Hello friends! I started this little venture six years ago this month, so I wanted to share how this all began. January 2018 was about five months before I met my wife and exactly two years before we would welcome our oldest of two sons.
Before I met her, there were about 40 craft breweries in the Houston area and I had been to all but five. I wanted to create a social club where people could gather once a month and each member of the Houston Area Beer Society would receive a map of the breweries in the area. I had dreams of having thousands of Houstonians join and then design an awesome coffee table book using the photos I had taken on each of my brewery trips.
Life takes turns and 2020 happened. My dreams were bigger than the time and resources I had with a newborn, so I pivoted and started focusing just on selling the poster. I would get the breweries to partner with me, put their logo on it, and sell them at their locations. Well, I finished the design and it took me about a year to get most of them to get me the logo to be on the poster. As of now, 60 of the current 67 are on the poster and hopefully one day we’ll have them all.
After updating the map several times with each brewery opening and, unfortunately, some closures, I decided to draw a line in the sand and go ahead and print them and start selling them online in the summer of 2023. Many of the breweries have a map at their location with a QR code that can be scanned to buy a copy. The map is always up-to-date, even though we have to get through one print run before we start selling the next one. Our returning customers receive 50% off for an updated poster.
By the beginning of 2024, I completed the designs for Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio, and Louisiana (my wife’s home state). I’ve also been to many breweries in Louisiana, so I thought I had enough experience to branch out! I’m going to take these five maps and see if I can start spreading the word and selling out our print runs faster. I’ll keep making them as long as people are buying them, and will design other cities and states if there’s a demand for them. My next project is one for the entire State of Texas, so look for that by the beginning of 2025.
Thanks for stopping by and checking us out! If you want to support us, please buy a poster, or if you have an event where you want to use the poster as a prize giveaway, reach out to us directly. We’re always open to ideas and feedback.