The upstart craft beer cooperative, profiled in our recent roundup of
new MSP breweries, just launched a
$25,000 Indiegogo campaign ahead of a planned early 2017 launch. The goal is flexible, meaning Broken Clock will receive funds even if it doesn’t hit the $25,000 mark. As of September 10, the campaign had raised about $3,500 with two months left to go.
Broken Clock is actually MSP’s second cooperative brewery. The first,
Fair State Brewing Cooperative, opened in a small Northeast Minneapolis storefront two years ago. Fair State’s cooperative model clearly struck a chord with the community: Fair State’s member-owner count is approaching 1,000, and Fair State just announced a massive expansion plan involving a 30-barrel production brewery in St. Paul’s Creative Enterprise Zone, per
The Growler.
Fair State may have been the first mover, but Broken Clock has big plans to claim a slice of what’s proven to be a big (and growing) pie. That means paying attention to more than just the bottom line.
“Being a cooperative means that we put the needs of the community ahead of the bottom line,” according to Broken Clock’s Indiegogo page. “We aspire to make a difference by empowering people, inspiring passion, and fostering collaboration in our community.”
Broken Clock’s road to “mak[ing] a difference” could be a lot shorter than most upstart breweries’. The co-founders recently signed a purchase agreement to take over the Northeast Minneapolis space outgrown by
56 Brewing.That space is “turnkey,” meaning it won’t require the sort of messy, time-consuming, setback-prone build-out that’s normally part of a new brewery opening.
But Broken Clock does need some of its own stuff to get started: “all the equipment, building, and consulting we need to brew beer the day we move in,” according to its Indiegogo page. That’s where the $25,000 figure comes in.