad regulations play a major part in Indeed’s decision to head to The Good Land, it could be argued that Wisconsin has more to offer the company, from a volumetric standpoint. People in Wisconsin drank six more gallons of beer, or 21 percent more beer on a per-capita basis, than people in Minnesota in 2017. This fact, combined with bad regulatory policy, is encouraging people to drink Wisconsinbly, Indeed.