The Ides of November seemed like a perfectly good day to launch the 2024-25 Look Back/Look Ahead Series. For those new to following us, towards the end of every year we sit down with the folks running our breweries to review the year gone by and preview the year to come.

This time around, admittedly, could be a bit gloomy, as the industry is dealing with some significant upheaval. That made the trip up I-25 to Bernalillo to talk to Kaktus Brewing owner Dana Koller a bit different, as he remains a beacon of positivity.

“This year was great,” Koller said. “We got a solid staff. It was a big focus on internal growth, meaning focusing on the employees and the corporation itself rather than (outside elements). We already have solid, award-winning pizzas and beers, that sort of thing. What we wanted to do is really focus on a better work environment.

“The year before we were voted best brewery staff by Albuquerque the Magazine. We really wanted to hone in on that. And so, the biggest change we made this year was we went employee owned. That would be an opportunity to earn equity in the company. We already have one employee that’s done that, so we’re considered employee owned, and we have two more (pending).”

Koller said the goal is to be 50-percent employee owned in the future.

“What else happened this year? We just got our Restaurant B license, which allows us to carry spirits from all over the world, and wine,” Koller continued. “That’s upped our cocktail list, dramatically. We have higher quality offerings at the same price, which is really cool. It also allows us to expand a little bit more on mocktails and non-alcoholic beverages, which is really cool. I should say super-low alcohol, since some of them are not 100-percent alcohol free.”

The most visible change has come out front. Remember how you could basically drive in a circle around the brewery building, parking along the sides? Well, now there is a north parking lot and a south parking lot, with access to the latter via a left turn as you enter the property. Instead of going straight and then looping, there is now an expanded outdoor area.

“Obviously, we’ve expanded our patio, adding a true beer garden,” Koller said. “We added the grass field. We added an outdoor service bar for lager events.”

Koller was actually working on stringing up some more lights to keep things illuminated outside, as the beer garden has proven to be a hit on good-weather nights as well as days. There was a giant chess set in one corner, and seating around to the side.

The main covered patio, which features the entertainment stage, is already wrapped for the winter. Kaktus has been able to build up a consistent lineup of entertainers, with a mix of musical styles (jazz, blues, and more) spread across the week. The Desert Darlings are still performing there, unveiling their new Cactus Cabaret: A Vaudevillian Rendezvous show, with the latest edition scheduled for tonight (Friday) at 7.

“That was definitely the goal, and that’s definitely hard to do that,” Koller said of keeping the entire lineup of talented performers coming back week after week. “It takes a lot of up-front investment. We have the consistency that people can rely on and appreciate.”

In addition to the entertainment, Kaktus is also approaching the food menu from a new angle.

“Now we’re moving towards farm-to-table, so we’re creating Kaktus Farms,” Koller said. “Most of it will happen next year. But we’ve already started doing some mushroom farming, so we have fresh mushrooms on our pizza, and micro-greens, so we’re already transitioning our salads to nutrient-dense micro-greens. That all happened this year.”

To help pay for a lot of these upgrades/improvements, Koller has introduced a new way for the brewery’s most loyal supporters to invest directly into Kaktus.

“We’ve been always wanting to move in the direction of employee owned, community invested, and this is the first time we’ve found a program that will kind of scratch the surface of that,” Koller said. “It’s not an equity build, but it is an opportunity for our customers to earn 10-percent back interest in what they invested in the company. And so, this allows us to scratch the surface of what’s possible when that happens.

“In the future we might be doing an equity-earned opportunity investment. But, at the moment, this is a partnership with a company called Honeycomb. Our goal right now is to raise at least $40,000 within the next 25 days. Again, once all that money is raised, it gets packaged like a traditional loan, and then all our customers get 10-percent back interest, and they get paid out every quarter for that until it’s paid off. It’s a three-year note, but we’re anticipating it being paid off early. We have a feeling it will be within 12-to-18 months, and that point we’ll actually have hopefully learned a lot from it and go for round two in investment.”

Naturally, anyone investing will want to know exactly where that money is going.

“A big majority of that (investment) is going to be in finishing our expansion of the patio,” he said. “We’re putting in some heaters for a larger, winterized space, and more shade for this coming summer’s events.”

Koller said they will also look into doing a mug club for the first time, if that makes financial sense, and that in turn will be tied to a new Kaktus phone app that is under development.

“We know that the phone app will help people to stay up-to-date on our events,” Koller said. “There will be special discounts through that phone app. It will allow us to send special push notifications, so for example we had that major storm and unfortunately we had to close early (last week), and if we had that phone app we could have immediately let our customers know. It’s just more convenience, more communication.”

The aforementioned Restaurant B license also did not come cheap.

“It will also put a little buffer, we did spend a of money towards the end of this year because we got the Restaurant B license,” he added. “That’s a $10,000 up-front charge, plus the inventory was another $3,000. Going into our slow season, we did some big investments. It’s nice to have a buffer, even though we’re not in financial distress or anything.

“Out of the $40,000, $30,000 will be immediately invested, and moved towards those programs to finish them off, those expansions. And then, $10,000 will be reserved.”

Anyone interested in investing can check out the official link, or reach out to Kaktus directly with questions.

Koller said the motivation behind getting all of this done now, even when it seems like the rest of the industry is grinding to a halt, is exactly because of that.

“We’re anticipating a really big summer,” he said. “We’re seeing the shifts in the market. I think we’re seeing struggles with other breweries, and I think that’s honestly just the start for some. I hate to be (negative). It’s not a bad thing, necessarily, it’s just reality of the ups and downs in the industry. We’re anticipating a really strong summer for us as there’s less competition.”

Kaktus has a few other tricks up their sleeves for 2025.

“We are working on a project,” Koller said. “We aren’t yet able to disclose, but it’s a partnership with the county. I can tell you that much, where we might be able to manage one of their liquor licenses. It was an RFP (request for proposal) that went out. A lot of companies have bid on it.

“I really hope that we get it. If we do, then it will allow us to hire a full-time event coordinator. And, for the first time in probably four or five years, you’ll probably start to see Kaktus reapply for all of the events that the Brewers Guild does, the City of Albuquerque, Bernalillo, Rio Rancho, we’ll get more aggressive with those events once again. Just because I was handling those, I just didn’t have the bandwidth, it wasn’t a focus of mine. If we get this RFP you’ll start to see Kaktus move into offsite events, which we’re really excited about.”

Kaktus will bring back the popular Farm House Ale Event, a country music and beer festival, and Koller said they may take the lead on a new beer festival that would happen early in the summer in Bernalillo.

While head brewer Michael Waddy was unable to join us for the interview, Koller said that the two of them have an interesting project starting up that he could only share a little about right now.

“We’re both excited that we have new equipment coming in,” Koller said. “It’s proprietary to do some R&D on a new product. That equipment will probably be in by January and installed in February. This is kind of a proprietary system that will enable us to do some unique water profiling.

“We’ve been in business for (more than) a full decade now, at 11 years, and we’re excited to have a little bit of bandwidth to put something on the market that’s unique enough that it stands out the moment you taste it. I think we’re both immensely excited about that, because it’s been something we’ve talked about for probably three or four years, and now we finally have the opportunity to execute it.”

Clearly, a return trip to Kaktus in early 2025 will be in order to see just what Koller and Waddy have cooking back there.

For now, though, the patio expansion/beer garden work has already started, and there will be live music and more throughout the slower months of the year. If you have not made the drive to Kaktus in a while, it is a great time to stop by and see what they have done and learn more about what they plan to do going forward.

Oh, and the beer is tasting the best it has ever been, in my personal opinion. Grab some of the Oktoberfest before it runs out.

A big thanks to Dana for the interview. The Look Back/Look Ahead Series will continue throughout the winter and into the spring.

Keep supporting local!

— Stoutmeister