Meet Gary Gordon | small business owner/ Meadery

We had the good fortune of connecting with Gary Gordon and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Gary, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
As any good parent would do, I bought a home brewing kit for my oldest son when he turned 21. This became a father/son hobby for us. My middle son attend the Scarborough Faire when he turned 21 and tried mead. He suggested we try to make one, and that’s where the idea came from. We were originally thinking about starting a brewery, but there was a lot of competition and the start up costs were very high. Since friends and family were enjoying our meads, and there wasn’t one in north Texas, we felt we might be able to start a following. Since mead would be a new alternative to beer, wine and cider, and the start up costs were a lot less than a brewery we decided to go for it.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Breaking Brew Meadery has been in business for almost 5 years. We were the only mead taproom in north Texas when we opened. We are very proud of the products we produce and obstacles we’ve had to over come. We had started our second full year in business when we were shut down for Covid. We had to create an online store and do curb side pick just to pay the rent. This also threw off our business plan for distribution, which limited our growth.

This was our first time starting a business and we knew there would be bumps along the way. Because our funding was limited we had to do the majority of the work ourselves, i.e. create an LLC, apply for a federal and state wine licenses, locate and lease space, create recipes names and labels for our meads and receive approval from the government, remodel the location, learn to move from small batch production to larger batches, find and purchase ingredients, glassware, etc. setup payment processing, understand and process tax payments, etc.

We didn’t realize there was so much bureaucracy in starting a business, let alone one that is alcohol related. We’ve had to learn a lot on the fly and learn to be very patient.

We are now in the process of setting up a large production facility in north Dallas. We’ve started taking orders from local taprooms, bars and restaurants. Our plan is place our meads in as many locations as possible across the DFW area. We will continue to serve at our current location as well.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Go to Breaking Brew Meadery visit Addison Cigars
have sushi
visit the local breweries
visit Addison and Love field air museums
go to the Arboretum
ride bicycles along the White Rock river
tour downtown
Go to the Perot museum
have dinner and drinks in uptown
visit Ft Worth and the stock yards
catch a Rangers game, if available.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Mead Makers/Taproom managers: Blake Gordon and Brian Hull Family support: Ellen Hull Gordon, Lainey Gordon, Nick Gordon

Website: www.breakingbrewmeadery.com

Instagram: @breakingbrewmeadery

Facebook: @breakingbrewmeadery

Yelp: Breaking Brew Meadery

Youtube: Breaking Brew Meadery