In the years following the 2016 launch of
Good City Brewing, co-founder
Dan Katt found himself completely immersed in a fast-growing entrepreneurial venture, learning the ins and outs of a new industry.
A local craft beer boom set the stage for the brewery's early growth, and Katt leaned on his extensive background in commercial real estate (he launched a real estate development and consulting firm in 2013 and before that was project development director for Eppstein Uhen Architects and business development manager for construction firm J.H. Findorff & Son) to guide Good City's expansion from a single location on Milwaukee's East Side to a second taproom and restaurant in the Deer District and then the purchase of a 53,000-square-foot building at Century City business park for its office and warehousing operations.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and Katt, with partners David Dupee and Andrew Jones, stepped up to a "whole other level of involvement and commitment" to keep the business going, said Katt. And Good City kept growing, with a third taproom location that opened in Wauwatosa in 2021.
So, understandably, it wasn't until the past 12 to 18 months, said Katt,
that he was able to start thinking about what else he'd like to do with his career.
"In the early summer, I was kind of thinking about either kicking off some new real estate projects on my own, which is what I had been doing prior to Good City, but then I reconnected with Bob Monnat at Mandel Group – I've known Bob for 20 years – and he expressed a desire to maybe try and make something work together," Katt explained in a recent interview with BizTimes Milwaukee.
That conversation ultimately led Katt to
join Milwaukee-based multifamily real estate development firm Mandel Group last month as development manager, working alongside Monnat, the firm's senior partner.
Katt remains involved at Good City as an owner, but over the past two years, he and the founding partners have been able to transition out of the company's day-to-day operations as the "next generation of leaders" take the reins. Earlier this year, three managers were brought on as part owners:
Andy Hartzell, general manager; Dane Mariani, brewery operations manager; and Manny Ramirez, head of kitchen operations.
Now, with a succession plan in place, Katt remains confident in the future of Good City, and has his sights on this next chapter of his career. He spoke more about it in an interview with BizTimes Milwaukee associated editor Maredithe Meyer. The following are excerpts from their conversation.
How are you finding the transition from running your own business to now working for a company?
"It's great. Honestly, after 10 years of (working for yourself) it can be pretty lonely at times to be kind of doing everything yourself. I wouldn't say that I did everything myself, but you're used to maybe not having the same resources that you would at a more established place. So I feel like I get to not only deepen my knowledge and learn a lot, particularly in multifamily development, but also on a larger scale, I'm able to work on projects that are likely beyond what I could have done myself, so that's super rewarding. And then I'm working with Bob, who I've known for a long time, so there's a lot of trust there, but there's just a really great culture and great team of people, and it is very entrepreneurial and it is very project based. And so that all feels very familiar and natural. It's not necessarily super corporate, it is very entrepreneurial from a development standpoint. So far it's really been great, I'm really enjoying it."
So, you remain apart of the Good City ownership, but beyond that, what is the extent of your involvement at this point?
"Certainly financial oversight and overall strategy for the business and then still leadership for our managers in helping them guide the ship and enable them to make decisions on their own, but that's primarily it. It's also experimental in a way for me because Good City was a baby and it's grown up a little bit, so it takes a little bit of courage to step aside and trust that it's still going to be executed incredibly well. We really could not have better people, so I'm really grateful for that. When I think about where we were when we started in terms of experience of running a brewery or a restaurant, our team has way more experience than those of us who started it. That makes it a little bit more simple and straightforward in terms of the way you think about it."
Do you ever see yourself ever phasing out of the business completely, or do you intend to always stay involved as part of the ownership?
"Yeah, I anticipate staying involved for the long haul. We've built a brand, we'd like the business to continue to grow and that's why you bring in and you elevate leaders and managers because you want it to be sustained over the long haul. And you want to create opportunities for people to stay and grow their own careers. And so, sometimes that requires you to kind of get out of the way yourself. But I'm still very tuned into what's going on and we’re still working every day to improve our product and our experience and what we're offering to people and to differentiate ourselves from our competition."
Any other takeaways?
"Overall, I'm just like super excited to be, again working on more things and things in the future that are part of the area and region's growth. And that's really my passion overall, whether that's real estate or whether that's starting a brewery. It’s also great to reconnect with a lot of my colleagues in the real estate world, who maybe I've seen at Good City but haven't seen professionally for a while."
