Our Annual Membership Meeting will take place on Wednesday, March 6th at 6:30pm in the Red Room of the Masonic Building in downtown Marquette. This is a members-only event, but you can sign up as a member at the meeting. We will have a table staffed with board members for Preferred Share investments (invest at the meeting and be entered in prize drawings!) 6:30 – 7:00 will be our mix and mingle, growler/bottle share (bring a growler, howler, etc to share if you like), Preferred Share time, member sign-up time, and general member social time. We’ll call the meeting to order at 7:00. Three board positions are up for election, plus we’ll share updates on our finances, construction timeline, logo, licensing, and more. See you there!
Preferred Shares FAQ
In the cooperative world, common wisdom says that fundraising goes very slowly. We have not found that to be the case! We started offering Preferred Shares in March of 2018 with a minimum goal of 150 Preferred Shares, or $75,000, which we felt was a bare minimum amount in order to let us borrow the rest and complete our build-out. We hoped to do this within a year.
Fast-forward to one year later, and we have sold over 230 Preferred Shares for a total of over $115,000 capital raised from our members! This outpouring of support from our membership allows us to start our build-out in a much better financial situation than we expected. But we’re not done yet! We still dream of upgrading our fermenters from plastic to stainless steel, installing a solid hardwood bartop, adding a color to the floor, and installing a 12′ picture window facing the lake. So keep those Preferred Shares coming! It’s a great way to invest in your local community, local jobs, local products, and to make a nice return on your investment in the process. Read on!
WHAT IS A PREFERRED SHARE? A preferred share is a way for us, the cooperative, to borrow capital from you, the member, and pay you back with interest. Each share costs $500, and you can buy as few as one(1) or as many as twenty(20) shares. We pay you back with interest depending on the terms you choose. If you elect a 3-year term, we pay 4% annual interest. If you elect a 6-year term, we pay you 4.5% annually. If you elect a 9-year term, we pay you a generous 5% at the end of your term.
HOW MUCH INTEREST DO I EARN? That depends on the term you select. Let’s say you invest $1000 and select the 9-year term. $1000 compounded annually for 9 years returns $1551.33 at the end of the term. That’s what we pay you at the end of your preferred share agreement.
IS THIS INVESTMENT GUARANTEED? All investments have some risk, and this is no exception. So the short answer is no. However, we are 100% committed to making this cooperative successful and fulfilling all of our financial investments.
WHY SHOULD I INVEST? Marquette Brewing Cooperative is a local, community-owned business, so your money will stay local. We are one of a handful of cooperative breweries throughout the nation, so we are truly creating something special for our Marquette community. We are dedicated to brewing beer that meets our three criteria: Creativity, Quality, and Variety. But we are also dedicated to using local ingredients, paying a fair wage, and being a good neighbor every way we can. Your investment in Marquette Brewing Cooperative is a local, socially responsible investment that earns you a generous return. We need capital. Wherever we get that capital, we’ll have to pay interest. We would rather give the benefit of that interest to you, our members, than to a bank or other lending organization.
HOW DO I INVEST? This has to be done in person due to the necessity for signatures from the investor(s) and board members. The easiest way to invest is to attend our weekly office hour at the brewery at 501 Lake Street each Tuesday from 7-8pm. Investment documents can be reviewed and printed here. We also have the documents available at the cooperative at our weekly office hour. We will also gladly make an appointment to meet with you at another time of your convenience. To set up an appointment, you can email Board President David Gill at dgill1108@gmail.com
CAN I INVEST IF I DON’T LIVE IN MICHIGAN? Unfortunately, Michigan State Law does not allow investors from out of state. We would love to accept investments from residents of other states, and we do have members from many others, but this is beyond our control at this point. We still value your membership!
Again, we are at the brewery every Tuesday from 7-8PM or we will meet with you by appointment to process the paperwork if Tuesday does not work for you.
Thank you for being a member, and we look forward to pouring you beer. With your help, we’ll be pouring by the end of this year!
Preferred Shares
Preferred Shares are here. Come out on May 12th from 12-3 at the Lake Street location to purchase some and help fund YOUR BREWERY.
The Brewery Co-op is, as all co-ops are, 100% owned by its members. As an owner, your financial investment will help Marquette’s next microbrewery achieve its goal of pouring awesome craft beer by December, 2018, while earning interest in the process! By purchasing Preferred Shares, you are investing in your business, and later we pay you back with interest (please see our disclosure document for more information HERE).
The brewery is already on its way, but the time has come to fund it. Your money goes to support construction, equipment installation and all the rest that goes along with building the business. The only missing piece is YOU!
Members Only T-shirts
These T-shirts are available for sale to coop members only. They will be at the members meeting on March 6th. $15.
Spread the Word
We have welcomed our first 100 members (and more) into the Marquette Brewing Cooperative family, and it’s time to push it to 200! Become an “Inner Circle” member and get in on the ground floor. Members number 101-200 will receive this stainless steel “Inner Circle” growler as our special appreciation gift for being willing to take the plunge. Click on JOIN US, to, well, join us!
September Board Meeting Progress
Your Board of Directors met at the brewery on September 6 and we made progress on several fronts. Here’s a quick rundown:
– We will soon be able to sell “Preferred Memberships”, which are essentially shares of stock in the cooperative. This is an investment opportunity and how we hope to raise a large portion of the capital needed to build your brewery. One of the regulatory hurdles we’ve been trying to jump for several months is setting up an escrow account, which is a state requirement. Range Bank has agreed to help us with this and we’ll be moving the cooperative’s bank accounts to Range Bank in the near future. When the investment opportunity is available we’ll announce it here and on FaceBook. There will be lots of details to share then.
– You may have notice that our big sign outside the brewery, featured in the last board meeting update, is not up. We’ve been waiting on approval of our sign permit application from the City of Marquette and hope to have that permit and have the sign up in a few days.
– We will soon be launching a Kickstarter campaign with the goal of raising the money needed to buy our brewhouse equipment. We hope to purchase a dual single vessel, electric, 2 barrel capacity system from Colorado Brewing Systems that costs about $10,000.
– We currently have 120 members. We will soon be launching another membership drive and have decided to offer an insulated stainless steel growler to the next 100 members. The growler will have an “Inner Circle” logo on it and all existing members at the end of this campaign will be designated “Inner Circle” members. Existing members will have an opportunity to buy one of the Inner Circle growlers.
We have a lease!
We have a lease! The Coop Board of Directors approved and signed a lease for the 501 S. Lake Street building today, which means we can actually start working to build your brewery! Coming soon: our Preferred Membership offering (essentially preferred stock, but we are a coop, so it’s called memberships, not shares of stock) so we can raise the money to actually start working to build your brewery!
SmartPrize!
Your brewing cooperative is an exhibitor in the Marquette SmartPrize competition. We can win a substantial grant to help us build your brewery. There is a Crowd Favorite category that’s based on public votes. You can register to vote at the SmartPrize website from April 1 through April 8.
New Board Members!
Thanks to everyone who came to the first membership meeting. About 1/3 of the membership were in attendance. It was great to meet you all. Some good questions were asked and answered, we shared some tasty beer, and we have three new board members to help guide us on our journey to producing great craft beer professionally for our community. The voting results are:
Paul Wright – 30 votes
Chris Holm – 29 votes
Jim Suksi – 29 votes
Welcome Paul, Chris, and Jim to the board, and thank you for serving!
Board of Director Openings
MEMBERS: We have openings on our board of directors. This would be a great way to get involved in the Marquette Brewing Cooperative, help build something great, and ultimately serve the community (while drinking beer!) We will elect up to three new board members at our General Membership Meeting on March 20th. If you are a member, please consider serving on our board. It is an exciting time, as over two years of planning is finally coming to fruition with over 100 members, our location chosen, and the chance in the very near future to design and build our brewery and taproom. We meet monthly on the first Wednesday of each month. Interested candidates will give a short introductory talk at our general membership meeting and we will hold an election at the same meeting. New board members will be announced on March 21st, and will take office and begin serving on the board of directors at the April Board meeting, April 5th.