Creating Space in South Dakota
Nicki Werner and Anthony Roark of Jefferson Beer Supply
In a state that has fewer than a million people, two South Dakotans seek to increase craft beer’s visibility and maximize its positive impact on their local community by launching a brand new brewery and sausage joint: Jefferson Beer Supply.
After 14 years together, the two co-founders, Nicki Werner (she/they) and Anthony Roark (they/them) call themselves “partners in life and business.” As the Director of Brewing, Werner is responsible for making the beer (obviously). Roark, the Director of Marketing & Sausages and Jefferson native, oversees the food element as well as community outreach. With some additional logistic help and financial acumen from Roark’s mother—a resident of Jefferson for over 40 years and the city’s C.F.O. for around 30 years—the family-run business hopes to fill a void in their small town.
“It hasn’t always been my dream to own a brewery, but it has definitely always been my dream, since I was a little kid, to have an opportunity to work towards a more equitable world,” says Werner. “2020 helped me see that beer is this superpower we have that we can use to make that happen.”
There’s not a lot of craft beer in South Dakota. According to the latest Brewers Association Sales & Production Statistics from 2020, there are 33 breweries in the state, putting them at #14 for breweries per capita, but 50th in actual annual output. That leaves a lot of opportunity to fill in the gaps, and thanks to the state’s business-friendly structure, makes it a relatively easy location to launch a new venture. “There’s a real ease of doing things in South Dakota,” says Werner, explaining that the lack of income tax as well as an excess of brewing equipment made available during COVID-19 helped lower the typical barriers to entry many prospective brewery owners face.
For as simple as the business side of starting a brewery in South Dakota may be, the cultural side remains a bit stickier. Opening a space dedicated to equity in the heart of a deeply red state would prove challenging at any point in time. But in the wake of the United States’ continued reckoning with deep and long-held injustices towards marginalized people, Roark and Werner see Jefferson Beer Supply as a crucial step towards building a better future for everyone. “In our town, there’s not really a lot of places for people to gather,” says Werner. Creating a new gathering space, even after experiencing some less-than-warm welcomes on occasion, is something they feel Jefferson needs to show that many different walks of life can coexist. “People totally think we’re weird… [but] I think some people don’t care that we’re weird, now that we’re making a brewery,” Werner laughs. “They’re just excited to do something fun.”
Their Origin Story
After meeting in college, the pair moved to Milwaukee to pursue their passions: for Werner, that was art and teaching, and for Roark, it was nurturing a newfound realization that a long-term career as a butcher could be sustainable. Since neither art nor academia tends to be particularly lucrative, to make ends meet, Werner took a job at a brewery. Surprisingly, she found it to be a much better fit than the other pursuits. “There’s so much power behind [beer],” Werner explains. “Because people are excited about beer, they have the power to do all these other things.”
Despite her relative nascence in the industry at the time, Werner calls her early experiences in craft beer somewhat “isolating” and lacking a supportive or even cohesive community. “A city like that can super drain you,” she says with a sigh. Roark agrees. “Milwaukee is just a really hard city to live in, or it can be,” they say, citing its pervasive segregation as another challenge. When the brewery Werner worked at went belly up, the duo relocated to Colorado, where Werner accepted a brewing job at Left Hand Brewing in Longmont. Luckily, Roark was also able to easily relocate to a butcher counter at the nearby Whole Foods, where they continued honing their craft on a parallel track with Werner.
At Left Hand, Werner was able to see first-hand the benefits of employee ownership—an attribute she hopes to replicate one day at Jefferson Beer Supply. By the end of her tenure three years later, she’d been able to acquire the necessary skills for their next move to Jefferson, where Roark grew up and their still family lives.
Leaving Colorado was bittersweet for the pair. “We didn’t see us building a future for ourselves in Colorado, because it's so competitive and so expensive,” Werner explains. Additionally, Roark’s father had just received a terminal diagnosis, so being near family to provide support was another motivator for the move.
Starting Over in South Dakota
One thing they never planned on doing upon arrival to a town with around 600 people was open a brewery. “I never, ever, ever thought we’d open a brewery,” says Werner. “I never had any interest in it, because I saw how hard it was. I saw how many things could go wrong. I saw what it takes out of you.” But in a town that small, to work where you live sometimes necessitates creating your own job.
The cataclysmic shifts that 2020 wrought also stoked the pair’s desire to create something progressive in a conservative stronghold. “I got to the point where I had accepted that brewing was the way I make money, but it didn’t always necessarily align with that other part of me,” says Werner, explaining that the disconnect between social justice activism and craft beer led them both to realize how critical is would be to provide a place that united the two. “Now is the time to be who we are.”
The core values that Roark and Werner hope to instill at Jefferson Beer Supply range further than becoming a safe space for more liberally-minded consumers, or even focusing on locally grown ingredients (although both remain crucial aspects to their business plan). “There are no spaces for anything other than the dominant culture right now,” says Werner. “We need to start making spaces for there to be a different type of culture.” Still, she understands the reality of small town living will necessitate a different approach than one might take in a bigger city. “If we were opening a brewery in Milwaukee or L.A., we could have our values right on the front of the building,” she explains. “Right now, there’s not space for any of those [political] conversations in our town.”
The pair estimates the five-barrel brewhouse will be fully operational by late summer, in time to enjoy plenty of outdoor pints and brats before the weather cools. But for now, they’re working on establishing core flavors and pairing options that genuinely reflect the terroir of the surrounding plains.
Looking Forward
Creating an inclusive community hub with craft beer and handmade sausages will allow Jeffersonians to experience something they may never have before. But Roark and Werner hope this business does more than bring people together. By dismantling the entrenched systems that keep certain people out of beer, the duo believes they can be role models who are making a tangible difference in their own backyard. “I have things written into place to make sure that our values get put into the business in a systemic way: like where we’re going to post for jobs, rate of pay from the top compared to the bottom, how we conduct reviews. All of these systemic ways that we can build our values into our day-to-day practices,” Werner says.
By increasing transparency, implementing an employee stock ownership structure (eventually), and encouraging people from all identities to commune together over food and drinks, both Werner and Roark believe they have the ability to introduce the best parts of beer culture to a brand new audience. Plus, if Jefferson Beer Supply lives up to its owners’ expectations, it has the potential to provide a new avenue for the small town to thrive. “I just hope we can show that a business can be successful in Jefferson, and maybe attract something else,” says Roark.
Werner agrees, going on to say that the adverse impacts new breweries sometimes unwittingly create in larger towns are unlikely to manifest there. “Gentrification is a super real thing that has negative effects in other places. But that’s what makes what we’re doing unique,” she says. “In our area, us bringing in a brewery and increasing property values is going to increase the wealth of the people in the town… the brewery is going to help uplift what’s there and make sure that money that’s being spent in the town stays in the town.”
They hope to share what they’ve learned with others who look to them for inspiration. “It’s better to ask for something and get told no than not to ask,” says Roark when asked what advice they’d give to aspiring owners. Werner adds that receiving support from both the brewing and local communities has allowed them to tap into success in ways she never expected—something she hopes others take to heart. “Be generous, be gracious, and be brave.”
She pauses after speaking of bravery. “Right now, I’m just thinking about how scary everything is,” citing things from the general precipitous state of the world to the start of this venture and the vulnerability that comes along with visibility. But fully embracing that need for vulnerability has already proven to be an asset to them both. “The beer scene around us is small,” says Werner. “But we can show people the potential of what this can be.”
Prohibitchin' is made possible by a sponsorship from Hopsbauer, a woman-owned hops brokerage company based in San Diego. Hopsbauer brings the best hops from around the world to craft breweries. Find out more by visiting Hopsbauer.com, and thanks to Liz Bauer for her generous support!