John Machacek, Chief Innovation Officer for the Greater Fargo Moorhead Economic Development Corporation, has worked with countless startups throughout our community over the years. He knows their ups, and their downs, but most of all, he knows the questions to ask them. Here are John Machacek’s 10 questions for Mark Bjornstad, Co-Founder and President, Drekker Brewing Company.
1. Will you please tell me your elevator pitches for Drekker Brewing and Brewhalla?
Drekker Brewing and Brewhalla are all about one thing: creating experiences and destroying expectations! That’s not just our motto—it’s tattooed on our souls.
At Drekker, we’re way more than just a brewery. We’re this wild, weird flavor factory where the mission is simple: blow people’s minds and completely redefine what people think beer can be. Whether it’s an IPA that makes you do a doubletake or a sour that tastes like it came straight out of a mad scientist’s lab, we’re here to keep things exciting and unexpected.
Then there’s Brewhalla—Fargo’s food and entertainment wonderland. It’s this buzzing marketplace packed with some of the best restaurants and shops in the area. Add in a bumping event center that’s all about delivering unforgettable vibes and a boutique hotel where every detail is part of the experience. Put it all together and you’ve got a spot that’s truly one of a kind.
Combined, Drekker and Brewhalla are like this big, beautifully weird machine, cranking out good times and bringing the community together in the best possible way.
2. From knowing, following, and paying attention to Drekker over the past decade, I would say that creating experiences and destroying expectations sounds pretty accurate. Between the brewery, the market, the hotel, and your company growth, there is a lot we can talk about. I’ll come back to your experience creation but let’s start with talking about the inception and growth of Drekker Brewing. What are your thoughts or philosophy about the planning, ambition, and risk of not only the entrepreneurial leap of opening the original location in the Cityscapes Plaza but also the move to your current brewery and then the addition of the huge Brewhalla complex?
If you’re asking how we got here, I’m gonna have to be completely honest; I don’t really know. But maybe if you look at the way we approach planning and risk and from the context of our ambition, it might start to make a little sense. From our inception through the first 10 years of our company, we intentionally avoided making plans or setting goals. We kept our focus on a much more simple exercise; living out who we were and doing things the way we wanted to do them. We felt that if we stuck true to that, we’d end right where we were supposed to be.
Now as far as risk, we have a very macabre philosophy. In our eyes, death and failure are certain things for a business. What we do between now and then is all that matters. When we’re looking at a risky endeavor, after all the due diligence and projections are done, we rely on our gut for the final say by asking two questions; 1) Is this something worth dying for? Is this something we’re willing to get wrong and go out of business over? 2) Can we live with ourselves if we pass this up? By asking these questions we can quickly find the answer that is most aligned with our deeper purpose and come away with a sense of commitment and motivation about what we’re setting out to do, or not to do. It brings out a greater discussion about our core values, whether this will have a positive community impact, and whether it will challenge the norms. If we set out to achieve those aspects but ultimately fail, we’ll just call it a worthy attempt. One of the biggest rewards for us is setting out to do difficult or seemingly impossible things. Failure or success becomes much less of a consuming thought when your intent is to just pursue the challenge.
3. You have visited breweries and venues around the world. Do you use those trips to get ideas for your own brewery and beer hall?
This is such a fun part of working here at Drekker. We love traveling and visiting all the far corners our beer reaches around the world, and we come back full of excitement, creativity, and motivation. However, it’s not too often we come back with a concrete idea or something we want to replicate, because that’s not our goal. When we visit other breweries, restaurants, hotels, and communities, we’re most impacted by watching someone else nail their vibe and deliver a unique experience. It’s inspiring and gets our minds running about how we can up our game. We never try to compare or validate ourselves; we try to challenge ourselves and simply appreciate others who are living out their mission so well.
4. When thinking about perceptions of Drekker Brewing and Brewhalla, beyond the beer part of it, your community culture and company voice really stand out to me. How would you describe the culture of Drekker, internally and externally?
Culture is probably the business buzzword of the decade. I’ve worked at other companies, and been a part of many organizations that shaped my opinion on what I wanted our culture to be at Drekker and Brewhalla. To lay out the intent, we want our culture to be unapologetically authentic, trustworthy, and fun whenever possible. That goes for both internal and external.
For our team, we need to have a high degree of trust and a feeling of safety if we’re out there trying to do hard things and challenge ourselves. We all need to feel comfortable taking chances and challenging positions. If there is a fear of failure or criticism, it will deter people from doing their best work or worse, ever starting.
We also want those intentions on culture to be felt by the community. Trust, authenticity, and fun are how we shape our voice, and we do it because, well, that’s the way we want to be spoken to. We want something real and honest and most importantly comical. These are our friends and that’s the way we want people to see and feel about us.
5. That culture of trust and authenticity and support, and I would say fun too, seems to carry over into your branding and messaging too. How do you look at Drekker and Brewhalla from a branding perspective?
Branding is a good segue from the discussion of culture. For our brand, we want to inject our culture into our voice and image and give an honest representation of who we are. To us, that’s a voice that’s funny and cheeky, like a great conversation with friends. Full of inside jokes and slang. We’re building that same relationship with customers and the community. We’re going to be genuine, have fun, and at times, have a little take-no-shit mentality. Again, we know exactly who we are and that has to live out in our brand voice.
We also love to take that voice and use it to shape our art direction and image. Skateboard decks, pogs, and gig posters of the 90s shaped our creative interests. Originally, that played out in the artwork for our cans. To us, we’re creating art inside the can and it’s just as important to carry a passion for art to the outside of the can, as well. We’re telling a story and trying to immerse people in this weird world we’re stringing together. People seemed to really get into that vibe and so we started spreading it to merchandise and events and welcomed people even further into this whimsical world. It went into murals in all the hotel rooms and art shows we throw in the event center. Our artwork and creative vision have found its way into every corner of our company.
6. Speaking of the brand and message, from prior conversations, I know that you have invested in the addition of new creative and marketing roles. How did the thought process go to take that step in expanding your staff?
Well, as entrepreneurs and owners, we often found ourselves becoming overly essential to the work product of the company. We had the passion and vision but often held too tightly to reins. It creates a huge problem when your limitations of time and ability become the limiting factor for growth. We knew we needed to find the right people to take over some of that and it was scary to think about both the financial cost and also, delegating the trust. We had to go back to our core values and set up a system for our proprietary way of thinking. And seriously, when you find awesome people and let them run, they will ultimately go further than you ever could as an owner. That’s such a rewarding thing to watch and it leads to exponential growth.
Another aspect that became essential to us as we’ve grown, and our tentacles are spread out in different directions, is cross-training across departments. Silos are the enemy, and we want everyone to have an understanding and appreciation for what their teammates are doing. Not just to build more efficient teams but so people can learn from ways other departments are living our values and ways they’re smashing goals. The marketing team learns from what goes on beyond the bar and the conversations with customers. The housekeeping team learns and challenges themselves to expand the customer experience and passion they see in the taproom. The perspective and inspiration everyone finds become valuable not just to their own jobs but to the entire team and company.
7. For you, as owners, as you’ve started to delegate more and take some tasks off your plate, has that freed up your time to mentally focus on ways to improve business operations?
Certainly, I’ve been able to allocate more time to vision and strategy and that’s been huge. Previously, any time I spent in the business was time I wasn’t spending on the business and vice versa. Now the trains all run on time, and I can focus on what the team needs, where we’re going to go, and how we’re going to get there. We’ve been able to take a step back and evaluate ways to improve efficiency across the company. Better warehouse management, fulfillment processes, supply chain management, and leveraging our buying power. All things we were too deep into the chaos of day-to-day to see, let alone tackle before.
Over at Brewhalla, that machine is still less than two years old and not even fully unleashed. There are always new ideas the team is brainstorming and bringing to life. And Brewhalla has made us a better company. It allowed us to expand our team and build out the infrastructure of the company through systems and strategies. We’re finding ourselves to be way more effective at smashing goals and creating new ideas and that just keeps getting better and better
8. As I mentioned earlier, I wanted to come back to “experience creation” because the events and the good times are a big part of your business and brand. Why are events a key factor in your strategies for business and destroying expectations, as you would say?
Events come back to that core purpose of creating experiences and destroying expectations. We’re on a mission to bring people together and what better way than a party? It’s all about having genuine human interaction with others. Something we think is more needed than ever. We do that through hosting weddings and corporate functions and partnering with other Brewhalla
Market businesses like Unglued or Plant Supply or throwing our own themed events like Hotdish Festival or Foolers’ Ball. We’re looking for cool ways to deliver that experience, reach new people and demographics, and help them find new connections in the community. There’s honestly so much going on at Drekker and Brewhalla that we even get confused at times. Sign up for our newsletter to stay up on all the cool things happening here.
9. If you could go back in time to Mark from the past, what kind of hindsight advice would you give that younger, less wise Mark?
Well, I’ll tell you two things that concern me about that. 1) Causing a butterfly effect and destroying the fabric of our current reality. 2) I’m pretty sure that past Mark is smarter than the current one. I’ve lost pieces of myself along the way. Truly though, I wouldn’t want to spare myself from any of the struggles or failures I went through. They made me who I am now and I’ve learned so much from those experiences. Maybe I’d just whisper that it’s all going to be worth
10. Yeah, I often think of that butterfly effect thing too, and how our past decisions helped shape who we are today. To wrap up, what can we do as a community to help you, Drekker Brewing, and Brewhalla succeed?
Wow, I really appreciate that. We’re townies and love this community. But just like any other local business, we live or die by community support. Come out and hang with us for a beer, attend one of our events, suggest your friends or relatives stay with us when they’re in town, or just share a great experience you had at Drekker or Brewhalla with a friend. And please share that love and support with all the great businesses and organizations in the area. Let’s keep Fargo weird, cool, and fun!
Drekker Brewing Company
drekkerbrewing.com
Facebook | /drekkerbrewing
Instagram | @drekkerbrewing
Twitter | @DrekkerBrewing
Brewhalll
brewhalla.co
Facebook | /Brewhalla.Fargo
Instagram | @brewhalla.fargo
Twitter | @BrewhallaFargo
