ASHEVILLE – Huddled next to the large, 10-foot-tall silver tanks inside Hi-Wire Brewing, more than 50 people stood shoulder-to-shoulder last week to watch five men share their business ideas, one by one, in less than a minute.

The concepts ranged from the food-minded — a mac ‘n’ cheese restaurant and an organic year-round produce provider — to the tech-based and the tourism-focused.

But after 60 seconds, the unforgiving ringtone of a cellphone timer stopped them — sometimes mid-sentence — from saying another word. Then, the questions began. The timer was reset for 2 minutes.

“How will you distinguish yourself from your competitors?”

“What is your marketing plan?”

“Have you calculated your return on investment?”

Over the sound of humming brewery equipment, a presenter shouted answers back to the audience, and audience members continued to shout back more questions. Then, the timer rang, the presenter smiled and the audience clapped. The person with the most popular idea in the room won $50 and a free pitcher of beer.

The inaugural Pitch for Pitchers event did not come from the mind of a high-powered executive, a venture capitalist, or even a local business group. Instead, it was the idea of a UNC Asheville sophomore named Jordan Miller: a mechatronics student with an entrepreneurial spirit.

Though the editors at Popular Mechanics magazine did not mention Pitch for Pitchers when they named Asheville the second-best startup city in America last week, the event is a testament to the city’s growing entrepreneurial energy that’s not just for breweries.

But the Popular Mechanics accolade has become a catalyst for conversation and a questioned claim not only about the current status of the Asheville startup scene but about its potential in the years to come.

“With Beer City, USA, we rose to the title. I think we have the potential and I hope we probably will one day rise to being the No. 1 startup city in the future. I think that people can get excited about that, and that the energy to do that is here in this room,” Miller said after the event. “That’s what this is for. We’re not there yet as a city, but we can rise to the occasion.”

As the director of entrepreneurship for the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce, Josh Dorfman is just one of the people trying to figure out how to move Asheville’s startup community forward, as well as what may be holding it back.

Investing in Asheville’s startup future

Since Dorfman accepted his role as director of entrepreneurship for the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce in April, his focus has been on Venture Asheville.

The chamber initiative, which was first championed by Pam Lewis in 2011, seeks to foster entrepreneurship in a city more often known for its ties to the Blue Ridge Parkway than its business scene.

Before he presented his ideas for the next incarnation of Venture Asheville last spring, Dorfman spent nearly three months getting acquainted with the region’s entrepreneurs.

What Dorfman said he found was a need to connect area startups with the capital and talent they required to succeed, as well as find a way to foster dialogue and connections between new and existing entrepreneurs.

“We know that it’s important and highly strategic to continue to make more capital available to local startups. That may over time become an area where we increasingly focus because bringing capital into the startup community not only enables startups to move faster, but to hire the talent they need to grow,” Dorfman said.

That’s why the Asheville Angels took flight in August as a member-based investor group focused on funding young, innovative companies in the Asheville area. The group just recently made its first investment. They chose local.

Plum Print, an Asheville-based startup company that transforms children’s artwork into original coffee table books, recently secured $1 million during their first seed round of funding. Asheville Angels decided to invest more than $100,000.

“When we’re able to put in over $100,000 into a startup that’s a significant step up for an angel investor network,” Dorfman said. “We view that as such a milestone coming out of the recession. We now see that we’ve created a pathway for successful, affluent individuals who are local or who have recently located here to participate in our economic growth and development.”

Dorfman said Asheville Angels has 26 members, but that the number is growing largely by word of mouth among local investors. At next week’s meeting, he said he expects the group’s size could increase to 30.

For Accelerating Appalachia, the world’s first nature-based business incubator, capital is like lifeblood for the businesses they work with each year.

Accelerating Appalachia selects 12 businesses, which are in such sectors as sustainable food, farming, clean energy, forest production, craft brewing and distilling, natural fibers, green building and integrative medicine, into its incubator program annually. Those businesses then participate in a 12-week program.

Last year, the 10 business that participated in the first cohort created 35 jobs and retained 50 existing jobs. In addition, more than 106 farm acres and 12 new farmers were added to supply chains.

As the local program begins its second year, its founder, Sara Day Evans, said the effort’s greatest need going forward will be securing access to capital.

“We definitely want to see more folks involved in this kind of investing, and investing in us as well. We’re a nonprofit. There are other business accelerators that are able to take an equity stake in the startups they work with, but we work on a pretty tight budget,” Evans said. “We’re looking for more investors, more partnerships.”

Providing resources

Oftentimes at the Mountain Bizworks office on South Lexington Avenue, people come to the nonprofit looking for guidance, a business loan and someone who can talk them through the process of turning their business dream into a reality.

Whether it’s an idea for a startup or an existing small business that wants to expand, Patrick Fitzsimmons, the executive director at Mountain Bizworks, said he’s seen no slowdown in Asheville’s entrepreneurial spirit.

“Building your own job in Asheville is not only encouraged, but in some ways it’s almost required. We get a lot of people who come in here with business ideas. Some need development and some are really viable, but the important thing is we have no shortage of people who have ideas about how to build a business and how to build a job,” he said.

According to Fitzsimmons, about half of business loans done at Mountain Bizworks go to startups and the other half go to small businesses. The 25-year-old nonprofit defines a startup as a new business that does not exist in the market, and a small business as an existing business with less than 50 employees.

Two years ago, Patrick Conant and Jesse Michel went to Mountain Bizworks to get an overview about what steps they should take when setting out to work on their local web development startup company, PRC Applications.

“Just going through some of those processes and even just talking to an accountant later on was helpful,” Conant said. “We came into this knowing we could provide a service that there’s a definite need for in the Asheville area. There’s freelancers around Asheville that you can hire to do web development, and there’s big firms. We’re trying to fill the gap in between those two.”

Seeing an end to the days of brochure or cookie-cutter websites, Conant said PRC Applications started as a way to deliver dynamic, data-driven websites to area businesses. However, the venture has also been a way to keep the two UNC Asheville graduates working in the region.

Michel and Conant met at UNCA after transferring to the liberal arts school from other universities. After graduating and working at other jobs that allowed them to flex their design and developer skills, the pair realized they would have to make their own way if they wanted to continue to live and work in the city they loved.

“I couldn’t find a dream job working around here, but I found that starting out on my own and building my own business was the solution,” said Conant, who is also the co-captain of Code for Asheville, a local code brigade that meets regularly to build civic technology to improve access to community resources and data.

Though Conant did not get a business loan from Mountain Bizworks, the local nonprofit has apbout $800,000 in loans available to startups and small businesses every month. Not everyone who applies for a loan will get it, but Fitzsimmons said the nonprofit does take on clients that some banks would consider risky.

“We live in this place where creativity is encouraged; where being an entrepreneur is celebrated,” he said. “To ensure that they are successful, we do a lot more handholding. We’re providing them with coaching, training, we’re checking in on them, we’re making them a part of the community here.”

Encouraging entrepreneurs, finding talent

Coming to Asheville from Chicago in November, 24-year-old Hadley Bergh knew she wanted to plug into the local startup community. However, after regularly attending Asheville’s weekly 1 Million Cups event, she started to notice a pattern about the presenters and the audience: It was mostly white men giving a presentation to a room of mostly white men.

Instead of deterring her, though, she said the realization has strengthened her resolve to demand more diversity of the entrepreneurial scene of her new city.

“There are a lot of women-owned businesses in Asheville. I think it would be really fun for those women who are involved to bring some of their ideas to the table and could connect with others,” said Bergh, who worked to market and organize the Pitch for Pitchers event with Miller and Briar DeHaven, a newly hired digital optimization specialist at the Asheville Citizen-Times.

“Inclusivity, and more women and more minorities at these events, is a huge aspect of what we want to see more of going forward.”

Three years ago, Kim Celentano co-founded Strivven Media with her husband in Asheville and created Virtual Job Shadow, a web-based career exploration tool that can be found in school systems nationwide.

“We’re in the zone right now. We have a lot of interest from literally Alaska to Hawaii,” Celentano said, noting that two of their customers are Buncombe County Schools and Henderson County Schools.

However, like Bergh, she does see a need for more women, especially when it comes to talent and mentorship in STEM programs.

“I have a 12-year-old daughter, and she has plans of going to MIT one day. We want her to go to the Discovery Academy, but she’s saying her friends aren’t applying. It’s easy to fall away when you don’t have that role model or mentorship in place,” she said. “As a woman, if I can get to a certain place where I can be a mentor, I will do it in a new York second.”

Paul Hedgecock, the president and founder at E-Commerce Business Solutions, said he sees a gap when it comes to finding talent.

Citing a lack of a large technology institute, he said that as the city continues to attract outside talent to stay here, he would like to see them pass on their knowledge to pave the way for helping Asheville become a stronger place for technology innovation.

“I think there are people here who are focusing on educating and planting seeds for the future, and I think there are a lot of people who are moving here that could be able to reach out and bring those resources here,” he said. “I think it will take leaders in the community to continue to import that need.”

Conant said he would like to see area colleges work creatively to fill this gap, especially at his alma mater.

“I would like to see UNCA expand its computer science program. There is a compelling argument for the marriage of tech and liberal arts, and that kind of dual focus. I think Asheville is kind of the perfect city to do that,” he said.

Dorfman, who said he would like to one day see Venture Asheville do more in terms of mentorship going forward, points to networking and pitch events like 1 Million Cups and Pitch for Pitchers as first steps to becoming an attractive city to attract tech talent and help the talent that already exists in the region.

“We want to build the mechanisms for people to find each other and connect with each other. That’s the role that we feel we can play, but startup communities really thrive to the extent that they are being led by entrepreneurs and getting involved,” Dorfman said. “The more entrepreneurs that can take ownership, the better. We’re trying to build the groundwork for next generation of entrepreneurs.”

Staying the course

When Shane Remington and Kendall Weaver met at a pub in downtown Hendersonville five years ago, they immediately bonded over open-source operating systems, like Linux. After a few hours and a few beers, the duo decided to take a chance, follow their passion and create their own operating system called Linux.

Coming in at under 600 megabytes, the entire operating system was designed to be lightweight. To date, the company has seen consistent growth with every release. Remington said they receive about 5 million downloads on each new version they develop and release.

Now, five years later, the company is already working on its sixth version of the operating system and will be working on next steps to start delivering enterprise-level software and services.

Though larger cities have come calling, the company chooses to remain in the Asheville area.

“The decision to be based here was easy because we live here, and we had all the resources we needed locally. We have faced being courted to other parts of the country a few times,” Remington said. “They were considered, and in the end we just feel strongly that this is where we belong.”

When Remington heard about the listing in Popular Mechanics, he was not surprised. However, he does see a need for the community as a whole to capitalize on this momentum.

“It’s important that we understand that we belong here and don’t need to pack our bags to make things happen or have an impact,” he said. “You might not have TechCrunch reporters and venture capitalists having coffee right beside you every morning but is that what its all about? Make some noise and before you know it they will be on a plane from San Francisco to find out who you are.”

Among many local startups that is the hope. For Dorfman, at Venture Asheville, this moment is just the beginning for Asheville’s startup scene, and represents the efforts of many who have come before him.

“The accolade does represent the entrepreneurial efforts that have been underway in Asheville for a long time,” Dorfman said. “What’s said often about startups is that it takes a really long time to become an overnight success.”

ASHEVILLE – Huddled next to the large, 10-foot-tall silver tanks inside Hi-Wire Brewing, more than 50 people stood shoulder-to-shoulder last week to watch five men share their business ideas, one by one, in less than a minute.

The concepts ranged from the food-minded — a mac ‘n’ cheese restaurant and an organic year-round produce provider — to the tech-based and the tourism-focused.

But after 60 seconds, the unforgiving ringtone of a cellphone timer stopped them — sometimes mid-sentence — from saying another word. Then, the questions began. The timer was reset for 2 minutes.

“How will you distinguish yourself from your competitors?”

“What is your marketing plan?”

“Have you calculated your return on investment?”

Over the sound of humming brewery equipment, a presenter shouted answers back to the audience, and audience members continued to shout back more questions. Then, the timer rang, the presenter smiled and the audience clapped. The person with the most popular idea in the room won $50 and a free pitcher of beer.

The inaugural Pitch for Pitchers event did not come from the mind of a high-powered executive, a venture capitalist, or even a local business group. Instead, it was the idea of a UNC Asheville sophomore named Jordan Miller: a mechatronics student with an entrepreneurial spirit.

Though the editors at Popular Mechanics magazine did not mention Pitch for Pitchers when they named Asheville the second-best startup city in America last week, the event is a testament to the city’s growing entrepreneurial energy that’s not just for breweries.

But the Popular Mechanics accolade has become a catalyst for conversation and a questioned claim not only about the current status of the Asheville startup scene but about its potential in the years to come.

“With Beer City, USA, we rose to the title. I think we have the potential and I hope we probably will one day rise to being the No. 1 startup city in the future. I think that people can get excited about that, and that the energy to do that is here in this room,” Miller said after the event. “That’s what this is for. We’re not there yet as a city, but we can rise to the occasion.”

As the director of entrepreneurship for the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce, Josh Dorfman is just one of the people trying to figure out how to move Asheville’s startup community forward, as well as what may be holding it back.

Investing in Asheville’s startup future

Since Dorfman accepted his role as director of entrepreneurship for the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce in April, his focus has been on Venture Asheville.

The chamber initiative, which was first championed by Pam Lewis in 2011, seeks to foster entrepreneurship in a city more often known for its ties to the Blue Ridge Parkway than its business scene.

Before he presented his ideas for the next incarnation of Venture Asheville last spring, Dorfman spent nearly three months getting acquainted with the region’s entrepreneurs.

What Dorfman said he found was a need to connect area startups with the capital and talent they required to succeed, as well as find a way to foster dialogue and connections between new and existing entrepreneurs.

“We know that it’s important and highly strategic to continue to make more capital available to local startups. That may over time become an area where we increasingly focus because bringing capital into the startup community not only enables startups to move faster, but to hire the talent they need to grow,” Dorfman said.

That’s why the Asheville Angels took flight in August as a member-based investor group focused on funding young, innovative companies in the Asheville area. The group just recently made its first investment. They chose local.

Plum Print, an Asheville-based startup company that transforms children’s artwork into original coffee table books, recently secured $1 million during their first seed round of funding. Asheville Angels decided to invest more than $100,000.

“When we’re able to put in over $100,000 into a startup that’s a significant step up for an angel investor network,” Dorfman said. “We view that as such a milestone coming out of the recession. We now see that we’ve created a pathway for successful, affluent individuals who are local or who have recently located here to participate in our economic growth and development.”

Dorfman said Asheville Angels has 26 members, but that the number is growing largely by word of mouth among local investors. At next week’s meeting, he said he expects the group’s size could increase to 30.

For Accelerating Appalachia, the world’s first nature-based business incubator, capital is like lifeblood for the businesses they work with each year.

Accelerating Appalachia selects 12 businesses, which are in such sectors as sustainable food, farming, clean energy, forest production, craft brewing and distilling, natural fibers, green building and integrative medicine, into its incubator program annually. Those businesses then participate in a 12-week program.

Last year, the 10 business that participated in the first cohort created 35 jobs and retained 50 existing jobs. In addition, more than 106 farm acres and 12 new farmers were added to supply chains.

As the local program begins its second year, its founder, Sara Day Evans, said the effort’s greatest need going forward will be securing access to capital.

“We definitely want to see more folks involved in this kind of investing, and investing in us as well. We’re a nonprofit. There are other business accelerators that are able to take an equity stake in the startups they work with, but we work on a pretty tight budget,” Evans said. “We’re looking for more investors, more partnerships.”

Providing resources

Oftentimes at the Mountain Bizworks office on South Lexington Avenue, people come to the nonprofit looking for guidance, a business loan and someone who can talk them through the process of turning their business dream into a reality.

Whether it’s an idea for a startup or an existing small business that wants to expand, Patrick Fitzsimmons, the executive director at Mountain Bizworks, said he’s seen no slowdown in Asheville’s entrepreneurial spirit.

“Building your own job in Asheville is not only encouraged, but in some ways it’s almost required. We get a lot of people who come in here with business ideas. Some need development and some are really viable, but the important thing is we have no shortage of people who have ideas about how to build a business and how to build a job,” he said.

According to Fitzsimmons, about half of business loans done at Mountain Bizworks go to startups and the other half go to small businesses. The 25-year-old nonprofit defines a startup as a new business that does not exist in the market, and a small business as an existing business with less than 50 employees.

Two years ago, Patrick Conant and Jesse Michel went to Mountain Bizworks to get an overview about what steps they should take when setting out to work on their local web development startup company, PRC Applications.

“Just going through some of those processes and even just talking to an accountant later on was helpful,” Conant said. “We came into this knowing we could provide a service that there’s a definite need for in the Asheville area. There’s freelancers around Asheville that you can hire to do web development, and there’s big firms. We’re trying to fill the gap in between those two.”

Seeing an end to the days of brochure or cookie-cutter websites, Conant said PRC Applications started as a way to deliver dynamic, data-driven websites to area businesses. However, the venture has also been a way to keep the two UNC Asheville graduates working in the region.

Michel and Conant met at UNCA after transferring to the liberal arts school from other universities. After graduating and working at other jobs that allowed them to flex their design and developer skills, the pair realized they would have to make their own way if they wanted to continue to live and work in the city they loved.

“I couldn’t find a dream job working around here, but I found that starting out on my own and building my own business was the solution,” said Conant, who is also the co-captain of Code for Asheville, a local code brigade that meets regularly to build civic technology to improve access to community resources and data.

Though Conant did not get a business loan from Mountain Bizworks, the local nonprofit has apbout $800,000 in loans available to startups and small businesses every month. Not everyone who applies for a loan will get it, but Fitzsimmons said the nonprofit does take on clients that some banks would consider risky.

“We live in this place where creativity is encouraged; where being an entrepreneur is celebrated,” he said. “To ensure that they are successful, we do a lot more handholding. We’re providing them with coaching, training, we’re checking in on them, we’re making them a part of the community here.”

Encouraging entrepreneurs, finding talent

Coming to Asheville from Chicago in November, 24-year-old Hadley Bergh knew she wanted to plug into the local startup community. However, after regularly attending Asheville’s weekly 1 Million Cups event, she started to notice a pattern about the presenters and the audience: It was mostly white men giving a presentation to a room of mostly white men.

Instead of deterring her, though, she said the realization has strengthened her resolve to demand more diversity of the entrepreneurial scene of her new city.

“There are a lot of women-owned businesses in Asheville. I think it would be really fun for those women who are involved to bring some of their ideas to the table and could connect with others,” said Bergh, who worked to market and organize the Pitch for Pitchers event with Miller and Briar DeHaven, a newly hired digital optimization specialist at the Asheville Citizen-Times.

“Inclusivity, and more women and more minorities at these events, is a huge aspect of what we want to see more of going forward.”

Three years ago, Kim Celentano co-founded Strivven Media with her husband in Asheville and created Virtual Job Shadow, a web-based career exploration tool that can be found in school systems nationwide.

“We’re in the zone right now. We have a lot of interest from literally Alaska to Hawaii,” Celentano said, noting that two of their customers are Buncombe County Schools and Henderson County Schools.

However, like Bergh, she does see a need for more women, especially when it comes to talent and mentorship in STEM programs.

“I have a 12-year-old daughter, and she has plans of going to MIT one day. We want her to go to the Discovery Academy, but she’s saying her friends aren’t applying. It’s easy to fall away when you don’t have that role model or mentorship in place,” she said. “As a woman, if I can get to a certain place where I can be a mentor, I will do it in a new York second.”

Paul Hedgecock, the president and founder at E-Commerce Business Solutions, said he sees a gap when it comes to finding talent.

Citing a lack of a large technology institute, he said that as the city continues to attract outside talent to stay here, he would like to see them pass on their knowledge to pave the way for helping Asheville become a stronger place for technology innovation.

“I think there are people here who are focusing on educating and planting seeds for the future, and I think there are a lot of people who are moving here that could be able to reach out and bring those resources here,” he said. “I think it will take leaders in the community to continue to import that need.”

Conant said he would like to see area colleges work creatively to fill this gap, especially at his alma mater.

“I would like to see UNCA expand its computer science program. There is a compelling argument for the marriage of tech and liberal arts, and that kind of dual focus. I think Asheville is kind of the perfect city to do that,” he said.

Dorfman, who said he would like to one day see Venture Asheville do more in terms of mentorship going forward, points to networking and pitch events like 1 Million Cups and Pitch for Pitchers as first steps to becoming an attractive city to attract tech talent and help the talent that already exists in the region.

“We want to build the mechanisms for people to find each other and connect with each other. That’s the role that we feel we can play, but startup communities really thrive to the extent that they are being led by entrepreneurs and getting involved,” Dorfman said. “The more entrepreneurs that can take ownership, the better. We’re trying to build the groundwork for next generation of entrepreneurs.”

Staying the course

When Shane Remington and Kendall Weaver met at a pub in downtown Hendersonville five years ago, they immediately bonded over open-source operating systems, like Linux. After a few hours and a few beers, the duo decided to take a chance, follow their passion and create their own operating system called Linux.

Coming in at under 600 megabytes, the entire operating system was designed to be lightweight. To date, the company has seen consistent growth with every release. Remington said they receive about 5 million downloads on each new version they develop and release.

Now, five years later, the company is already working on its sixth version of the operating system and will be working on next steps to start delivering enterprise-level software and services.

Though larger cities have come calling, the company chooses to remain in the Asheville area.

“The decision to be based here was easy because we live here, and we had all the resources we needed locally. We have faced being courted to other parts of the country a few times,” Remington said. “They were considered, and in the end we just feel strongly that this is where we belong.”

When Remington heard about the listing in Popular Mechanics, he was not surprised. However, he does see a need for the community as a whole to capitalize on this momentum.

“It’s important that we understand that we belong here and don’t need to pack our bags to make things happen or have an impact,” he said. “You might not have TechCrunch reporters and venture capitalists having coffee right beside you every morning but is that what its all about? Make some noise and before you know it they will be on a plane from San Francisco to find out who you are.”

Among many local startups that is the hope. For Dorfman, at Venture Asheville, this moment is just the beginning for Asheville’s startup scene, and represents the efforts of many who have come before him.

“The accolade does represent the entrepreneurial efforts that have been underway in Asheville for a long time,” Dorfman said. “What’s said often about startups is that it takes a really long time to become an overnight success.”

In the months prior, amid much public speculation, SAB owners Andy and Kelly Cubbin weren’t sure exactly where one of the country’s most revered craft breweries was going to establish its world-class brewery, but the Cubbins knew it would be close when they saw the company’s iconic founder inside their Hendersonville tap room one day.

“At first I was scared,” Andy Cubbin recalls now with a smile. “Very scared. I think that, although I was excited to see Ken Grossman at the brewery, I was a little frightened because at the time of the (Sierra Nevada) announcement, we were still in start-up mode, we were still learning how to do this.”

A few months later, in the spring of 2012, Oskar Blues Brewery announced it was building an East Coast expansion facility in Brevard, just a couple miles up the road from where Kyle Williams was about to open his downtown Brevard Brewing Co.

“Yeah, it was scary,” Williams admits. “At the time my doors weren’t even open yet, and as much as people want to say that small breweries work together and all that — and they do — there was still an uncertainty that people won’t come here, and that (Oskar Blues) is going to draw some business away.”

Both small businesses not only survived, but have thrived and grown despite the arrival of Oskar Blues and Sierra Nevada. Or, many would argue, they’ve done so, in part, because of it.

Oskar Blues and Sierra Nevada have helped generate widespread interest in craft beer in two counties — Henderson and Transylvania — where, despite being in the shadow of Asheville, aka “Beer City USA,” not a single brewery tap room existed just five years ago.

“The trend we’ve seen over time is that the places that have established, regional craft breweries are the places where the smaller breweries are the most vibrant,” says Bart Watson, chief economist for the Brewers Association, the industry’s premier trade group.

According to Watson, larger breweries such as Oskar Blues, Sierra Nevada and New Belgium, which is currently building a state-of-the-art expansion brewery of its own in Asheville, do much of the heavy lifting in terms of opening retail channels, exposing beer fans to what it means to have locally made beer from small, independent producers, and creating a marketing environment where it’s easier for small, local players such as Brevard Brewing and SAB to succeed.

“In just about any place you see a large, regional craft brewery, you find a lot of thriving small craft breweries and brewpubs around them,” Watson says, “so I’m not surprised to hear that that’s what you’ve seen in your area.”

There are more than 3,200 breweries operating in the U.S., by far the highest total since the 1800s and a number that is fast growing. The industry’s mid-year report in 2014 showed 18 percent growth, and Watson expects the craft beer’s market share to rise from 7.8 percent to 10-11 percent when the Brewers Association concludes its 2014 year-end report next month, and from 14.8 to 17 or 18 percent in retail dollar share.

Still, industry insiders say, staying relevant in a crowded market like Western North Carolina means maintaining quality — making great beer — is critical. Williams and the Cubbins say that’s been the driving force behind their success.

“We’re still seeing growth in places like Portland, Ore., which has 50-plus breweries and market share is 40 percent, so I certainly think in a place like Asheville, which isn’t quite there in per capita numbers, that there’s still room for growth,” Watson says. “I just saw a winery report today that said there is now more than 8,000 wineries in the country. We’re at 3,200 breweries and Americans drink a lot more beer than they drink wine, so I certainly think there are still growth opportunities for people who are differentiating themselves with great beer.”

The following is a look at where Brevard Brewing and SAB are headed in 2015, and how they got there.

Barrels of fun

The Cubbins purchased their business (known then as Appalachian Craft Brewery) in 2006. They moved the brewery from a small warehouse in Fletcher to SAB’s current digs on Locust Street in Hendersonville, and in April 2011 opened the adjoining tasting room that initially featured only SAB’s three flagship brands — Black Bear Stout, Copperhead Amber and IPA.

By next week, SAB plans to have no less than a dozen beers flowing when it doubles its tap lineup behind the bar.

“The 12 taps will showcase all of our beers at one time, and we’ll be able to start utilizing our (15-gallon) pilot system a little more and have an outlet for those beers, too,” Andy Cubbin said, “and also be able to start serving local ciders, which people ask for all the time.”

Last year was a big one for the Cubbins. They signed on with a distributor, Greensboro-based Freedom Beverage, and expect their beers to be available statewide by this summer. They also purchased the property on which their building sits, thus facilitating future expansion plans.

Still, the Cubbins chose to grow slowly, developing a local following first at the tasting room before expanding a distribution footprint that this year may lead into South Carolina.

“The truth is that the demand for Western North Carolina beer is so big that markets outside of the Asheville-Hendersonville area are really wanting craft beer from this area because of our reputation,” said Kelly Cubbin, “so that’s a good thing. And we’re seeing that demand in South Carolina, too. So with Asheville being so flooded with great beer, it’s nice to see that there are other outlets.”

SAB also has put itself on the map with a new wood-aging program that began last year after the purchase of about two dozen Tennessee whiskey, Kentucky bourbon and California red and white wine barrels. The Cubbins started filling them last spring, and are now beginning to release a series of specialties that include Belgian-style sour beers inoculated with wild yeast, and a 1-year-old barrel-aged imperial stout that takes on flavors of vanilla and oak from the wooden vessels.

The Cubbins say the barrel-aged beers have received the biggest response at regional beer festivals, such as next Saturday’s Asheville Winter Warmer, where hard-core beer aficionados seek them out.

”We will always bring something special to the festivals,” says Andy Cubbin, “and I can’t tell you how many people have said, ‘This is the best beer at the festival.’ And those are the people that say, ‘I love sours, I’m here for sours, and yours is the best.’ That’s big for us. It would be nice to have one of these beers at a specialty store in Asheville or in Charlotte where people can say, ‘Wow, we’ve got to hit that place next time we’re out there (in Hendersonville).’”

SAB hopes to provide a festive venue for those potential visitors, and locals, this summer with plans to better utilize the Cubbins’ outdoor area with an events space that rivals the downtown Rhythm Brews. A music stage, covered seating and expanded music lineup are in the works.

And Sierra Nevada?

“What they’ve done for everybody is only helping us,” says Andy Cubbin, who also thanked Oskar Blues for twice saving the day by providing yeast when Cubbin ran out. “From offering to sell us our grain and potentially hops to bringing in beer tourism, it’s been nothing but 100 percent positive.”

‘Life is good’

When Williams first installed his new 15-barrel brewing system and 30-barrel fermentation tank last year, effectively tripling his production capabilities for each brew session, what was the biggest impact it had on the Brevard Brewing owner?

“I get to spend more time at home,” he says. “A LOT more time.”

Williams, a former brewer at Pisgah Brewing in Black Mountain, opened BBC in April 2012. Back then he did everything – the brewing, the books, marketing, deliveries, even bartending in the on-site tasting room. And while he’s since delegated some of those responsibilities to others, Williams still does the lion’s share of work to keep the business running while commuting two and a half hours round-trip every day from his home in Erwin, Tenn. He also became a father two years ago, making his time that much more valuable.

Williams’ expansion is predicated on his skill in producing crisp, clean, European-style lager beers. Lagers require more time to produce, their smooth finish the result of longer aging at cooler temperatures, which is one reason why ales are far more prevalent among American brewers.

Not that Williams is averse to experimenting with single-hop pale ales and double IPAs — now more feasible with the new equipment — but Williams built his reputation on lagers and other easy-drinking brews such as lower-alcohol “session beers.”

“I definitely fill a niche,” Williams says. “The more I read about it, I’m not the only one. When I first opened this place I thought I had the best idea in the world, but as it turns out a lot of breweries are shifting toward session beers, and lagers are becoming a lot more popular.”

So are Williams’ beers, which are available throughout Brevard and at Square Root and Mike’s Pizza and Pasta in Hendersonville.

Williams has no plans to further expand in the foreseeable future, focusing instead on landing bigger local accounts, as he did recently with Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria, a pioneering craft-beer bar in downtown Asheville. Williams, whose business has grown 30 percent in each of its first three years, plans to start house hunting this winter and prepare a move to Brevard once his wife completes graduate school in Tennessee.

“Right now I’m going to ride things out a little bit,” he says. “I’ve been just in constant growth mode for the past three years. I’m at a place where the business is doing well, I’ve got some free time on my hands … For the time being I need to step back and just let things settle in a little bit and then take the next step maybe a couple years from now. Right now life is good, so I’m holding back.”

And Oskar Blues?

“It worked out great, and they’ve been really good neighbors,” he says. “I really don’t have anything but good things to say about them.”