144. Starting a Small Town Brewery with Terry Sando

Update: 2024-10-14

Description

We’re back with another one of our favorite kinds of episodes: real stories of real people doing really cool things in their small towns.

This episode features Terry Sando, a retired Air Force officer who’s built a brewery in his small town of Hillsboro, ND. We love this story because Terry was inspired to build a business to serve his community…so he did! He’s kept the community at the heart of everything he does, and he’s such a great example of what can happen with a dream, willingness to learn, and lots of hard work.

About Terry:

I was born and raised in Valley City, ND. In the summers, I worked on my grandparents’ farm south of Rogers, ND. I graduated from Valley City High School and went to college before joining the Air Force in 1979. I did 5 ½ years of enlisted time with my final assignment being a crew member on the B-52 at Grand Forks AFB. Duties included pulling nuclear alert and flying training missions.

In November of 1984, I joined the 119th, the Happy Hooligans to become an Intelligence Officer and trained at Lowery AFB in Denver. My son Travis was born during my assignment there and my wife Deb wouldn’t tell me on the phone if it was a boy or girl! Happily, I was granted emergency leave and flew back to Grand Forks to see my son.

I had different assignments at the 119th and returned to active duty to gain space operations background for future Air Guard missions in 1998. During my six years in Colorado Springs, I was assigned to Peterson AFB, Schriever AFB, and Cheyenne Mountain. 9/11 happened while I was stationed at AFSPC (Air Force Space Command) and I was selected to help stand up NorthCom. I was the first Guardsman to be qualified to stand watch at Cheyenne Mountain for NORAD/NorthCom. It was my most challenging assignment, but also my best assignment during my career.

My next assignment in 2004 was at the National Guard Bureau in Washington D.C. and from there I went to the Air War College at Maxwell AFB where I got my Master of Strategic Studies. My final assignment was Plans and Requirements at 1st Air Force at Tyndall AFB.

During this assignment, I grew an appreciation for craft beer brewing. I had a coworker who was a great homebrewer, and he got me interested in learning to brew beer. I had to put it into my bucket list of things to do when I retired.

I retired in November of 2009 and came home to Grand Forks. After retirement I had jobs at the University of North Dakota as the Emergency Manager, Grand Forks Region EDC working on building the UAS ecosystem, a Norwegian company eSmart doing UAS operations for utility line inspections, and finally Mobile Recon a small UAS startup company.

I decided to get into brewing in 2019 and started construction of a brew pub in Hillsboro. This became Goose River Brewing, and the pub has been open for two years. Two beta batches of beer were done in July of this year, so we’re officially brewing! Part of the goal was to have a blue-collar craft beer lovers social gathering location that would help make Hillsboro’s downtown a destination. We are working on building relationships with our local malt barley growers. We also have been giving our spent grain to a local cattle grower to use in the cattle feed ration. The pandemic had a big impact on raising the cost of construction and pushing out the opening date. My goal is to build a local team that will take over operations and then I can slow down and take advantage of retirement.

In this episode, we cover:

What inspired Terry to get into brewing beer in the first place
How COVID threw a wrench in the plans for the brewery and what they did to compensate
Why businesses like this one could be a really cool opportunity for someone from a city who wants to move to a small town
The importance of community and relationship-building in long-term success and buy-in
Why you are never too old to learn or try something new

Links and Resources Mentioned:

The Goose River Brewing Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/GooseRiverBrewing