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Sipping and Spiking: Pearl Beach Brew Club's Volleyball Experience
64 Plays1 year ago
In this episode, we are joined by Paxton Stieber, COO of OSSO Sports & Social and Pearl Beach Brew Club, as she shares the remarkable journey of transforming the backyard of a brewery into a bustling entertainment hotspot.
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https://www.pearlbeachbrewpub.com/
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Transcript
From House to Brewery: Transformation and Management
00:00:00
Speaker
In this episode, I got to talk to Paxton from Pearl Beach in Oklahoma. They have two locations, one in Tulsa in Oklahoma City, and I got to really focus on how she took what was an old house, turned it into a bar brewery with San Volleyball courts, and how they've been able to actually manage the courts, the San Volleyball leagues, the rentals, the private events, and also being a brewery at the same time, and some of the challenges that come along with that.
00:00:21
Speaker
We got to sit right in the heart of the action so you could see people playing San Volleyball, us sitting out there on the picnic tables, talking about the challenges and everything that was going on. And I hope you enjoy this episode with Paxton at Pearl Beach. So I'm here in Tulsa, Oklahoma today with my friend Paxton, the COO of OSO Oklahoma Sport and Social Organization and Pearl Beach Brew Club. Thank you so much for joining us. Tell me a little bit about how you even got into this episode.
00:00:50
Speaker
Yeah, so I think first came OSO, Oklahoma Sports and Social. So we created OSO to do adult social sports leagues and kind of fill that gap of programming for different bars and parks around Oklahoma.
Paxton's Journey: Corporate to Small Business
00:01:07
Speaker
And then in 2019, we actually discovered this
00:01:11
Speaker
backyard property was just totally empty all grass and this was a brewery and partnered with the owners of the brewery at that time to build what you now see here. So tell me a little bit about yourself and your background and how you got into Oso and Pearl Beach. Yeah it's like a complicated question but um my background is kind of everything I've done corporate, I've done non-profit, I've done
00:01:35
Speaker
it happens we're at a sand volleyball bar not everybody's good at sand volleyball and her purse is wet now but whoops anyways um i've done corporate i've done non-profit and um now we're into small business and you know i just kind of met the owner uh blake and he provided me with this opportunity and it's been great so i've just kind of been running it since
00:01:59
Speaker
2019 and took over we took over the bar operations in 2020 so it kind of that's when we first got our grip into let's run this whole entire facility but originally it was just like split into two. OSO ran the backyard and the bar was completely separate.
Unified Operations: Volleyball Courts and Bar
00:02:14
Speaker
So talk about that transition between all right OSO's going well we're doing really well with San Volleyball we partnered with the bar. Yeah. Tell me about how how did it come about of like maybe we could take this over and talk about the challenges. So I think
00:02:26
Speaker
A little bit of both like the bar owners loved the volleyball and the volleyball owners loved the bar, but there was a disconnect, right? Because as somebody who was planning the programming for six out of the seven days of the week, we're bringing in 200 to 400 people.
00:02:42
Speaker
into your bar every single day and not capturing any of the bar revenue you know some animosity built there and same thing with the bar they were like but you are collecting leak fees so it was just it was just a hard partnership to establish and we just decided that it would be better for us to just take over the whole thing somehow.
00:03:01
Speaker
And so what would what did that look like? Did you guys buy them out cash? Did you work on it overtime? Yeah, so the owner of the company bought it out, but we're still doing like a so he bought the land and then we're paying like monthly payments for the business.
00:03:17
Speaker
Okay. For a few years. So you were able to negotiate rather than paying all up front buying the business and negotiate. And the owner, like the previous owner of Pearl Beach the bar, you know, he just did some self financing. He was like, you know, this was actually their house in 2017. And then he turned it into a brewery. So it was so our top room is about
00:03:38
Speaker
2,000 total square feet but the actual like sitting space is like 900 square feet and you know that was their garage and the kitchen and everything so he transitioned it into a brewery and you know has owned it ever since so it ends up being a great investment for him.
00:03:54
Speaker
Well, I never thought about that. Maybe I just turned my backyard into a sample bar.
Financial Strategies and Challenges
00:03:59
Speaker
I mean, truly, the one thing that we never took into account when this was converted was parking. It still is a problem here. But because our taproom is so small, like legally, our occupancy inside is only 69 people. We're only required to have poor parking spaces.
00:04:17
Speaker
OK, so how is that a big challenge with parking? Do you feel like I definitely it is a challenge. We actually have a vacant lot on the other side of the fence and it's been vacant for the last two years. So people have just been parking in that lot last Thursday and they put a fence up around it and they let us know that they were starting construction on it. And so this has been like a last five days issue where people are like, where do we park?
00:04:43
Speaker
Luckily, you know, street parking is legal. So they're just like parking from the curb from here down four blocks and walking. That's crazy. The problems never cease to exist. No. I mean, one time you solve one and another one pops up. Yeah. So with the facility, I mean, now that you've been three years into the agreement, do you feel like there was a better agreement or do you think the way you were purchased this on the deal you made to take it over was the right move?
00:05:09
Speaker
I think the origin of social sports made this deal the right move. What I mean by that is a lot of the times social sports are low overhead, high cash business because you're getting all these lead fees and you're not really paying for the facility necessarily, but a lot of times you're renting it. There's a lot of different revenue streams that you aren't capturing within that.
00:05:36
Speaker
This was right for us because we started so small. I mean we started so small and we were able to just come in and finance the backyard build out. That was you know 300-400 thousand dollars all in over the course of two years.
Organic Development: Building Pearl Beach
00:05:51
Speaker
I mean we first just built the courts and then we added the bathrooms and then we added an outdoor bar. So some of the additional features were added as we
00:06:01
Speaker
went on but it was it was great because we were able to self-finance all of it and and and just kind of grow organically. So what do you feel like was the biggest challenging um obviously you didn't have to open it from scratch it was already open but the transition to take ownership what was the biggest challenge? Yeah so I mean we did open the backyard from the scratch we we were here to build that up but I think the biggest challenge was
00:06:26
Speaker
All of us had sports background and none of us had bar background. I mean, what we knew was what you know as a patron, right? And what I knew was I worked for a quick trip, which is like a convenience store throughout the Midwest for six years. So I knew how to work hard and fast. And when I was in college, I worked for Chipotle for like two months. So I was like, all right, I'm going to take this combined experience. And at the time, my manager here,
00:06:54
Speaker
He was like, you're the GM. Congratulations. Get in there. And the rest is kind of history. We just had to figure it out. But the bar industry can be tricky to just jump into. There's a lot of legalities, a lot of rules, licenses that you have to maintain in a whole layer of safety, right? That you just have to take into account in serving liquor.
00:07:16
Speaker
Yeah, so you did actually open this from scratch.
Overcoming Construction and Seasonal Challenges
00:07:19
Speaker
What was the biggest challenging developing this out for the sand volleyball park? I think their biggest challenge was I think the sands. I know that we ended up bordering the sands from a southern state and you know we're like what how many dump trucks do we need for trying to figure out that figuring out quality of sands because
00:07:41
Speaker
the different coarseness of the sand comes into effect. We have one other sand volleyball facility here in Tulsa and it's actually at Tulsa Park and it's down on Riverside and Jinx and it's so much like gravel, like the sand is like gravel and everyone will post pictures after playing and they're just totally torn up, right?
00:08:01
Speaker
But that takes away from like the experience entirely is if you don't have this luxury sand, then there's that. So I think the sand was huge. Drainage is a really big thing. We're kind of on a slow, slow blot. And I still think we still deal with that a little bit.
00:08:18
Speaker
I think that's what's so great about this industry is like issues with parking, issues with some of these issues you're bringing up, small thing. Everybody wants to play, so they're gonna figure it out. They're gonna figure out where to park, they're gonna like, I think that's what's so cool about a business like this is people wanna play same volleyball, so if they have an issue with parking or whatever, they're kind of like overlooking it to some degree because they wanna play same volleyball sometimes. So that's awesome. What are your biggest challenges now that you're open, you've been open three years, what day to day, what do you feel like is your biggest challenge?
00:08:47
Speaker
Seasonality, probably. We're in Oklahoma in the Midwest. Tomorrow it could be snowing and today it's sunny. That's definitely our biggest challenge and probably biggest, I'm gonna say regret, but I don't mean it like that. I just think that if I had all the money in the world, I would have figured out how to build this as an indoor-outdoor concept so that I could be profitable 12 months out of the year, not just eight. As we really are.
00:09:13
Speaker
profitable on the side of the year and then the other however many I can't do math for, it's just dead. And that makes it really hard not only for from a cash perspective and a business perspective but also from a staffing perspective.
00:09:27
Speaker
It's really hard when, you know, we slow down, bartenders are like bar-based business, they are tip-based positions, and they want to go where the money is, so they end up leaving when we slow down, and they come back when we're ramping up. So we're ramping up, we have to train all our 30s south again, we have to do all their leagues again, we have to open up the bar all over again, and so it's all, all at once, every single year.
00:09:52
Speaker
And so I think a little bit of me just wants to find out a way to avoid having to go drink from the fire hose every single year at the same time. So do you have thoughts on how you're going to solve that problem?
00:10:08
Speaker
I don't have a lot of thoughts with this specific location. We would love to, I think our dream for this location would be to move the brewery offsite. So to do the production, not in the taproom. And then we would have a little bit more indoor programming space.
00:10:25
Speaker
so we could actually seat people.
Enhancing Communication and Efficiency with Technology
00:10:28
Speaker
So I said our occupancy is 69 people, but we only have like 23 chairs inside, because that's all that we really can fit. But if we could actually fit 70 people in there, you know, the entire taproom with tables and chairs, then we could create indoor events like trivia bingo, karaoke night, live events, stuff like that. But we don't have the space to even program that in there right now. Our sellout event in the winter is 23 people.
00:10:56
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of hard to run events with 23 people, yeah. It ends up not being worth all the time that you put in to create the event. That's awesome. So what's one solution that you've implemented that you're most proud of? I don't know if I have an answer for it. This is like what we were talking about just earlier. It's like every day you get a new problem and you solve it and then you move on and it wasn't like it comes to the back of my head. I don't know what the problem was anymore.
00:11:21
Speaker
Sure. Drinking from that virus, short term memory. Probably from me, I'm a systems based person. So just like when you start a company like from the bottom, you have to create the systems for everybody to communicate efficiently for all of the information to flow for.
00:11:41
Speaker
through every member of the team. And so I have about six or seven different softwares and they all talk to each other. And that's probably something that I'm the most proud of because I single-handedly like made that happen, right? Like through trial and error for sure, you know, finding all of the right pieces and all the right software to operate the different parts of our business. And I think that's also where you come in, right?
00:12:04
Speaker
Sure, exactly. Facility Ally, check it out, facilityallie.com. So how are you managing your rentals before switching to Facility Ally?
00:12:12
Speaker
We did try another court rental software, and it was pretty clunky. And it didn't talk to a lot of them. The thing we love about Facility Ally is that we can get it to tie into our Google Calendar. And so then our Google Calendar ties into our staff scheduling software. And so when our staff clock in, they can see everything that's happening in the day without having to totally open up a whole different software,
00:12:40
Speaker
Having your bartenders check a calendar every day is really hard, but if they're looking at it and they're like, oh, I work today and also here's all the other things that are going on, that's been really great. Sure, that's awesome. Have you gotten many reservations through the website since putting it up there?
00:12:53
Speaker
Yeah, yeah for sure. I think that this is our first year because we just implemented Facility LI in the fall of last year and as I mentioned we're very slow in the fall. So we have been getting all of our reservations kind of rolling in and so what we do is we have like the corks of separate rentals. We have an area under the shade tree that's a rental and then we also have like this shade structure that we're sitting under as a rental.
00:13:17
Speaker
It basically allows you to have like a private area that you know for sure if you're having 15 of your friends for your birthday coming out and you want to rent a court but you also want to have like space. Everything here is first come first serve unless you rent it. That's awesome. So it kind of creates demand like go to our website, book it.
00:13:36
Speaker
I mean, not courts are never open because we run a league six days a week and then normally on the seventh day we do tournaments. So the courts aren't really ever open, but the hours that they are open, people know to rent them.
00:13:50
Speaker
How do you keep the sand and the crooks? I feel like that's one of the biggest questions. Yeah, we need to do weekly turf cleaning to get all the sand out of the turf and back in. But the nice thing about the turf is when you use like a brush, everything that's under the turf is sand. You have like a layer of, that all layer of sand. So when you're brushing it, it's just settling down.
00:14:11
Speaker
and it ends up cleaning itself that way. I think one of the things is that being a brewery, in the brewery culture, people love to have their beer in a nice gold glass. And that is our biggest enemy when it comes to a place where we let people walk around barefooted.
00:14:30
Speaker
I think that's been a little bit of a hurdle because the craft brew community has such a stigma of this is how we drink our beer, this is the way we like our beer. And then we're also introducing this entertainment that just can't cop that. So we don't have any tulip glasses or steins, if you will.
00:14:49
Speaker
I can kind of relate that I love my beer in a cold glass, but as someone who does this stuff too, it's like, no, you can never have grass. Like, it's just not an option. We've kind of been trying to slowly transition to get all of our beers, like, canned for that option so that we can serve it and up up it with ice. And then that gives, like, people a little bit of an option because if you take your drink and then you go play and then you come back, now your beer is warm. Yep.
00:15:16
Speaker
It's stinking great for the bar business a little bit because it makes them drink it faster. And buy more. Yeah, so how do you attract or what's the most successful way found to attract people to Pearl Beach?
Organic Growth and Strategic Adaptations
00:15:28
Speaker
Um, you know, we pretty much just do organic marketing. So posting on social media, but like 90% of it is word of mouth. I think that when you're creating a team of people, you invite your friends to play and our links around, um, seven weeks. So it's six weeks plus playoffs. So seven weeks, you're coming out here and you get two time slots. You're about, you're here for about two to three hours and you may have a great time.
00:15:55
Speaker
You, as my teammate, may not have a great time, but you're like, but if I had so-and-so and so-and-so with me, I'd have a better time. And then it just has really expanded, and we have totally sold out our leagues. The last, I'm gonna say two seasons, we've been completely sold out and waitlisted, so.
00:16:16
Speaker
2019, we opened in May, so it's kind of taken a couple years to organically sell out 100%, but now we're waitlisted and what can you do? We can't build more courts, so.
00:16:26
Speaker
So how did you decide, so now that you're waitlist, you kind of achieve what you wanted to achieve, you know, what's the next option there? Obviously you can't build more courts. Do you think you raise your price just because you have so much demand or what are your thoughts on that? Definitely could raise our price and we have more recently with inflation and such, but I think the only other option for us is, so specifically here in Tulsa, which is where we're sitting, we only have three sand volleyball courts. So our demand is a little bit higher for what
00:16:53
Speaker
we have in our backyard. So we do four on four sand volleyball Monday Tuesday and Wednesday and then we do six on six Thursday Friday and Sunday. Obviously with both of those we have a roster minimum.
00:17:07
Speaker
the roster is larger for six on six. So I think our next step would be transitioning out a night of fours and introducing another night of six. And how we will do that is we'll cap like a fours night to only 18s and do two style of play on one night and then organically have like the sixes take over the fours because we do, we make more revenue when there's more people.
00:17:29
Speaker
It's a tough thing to balance is to try and make sure that people come and get what they want and are happy, but also we're a business and need to make money. Yeah, yeah, so it's when it's been good. I mean we.
00:17:39
Speaker
Sixes for us is like a party style and because we are a bar, a lot of the times we do see like less experienced players. In Oklahoma City, we have six courts. The demand is a little bit less. We're able to offer more styles of play. We do doubles. We do more competitive tournaments and leagues. Because we have the space here, we can't do that.
00:18:03
Speaker
And that has been a divide a little bit in the community because the people that love the sport want to play. They want to be playing the whole time. They never want to sit on the bench. So I think you already touched on this earlier, but if you started today, what would you do differently, maybe other than building an indoor so that you're year out? Yes, a little bit of that. I mean,
00:18:25
Speaker
If we were to totally pick our own land, then that would be ideal too because I don't, I think I speak for everyone on our team when I say don't build an odd number of courts. The scheduling and the programming and all of that, it becomes a lot more difficult when you can't evenly split between two and two or just four courts in general.
00:18:47
Speaker
So obviously now you know you're selling out, you got a wait list, so probably one of the other things would be to build more courts. But obviously you didn't know that. Yeah, but there's a fine line too, right? Because we have less courts, so we get more court rentals. Whereas in Oklahoma City, we have more courts. We're able to offer more styles of play, but we don't get very many court rentals because they're like, oh, there's probably an open court.
00:19:10
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense.
Navigating Regulations and Automation Benefits
00:19:12
Speaker
Cool. Are there any weird local rules or communities that you had to navigate through here in Tulsa?
00:19:17
Speaker
Other than just, like I said, I mentioned a little bit earlier, just the sand volleyball community, the people that want to play don't necessarily want to pay the premium dollar to play, but then also just expect to treat this place like a park and not a business. And so that thought was like a little bit hard to just train your rules, starting from, you know, we're taking IDs at the door. We're going to check your bag. You can't bring whatever you want here.
00:19:45
Speaker
like normal and pick up what you lay down sort of thing. So that was definitely difficult. And then I think every state poses its own challenges with liquor licenses. So we can all just say blanket statement liquor licenses are difficult to navigate and they put a lot of strain on your business in different ways with restrictions. Sure. Awesome.
00:20:08
Speaker
So before we wrap up today, I want to remind everybody that we're brought to you by Facility Ally, a software platform for entertainment concepts, clubs, and large entertainment sports facilities. If you had one thing to say, why people would need to automate their facility, what would you say?
00:20:25
Speaker
I love putting people on the spot. Yeah, I think it's just important. One person can only do so much. And the number one thing is the facility ally is a great way to communicate what's happening to everyone without having to actually communicate it. The customer is putting in all the information that everyone can see it at the exact same time. Awesome. So what is one piece of advice, the one thing you want to tell people that they're going to start their own facility, they're going to try and do something, what's the one thing
00:20:55
Speaker
Oh, I don't know. Just get ready to do all the jobs, I guess. I think that if you're scared to do any portion of the job, then maybe the business isn't right for you. Appreciate that. Awesome. So are there any books or podcasts you recommend to someone just getting started?
Inspiration and Learning: Recommended Resources
00:21:15
Speaker
Not necessarily in this business, but just as an entrepreneur, my favorite podcast is How I Built This by Guy Ross. I like it because they take a lot of really big companies and corporations, and they take a lot of big companies and corporations, and they start from the bottom. They tell you the basic building blocks of the things that they were doing to build Amazon, you know, before Amazon was Amazon. And so it's really cool because you,
00:21:43
Speaker
get into small businesses and you think to yourself like that all of this isn't normal and that it's all a lot of work and you're not doing things right but it's reassuring. So it's a long explanation. No that's great and posture syndrome is a real thing so having all the knowledge really helpful. So well thanks again for having us Paxton. If you ever are in Tulsa or Oklahoma City check out Pearl Beach, check out OSO and we'll see you next time.