So You Want to Start a Brewery?: The Lagunitas Story

by Tony Magee

Forty-five days later they will send you a letter demanding the dough. Take the letter and smoke it. Don’t answer! If you do, you will end up talking to very menial 1-800–type attendants who will push a little button on their screen and start a sinister timer running. There will be no negotiating. Instead, if you can stand it, wait until you get the fifth letter around September. It will come via certified mail. Answer that one right away. That letter will have a different phone number on it that rings into a Seattle office called the ACS (Automated Collection Service, but it is not automated at all). The hold music is Vivaldi, and it will drive you crazy. Eventually you will speak to a person who can make deals. Not on the amount, but on the terms. Make them a promise, and then, by all means, keep it. If you can’t keep it, call the day before and tell them. They won’t like it, but if you keep up your end of the deal—which includes telling them before you are late—they will keep up their end of the deal too. No more seizing bank accounts. If you don’t want to wait for the fifth letter, call me. I kept the secret ACS phone number just in case.