The drive from Chico to Madera is a long, flat and unimpressive 4 hour waste of time. Yes the Sierra Nevada mountains can be beautiful during the winter and spring, but the rest of the year they are clouded in a dirty mixture of agriculture dust and carbon monoxide. To pass the time, I subjected my dad to nonstop ramblings of how exciting it would be to run a specialty bottle shop in Fresno. Imagine every week working with a distributor and trying to obtain the latest and greatest releases from everyone's favorite breweries: Stone, Three Floyd's, The Bruery, Sierra Nevada, Russian River, etc.
In true 'father' form, my dad put my dreams to the test by playing devil's advocate and asking every question possible regarding location, inventory, distribution, bookkeeping, & demographics. Well, most of the questions I came up with at least a halfway decent answer, good enough for the car ride home. But none of them would hold up under scrutiny let alone convince an investor or bank rep to loan me money. And I hadn't even begun to crunch real numbers. Electricity costs were probably high because of the refrigeration units. Inventory had to be expensive because of all of the single bottles that had to be purchased. And most important, I had no idea if the Fresno/Clovis area could even support a craft beer retailer.
By the time we arrived home, the idea had faded into a faint memory and although I would think back on the possibility every now and then over the next 7 years, I would never seriously re-examine it until 2010.
Next...Resurrecting An Idea
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