From the Founder: A Letter of Gratitude on Thanksgiving 2023

The turkey is coming out of the oven, the house is filled with voices and laughter, the smell of delicious food fills your nose. Of course, you have a cold beer in hand, and you’re laughing about how long it took you to clean all the baseboards in your house in preparation for your 10 friends or family members to come over. In this moment, it’s your life. It’s the happenings of the present so they don’t seem as spiritual or as important as they do when we look back.

I hear it from my friends all the time, “I hope that you’re taking a second to recognize what you’ve accomplished!”. It’s so easy to pass by the time that we should be taking to celebrate. To me, the success was the goal and once it’s reached, “on to the next!”. But I took a moment today to really look back, feel the feelings, and express some gratitude for some successes that I am extremely grateful for this year:

First, I’m grateful that on two occasions this year I’ve had to pull money out of my personal checking account to put into Greenwood Brewing. You’re probably thinking, this lady is nuts. Why would she be grateful for that?? But honestly, it’s been foreseen in my business plan that I will need to fund this business (again) during a time of intense growth. Instead of being upset, I’m grateful that we’re at this place because it means that we’re growing (and scaling) heavily, and that after this time, I won’t have to fund Greenwood with my personal checking account again.

Secondly, I am grateful that we are having growing pains with our new distributor, Hensley Beverage Company. This month we’ve had customers without beer, customers try to get delivery two and three times with no success, and we’ve even destroyed beer that wasn’t meant to be destroyed. But beer delivery challenges means that one of the best and most successful distributors in the country is getting used to selling Greenwood Beer. How absolutely badass is that. The growing pains means that people are learning, and the more that my team and the Hensley team learns about how to operate Greenwood beer with our customers, the better and more successful we will all be in the future. That’s a heck yes from me.

Third, I am grateful that for the first time since we’ve opened, that my team has brought to me what 2024 will look like. This isn’t a challenge turned success, this is just a pure success. I have talked many times about the process of building Greenwood and that I never realized that I would have a group of people surrounding me every day that completely transform my life. If I haven’t said it enough, our Greenwood Brewing team absolutely rocks. They are hardworking, talented, creative, and independent people who think up the craziest ideas and also keep us on a steady track. They all brought their plans, ideas, and expectations for 2024 to me this year, and they are invested and interested in making our goals become reality.

Much of the time my favorite successes are not when we get on the cover of a magazine or gain more followers on social media (I mean, those are awesome too!), my favorite successes are when we had challenges directly tied to them. I am grateful for the challenges, it means growth, and learning, and newness. These things can be so unique and rare that when they happen, it’s the ultimate success.

My business isn’t perfect, but who wants perfect anyway. In a time of gratitude and celebration, I’m cheersing all day.

Thank you to YOU for helping us to get to where we are today. You are why we do it all.

With the thought of a delicious pie baking in the oven and a Harvest Diem in your hand, I wish you the Happiest Thanksgiving and a day filled with gratitude.

Sincerely,

Megan Greenwood

Owner & Founder, Greenwood Brewing