DEALING WITH DEATH? THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT
Before the pandemic, entrepreneurs Liz Eddy and Alyssa Ruderman had trouble getting venture capitalists to invest in their end-of-life planning app Lantern. Potential business partners were skeptical as well.
“We would hear, ‘Oh, this is really a niche issue,’ which I think is pretty hilarious,” Eddy says. “Death is quite literally the only thing on the planet that affects every single person.”
The past two years have highlighted the importance of such preparation, even for younger people. Abigail Henson, a 31-yearold college professor in Phoenix, says she started using Lantern about 18 months ago to plan her funeral, tell her executor where to find her passwords, and explain what she wanted to be done with her social media accounts.
“I’m a planner, and I have control issues, so the idea of being able to have a say in what happens following my passing was appealing,” Henson says.
Planning for death and navigating life after a loss can be difficult, complex and sometimes expensive. However, several apps — including Lantern, Cake, Empathy and Everplans, among others — promise to help.
How death-planning apps work
Death-planning apps typically have free tools for consumers, and
most have additional, premium services available for a fee.
For example, Empathy’s free offerings include checklists, articles and collaboration tools for family members dealing with a death. Those who pay a subscription fee of $8.99 per month or $64.99 per year can access a document vault and automated tools to close accounts. Subscribers
also get around-the-clock access to “care specialists” who can answer questions and help users search for specialized advisers, such as attorneys or tax pros.
Everplans, a document-storage site and app, offers a free trial followed by an annual $75 subscription fee.
Lantern’s free offerings include
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capacity and the willingness to contract-brew, using its equipment to manufacture others’ recipes. This has allowed another new brewing interest to bring its products to market. Going by the name Paradise Hills Brewing, it’s the brainchild of Khris Astudillo, the chefowner of National City Filipino restaurant Serbesa (Tagalog for “beer”).
In early 2020, Astudillo was working with North Park combination brewery and homebrew supply store Home Brewing Co. to contract-brew and debut Paradise Hills’ beers. The pandemic laid waste to his rollout, but he decided to give it another go earlier this year. There was just one problem. Home Brewing Co.’s owner, George Thornton, had downsized his brewery, rendering it unable to support contract-brewing operations.
Thornton pointed Astudillo in the direction of the Voodoo Child team, which agreed to brew batches of PHBC’s Filipino-inspired beers for him. The first two—a calamansi (citrus fruit indigenous to the Philippines) IPA and Filipinostyle adjunct lager — were released over the past month, with more on the way.
An existing beermaker, Little Miss Brewing, is also looking to establish an alternating-proprietorship agreement. The company recently acquired a 30-barrel brewing system but lacks room at its Miramar headquarters to set it up, so owner Greg Malkin is inviting inquiries from brewery owners who either have room at their facilities or are open to leasing a shared space with Little Miss. In both situations, the aforementioned brewhouse will be shared by both companies, allowing each to significantly increase their production capabilities.
Buying and leasing
In 2019, Chicago-based Kings & Convicts Brewing made headlines when it purchased Miramar-based Ballast Point Brewing from Constellation Brands. The latter multinational conglomerate had famously acquired the former San Diego brewing stalwart for $1 billion in 2015 but failed to capitalize on that pricey buy. Following the acquisition,
Kings & Convicts scrapped plans to expand its small Windy City brand to Wisconsin, instead moving its operation to San Diego and brewing small, sporadic runs of its beers at Ballast Point.
This January, wanting to expand production of Kings & Convicts products and in need of a large enough brewery to do so, owners Brendan Watters and Chris Bradley jumped on the opportunity to purchase the 50,000square-foot Saint Archer Brewing facility shortly after parent company MolsonCoors discontinued the brand. MolsonCoors followed the trend of “Big Beer” corporations buying independent craft breweries, purchasing Saint Archer in 2015. And just like Constellation Brands, despite big investments and flashy marketing, MolsonCoors was unable to find success with Saint Archer.
Located on Distribution Avenue, less than a mile from Ballast Point’s Miramar base of operations, the tasting room at the former Saint Archer brewery has been revamped and redecorated to convey Kings & Convicts’ rough-and-tumble, pub-like thematic. The same transformation has taken place at a Leucadia tasting room on Coast Highway, which was included in the deal. Behind the scenes, the majority of Saint Archer’s employees, including the entire brewing team, remained on board following the acquisition.
Kings & Convicts’ strong financial backing is something of a rarity in the craft beer industry. For the most part, businesses, especially new interests, are looking for the most economical path to
entry. Such is the case with a pair of startups: South O Brewing and Seek Beer Co. The owners of both opted to go with the lease-to-brew option presented by H.G. Fenton’s Brewery Igniter model, wherein the local developer rents out units equipped with brewhouses, fermentation tanks, cold refrigeration, tap systems and tasting rooms to new and established breweries.
The Brewery Igniter model allows new operations to hit the ground running and avoid steep startup costs such as purchasing pricey equipment. It also allows existing brewing companies an option for increasing production. The model has proven successful for a number of new companies. Pure Project Brewing and Eppig Brewing easily proved their concepts from Brewery Igniter’s Miramar and North Park campuses, respectively. Both are now headquartered at 10,000plus square-foot production facilities in Vista and operate satellite tasting rooms. Similarly, Rouleur Brewing proved its concept from Brewery Igniter’s two-suite campus in Carlsbad, eventually taking it over on a permanent basis before opening a tasting room in North Park and teaming with the Cohn Restaurant Group to run the large brewery at its Draft Republic location in San Marcos.
South O became the inaugural tenant of Brewery Igniter’s Oceanside suite. Founded by a pair of South Oceanside residents (hence the company’s name), it debuted in December offering an array of mostly sunfriendly ales and lagers. Seek Beer Co., the product of a veteran brewer who most recently directed production at Urban South Brewery’s Houston brewpub, opened in April at the suite that formerly housed Eppig. Replete with Seek’s red, gold and turquoise color palette, the tasting room is stocked with a variety of sour, hoppy and hazy offerings.
Beer, wine under one roof
In October 2019, the State of California passed Assembly Bill 1825, making it legal to produce beer and wine on the same premises. This opened the doors for brewing companies and wineries to manufacture and sell their goods under one roof. The first local instance of this debuted at Hangar 76. A reimagination of Carruth Cellars’ Oceanside production facility, the 17,500square-foot space now features tasting bars for that company as well as brewery tenant, Tipping Pint Brewing.
“When AB 1825 passed, it was a no-brainer. So many times, you see a couple trying to figure out where to go, with one wanting beer and the other wanting wine. Here we can accommodate both,” says Tipping Pint founder and head brewer Adam Jester. “We’re also focusing more on families. We want to make a welcoming space for both adults and children. Having a couple of small kids helps you realize how many places are hard to frequent.”
Jester hails from the Pizza Port family of brewpubs. At Tipping Pint, he is serving lagers, a honey ale and various IPAs, all of which can be enjoyed in combination with Carruth’s wines on a shared back patio with a stage for live entertainment.
Another operation made possible by AB 1825, CoLab Public House, is on pace to open to the public on June 10. Located just off State Route 78 on Industrial Court in Vista, the 12,500-squarefoot, two-story facility will serve the liquid wares of three brewery tenants— Barrel & Stave Brewing, Breakwater Brewing and Laguna Beach Beer Co.— plus vino from Propaganda Wine Co. with food from an in-house kitchen operated by Baby’s Badass Burgers.