The Executive - Spring 2015

Brewery Buddy founders —left to right: Wes Eldridge, Josh Sahib, Parker Brown, Steven MacNeil, Kayla Terry

BREWERY BUDDY
HOPS TO THE TOP
LOCAL STARTUP CONTINUES TO SEE SUCCESS
BY BRITTANY DOWNEY

What began as an idea mongfriendshasturned into a successful startup business plan. Brewery Buddy, an online management service for craft brewers, was established September 2014 and has seen continued success with each passing day. Entrepreneur Josh Sahib and Wes Eldridge are managing co-founders, while teammates Parker Brown, Steven MacNeil and Kayla Terry are also co-founders. The five-member team entered the Tuscaloosa Startup Weekend last September and ended the weekend with a business plan and the resources to help it succeed.

That weekend proved to be the launchpad for success. Brewery Buddy has taken off and fulfilled multiple checklists in forming a business. The team has completed these tasks and more since September. They also entered the statewide startup competition,

Alabama Launchpad, and brought home a piece of the prize: $24,600.

“It’s been a busy few months while working on all these different things in tandem,” Sahib says. “We’ve been trying to get our LLC done and working on the software. But it’s been really fun to see so much progress in such a short amount of time.”

The win at Tuscaloosa Startup Weekend gave Brewery Buddy the resources to pull together the missing pieces of its plan. Time with consultants, lawyers and potential customers has helped the team fill in the question marks as they continue to work toward a successful product.

While the software is still in beta testing stages as of April 2015, Brewery Buddy has been working closely with Druid City Brewing and Black Warrior Brewing in Tuscaloosa to get feedback

as Sahib and his team continue to build their product and make improvements.

“I can’t take all the credit. I’m fortunate to have a really strong team around me,” Sahib says. “We want to be a successful business. There’s a need for this, and we’re working our tails off to make it happen.”

The team will continue to conduct tests, tweak the software and make refinements before they make an all-out public launch.

“Our service is going to have differenttiers of services for our different breweries,” Sahib says. “The needs of a large brewery are going to be different than a smaller-scale brewery. We want to make sure there aren’t any bugs in the software and our customers are happy.”