Anaconda's RM Brewing, The Rock Inn on their way
Pub Date: 6/1/2008
By Paul F. Vang
Starting a new business is an exercise in courage something most small business owners understand and should never underestimate.
Two Anaconda entrepreneurs, Joe Boyer, owner of Rocky Mountain Brewing, one of Montana s newer microbreweries, and Greg Carpenter, owner of The Rock Inn, can testify to some of the difficulties of starting a new business, especially in Anaconda, a tidy city nestled along the Pintler Mountains that was hard-hit and still is by the closure of the Anaconda copper smelter back in the early 1980s.
Best of all, they re both at the point where they are pretty sure they re going to succeed. interestingly, both businesses are just across the street from each other.
When the Hardee s fast food restaurant chain pulled out of Montana a couple years ago, they left a big hole in downtown Anaconda.
Joe Boyer is an Anaconda native, the son of Fred Boyer, an internationally recognized wildlife sculptor. Joe, who already operated two businesses a landscaping business and snow removal business plus is an Alaska-licensed hunting guide, saw the possibilities in the vacant building.
He enlisted the support of family members and started coming up with a plan to acquire and convert the old Hardee s store into a microbrewery and restaurant. In addition, one corner of the building would house Boyer s Bronzes, an art gallery featuring Fred Boyer s bronze sculptures and art work of other wildlife artists.
The first step was to refurbish the old facility, converting it from a fast food restaurant to their concept for a new restaurant and microbrewery, a project that involved sandblasting the building s exterior and repainting it in 30-degree below weather.
It was a job that involved building a plastic sheeting shell around the building and warming the space with propane heaters. The project worked, though looking back, Joe admits, It was miserable.
Still, they overcame the remodeling challenges and things started to come together for setting up a brewery or so he thought.
Then things started to unravel. My brother-in-law was going to manage the restaurant, but in the preliminary process he did not secure a beer and wine license.
After getting a crash course in Montana s brewing and tasting room regulations, Joe says, We opened as a tasting room that just happens to serve food. In the meantime, it also worked out that Joe, himself, became the brewmaster, taking a crash course in brewing and getting a brewer s license. They opened the doors to the public on Memorial Day weekend of 2007.
The new microbrewery and restaurant made an immediate hit in the community and they enjoyed a great summer season, drawing a lot of business from people coming to Anaconda to play the Old Works Golf Course, a Jack Nicklaus-designed links and part of the remediation process to clean up environmental problems left from a century of copper smelting.
In September, an Alaska outfitter called Joe to ask him to come to Alaska to guide a Dall sheep hunt. Joe was ready for a break and accepted the job. Fred Boyer then arranged to fly to Alaska and the two of them went on a hunt of their own for another two weeks.
On his return to Anaconda, Joe was confronted with a stack of unpaid bills.
I was alarmed. We had a very good season. If we weren t making it we d never make it as we were packed all summer.
I locked myself in the office for some 90 hours and studied all the business records and financial reports and I became suspicious," adding that after a year, he still hasn t taken any compensation from the business.
As might be expected, the final story of this episode has yet to be told. For legal reasons, Joe is cautious in talking about the situation, other than to summarize, There are allegations of wrongdoing with former business associates, and a civil lawsuit is in progress.
Yet, Boyer is moving on and after making it through a slow winter season, says business is picking up and is now self-sustaining, though he confesses that, as it is working out, I got a lot more involved than I originally anticipated, especially when it comes to the art of brewing beer.
He speaks with pride of what Rocky Mountain Brewing has accomplished.
I think it s a real community asset, and Anaconda s first new manufacturing facility in several years. I see a lot of potential for us to grow and to employ more people.
He goes on to say that his dream is to expand the brewing facility and start distributing their beers around the region.
I look forward to when Anaconda people can travel around the northwest region and see our product in grocery stores, bars and restaurants. I think our people will enjoy being able to see our products around the region and know that it was made with the same water that comes out of the faucets in their own homes.
The brewing facility, which Joe describes as a five-to-seven-barrel system, is currently making a line-up of seven different brews, ranging from a Pintler Wilderness Wheat and Strawberry Blonde at one end of the spectrum to darker ales, including Bulldog Porter and Smelter Stack Stout the latter a reference to Anaconda s smelter stack, the world s largest free-standing masonry structure, that still towers in an undeveloped state park at the east entrance to Anaconda. It is about all that remains of the former Anaconda Company s huge smelter complex.
Joe says his customers favorite brews tend to be the wheat, a honey brown ale, and Rocky Mountain ale. We ve been educating people about our beers and that what we re producing is a completely hand-made product and not done with computers.
I think we ve got some good brews, Joe says with pride. After surviving the initial process of a business start-up and the falling apart of the original operating team, he submits, I think it ll be one helluva good success story.
On the restaurant side of the operation, the facility opens early for breakfast, and then goes on to a busy lunch and dinner business. The menu might be described as pub grub, with a lineup of appetizers, soups, sandwiches and steaks.
On the early April day when this reporter visited the business, they were doing a brisk trade. There is a sports bar ambiance to the facility, with flat screen TVs and an exhibit of Wayne Estes memorabilia. Estes was one of Anaconda s greatest all-time athletes and a basketball All-American at Utah State University who tragically was electrocuted by a downed power line, just hours after setting scoring records.
Joe Boyer believes that key to succeeding through the first year s problems has been the support of his staff of employees.
I have excellent, top-of-the-line employees. The staff have stuck with us as we went through our problems. I know that some of them have problems of their own, but they stuck with us and, if anything, stepped their game up. Everybody came together and figured out how to do their best with what they have.
Joe also gives credit to family support in keeping the business operating through some difficult times, as well as professional help.
We have a great accountant and a great lawyer, and they re watching my back. Overall, he adds, I think we ve become a little more savvy.
Anaconda is a community that has gone through economic struggles since the smelter closed over 25 years ago and local residents who have survived have developed a special ethic. Joe was referring to his own employees but most likely many Anacondans would share the same outlook: People stick together. They know if we don t survive, they won't survive.
As for Joe s varied business interests, he confesses that it often seems like a balancing act. It s a matter of trusting employees and setting priorities, and then it s a matter of being where I have to be. From the number of times our interview was interrupted by Joe s cellular phone, it s evident that he doesn t have time to concentrate on any one area for long.
In addition to brews sold through the tasting room, Rocky Mountain Brewing has established additional outlets around the Anaconda community, including the Haufbrau restaurant, Club Moderne (featured in Tavern Times several years ago), the Brown Derby at Georgetown Lake, Discovery Ski Basin, and The Rock Inn.
Joe s plans are to expand the brewing facility. He says, We need to start thinking of this as a manufacturing facility and not just a hobby, and looks forward to the future when he can put in a bottling line to facilitate wider distribution.
Of the last year s business experience, Joe says he s learned a lot. Starting businesses is a lot like having children. They have to be babied and raised up. We had to take a step back and rebuild.
Still, he s confident of the future. We re Anaconda people and we re not going to quit. I believe in this town and I believe Anaconda has a lot to offer the state of Montana.
Meanwhile, just across the street ¦
On June 1, 2007, just a few days after Rocky Mountain Brewing opened for business, Greg Carpenter, who previously lived in Billings, opened The Rock Inn, just across the street.
Of his business s name, Carpenter laughs and says, I should have made it Thee Rock Inn, so people would remember to say all three words of the business name.
Before moving to Anaconda, Greg worked at the Billings Clinic.
I was a brain surgeon. Then he laughs and says, Actually, I was in supply. Some 10 years earlier he had managed another bar, Bugsy s, in Billings.
Greg says of his background, I was born in Roundup and mostly grew up in the Billings area, though I ve also lived in Phoenix, Kansas City and Denver, and worked construction for many years.
He visited Anaconda and fell in love with the area. I really enjoyed meeting the local people and the beauty of the area. It has great outdoor recreation, with great parks, good fishing, hunting, golfing and skiing. It s all right here.
I finally chose to move here for the mountains and the golf, especially the Old Works Golf Course.
With a smile he notes, I wasn t looking for a bar I was looking for a place to live and this is what I found and it just happened to have a business attached to it.
What he found was an older business building that at one time housed a furniture store and later a couple different bars, as well as two large apartments on the second floor.
The bar previously in the location was known as the Caddyshack and it was a business that was in trouble.
They were only open sporadically," Greg says. "They d be closed three nights a week, and some nights they might have 10-15 customers in there and the owner would decide to kick them out and close for the night. They had actually closed the doors three months before I reopened it.
In a small town that has some 29 different alcohol licenses, Greg and his wife, Cindy, saw their challenge as finding their niche in the local bar scene.
Drawing on his previous experience in Billings, the Carpenters elected to make The Rock Inn the place to go for live music.
The first six months I had live music every weekend, Greg says. Unfortunately, he also found that it wasn t paying off. There s just not enough of a population base here to support live bands and I had some of Montana s best.
He also booked other acts, including, for one time only, the Hollywood Knockouts, a troupe of scantily-clad women who would box and wrestle. Greg admits, That might have pushed the envelope of Anaconda s suggestive and lewd act ordinances.
With the help of friends in Butte who operate the Party Palace, Greg installed a karaoke set-up. Karaoke wouldn t have been my first choice. I much prefer having live music, and I still am booking bands to come here during the summer.
Still, he has found that karaoke has been a popular entertainment choice among many Anaconda area people, and believes that he often has as many people coming in for karaoke as previously came in for live rock bands.
Another new gadget on hand is an internet-connected juke box, Touch Tunes, with a literally inexhaustible selection of some 18,000 numbers.
In addition to karaoke, the bar has pool tables, several gaming machines, and another room that is set aside for live poker. We have Texas Hold 'Em games most nights.
It was all in the process of finding his niche.
There are so many casinos here and I didn t want to be just another casino. He adds, We ve become the late-night bar where people come when other bars have closed. It s kind of a mixed blessing. We ve gotten some kind of reputation as a fighting place, mainly from one incident when some out-of-town people who had been bar hopping all night in search of a fight came in. I m trying to get the word out that if any rough stuff starts, I immediately call the police and get them out of here.
While finding that niche was a struggle, overall, the Carpenters believe they ve found a successful formula. After starting from scratch in a bar that had previously closed its doors, they are now what Gary believes to be Anaconda s third busiest bar.
The Carpenters have plans for growing additional business. Gary is going to be using the second apartment above the bar for nightly rentals, tying it in with Gary s business membership at the Old Works Golf Course.
We ll have an unbelievable $79 per person package that includes golf, he says.
Admitting that with a rock and roll bar in the lower level it s a pretty noisy building until 2 a.m. every morning, he adds, We re looking for gambling, drinking golfers and I think that includes a lot of them.
Cindy Carpenter, Greg s wife, owns a hair salon in a Billings senior living facility and regularly goes back to Billings to check up on that business, but has also learned to work part-time as a bartender.
Greg and Cindy have three teen-age daughters and a four-year-old son, Zephan.
At the conclusion of our interview, Cindy and Zephan had joined us, though Zephan turned unexpectedly shy when Greg was trying to get him to say, Rock on out at The Rock Inn.
Source: The Montana Tavern Times, June, 2008, published monthly by Continental Communications, 125 W. Granite St., Suite 102, Butte, MT 59701.