Brühaven - Season 3 Idea Jam 5
Season 3 Idea Jam 5
Season 3 Recaps brought to you by our partner University of St. Thomas - Schulze School of Entrepreneurship
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Spotlight Business for September 2026 - Season 3 - Idea Jam 5
Brühaven Craft Co.
What is Brühaven all about?
Brühaven Craft Co. is a craft brewery and taproom in Loring Park, on the southern edge of downtown Minneapolis. Co-founder Alex Doering has been brewing a long time. In his words, "It was a long path, but it started about 14 years ago," homebrewing with friends before working his way through a brewpub and into professional brewing. Co-founder Glenn came from about ten years in tech, and before that, teaching. Together they bought an existing brewery, and a mushroom beverage brand still in development came with it. That brand became Brüwell, a line of adaptogen-infused sparkling wellness drinks made with mushrooms and botanicals, including a newer electrolyte drink. The taproom is a neighborhood room first: people walk in, groups book it, and the space works as hard as the product does.
Core Offerings
Brühaven brings together:
Craft beer, brewed in house and served in the taproom
Brüwell adaptogen sparkling beverages in 4-packs: Tangerine, Cucumber Ginger, Lemon Lavender, and Peach Mango
A non-alcoholic electrolyte beverage, recently released
Private and corporate event hosting in the taproom space
A downtown gathering space for community groups, clubs, and networking
The taproom is where all of it comes together: the product, the events, and the neighborhood.
Brüwell
Adaptogen-infused wellness drinks made with mushrooms and botanicals, brewed by Brühaven.
What Makes Brühaven Special
It is a family business and says so plainly.
Families first. They are proud husbands and dads as well as owners, and as Glenn put it, "I've known Alex forever. Our families have been connected."
A clean split of strengths. Alex runs the beer, Glenn took the operations side, and Glenn's wife, who works in marketing, built the brand.
Built around community. After years in corporate tech, Glenn was chasing the kind of community he had found as a teacher and at his first startup: "I just kind of want to get that community back. And the brewery and the tap room and everything about it just kind of made that be something that we wanted [to] chase."
A room for other people's gatherings. Brühaven has made a habit of hosting other people's gatherings, and the space has become a place where communities meet rather than just a place that sells drinks.
Event Pictures
Event Deck
Problem Statement
Every small business eventually builds something good that nobody can describe. The product works, the owners believe in it, and then it sits on a shelf because customers do not have the words, the category, or the reason to pick it up. At the same time, most small businesses carry a second weight: the conditions around them shift without warning, and none of it is theirs to control. Brühaven is living both at once. Brüwell has been made for a couple of years and has real room to grow, but it needs a language before it needs a sales channel. And the neighborhood around the taproom has been through a hard stretch, which affects foot traffic, bookings, and mood in ways no brewery can brew its way out of. Underneath both sits the question Glenn named after the jam: "we've had so many irons in the fire and it's like, okay, now which ones do we take out and which ones do we really focus on"
Idea Jam Summary
On September 24, 2026, Innovate MN Members filled the Brühaven taproom in downtown Minneapolis for the Season 3 Spotlight Business Idea Jam. Nine tables worked through two topics, and the boards came back dense.
The first topic was "Lean In or Let It Stay Small": how should Brühaven position and market Brüwell, their non-alcoholic line, and what would help it grow beyond the taproom and onto grocery shelves? The second was "What Lands...": Brühaven is a business that often faces events outside its control, so what advice can we offer?
Members generated 284 ideas. The character of the two halves was completely different. On Brüwell, the room was blunt and specific. Several tables did not start with marketing ideas at all; they started with questions, and the questions were the finding. On the external factors topic, the room refused to stay abstract. Instead of offering coping advice, Members kept describing a version of Brühaven that is so woven into the neighborhood that external shocks land differently. The word that appeared over and over, in different handwriting at different tables, was community.
Idea Jam Analysis - Key Themes
JAM 1: Lean In or Let It Stay Small
Theme 1: Before you market it, make it legible
The single loudest signal of the night. Multiple tables opened with confusion rather than ideas, and they wrote the confusion down. Members did not know what the product was, what it does, whether it is legal, or what happens after you drink one. Several notes asked to drop the mushroom-forward framing entirely and lead with the benefit.
Ideas from the room:
Say what the drink does before saying what is in it
Answer the legal and safety questions on the label and in the room
Separate effects from flavors so a shopper can tell them apart
Use wellness language customers already search for
Put Brüwell on the Brühaven homepage, where people looking for it can find it
Key notes:
"What is Brew Well?"
"I don't know the words you use."
"Is it controlled? Legal? Can I drive?"
"CANS of MUSHROOMS - EFFECTS vs FLAVORS should be clear"
"Focus on benefits Drop Mushroom push"
"Can't find it on the website. Should be featured on your homepage"
"market with wellness keywords rather than focusing on the ingredients"
Theme 2: One brand, or a brand inside a brand
Members split on this and both sides were sharp. Some wanted the sub-brand gone so all the equity sits with Brühaven. Others wanted Brüwell treated as a campaign rather than a separate company. Underneath both was the same instruction: pick one thing and commit.
Ideas from the room:
Consider folding Brüwell into the Brühaven identity rather than running it separately
Treat Brüwell as a campaign with a beginning and an end, not a permanent second brand
Name a target audience and build for them specifically
Resist adding more before sharpening what exists
Key notes:
"ditch the sub-brands, just be all Brühaven"
"Bru Well as a campaign instead of a brand"
"STRENGTHEN YOUR BRAND w/ FORCE & CLARITY"
"Don't Do Too much. Focus, re-focus, refine, repeat"
"Pick A DEMOGRAPHIC & become their Home."
"Just because you're good at it doesn't mean you have to do it."
"Really know your brand, strengthen, be grounded in your main wares"
Theme 3: Sampling is the sales path
Members returned again and again to the same mechanic: this is a product people have to taste before they will buy, so the strategy is getting it into hands, not into ads. The ideas ranged from farmers market tables to a flavor-design night where customers compete to create the next release.
Ideas from the room:
Free samples at grocery and liquor stores, farmers markets, and craft markets
Tasting parties and trial boxes as a monthly rhythm
University taste testing to get structured feedback on what people actually want
A branding night where customers play with flavor combinations and the winner gets their name on the can
Ask non-drinkers directly why they drink what they drink
Key notes:
"Free Samples to encourage ppl to try"
"HAVE A 'BRANDING NITE' LET CUSTOMERS PLAY W/ FLAVOR COMBOS ...WINNERS GET THEIR NAME ON IT!..."
"Connect with University taste testing to get feedback on what is desired"
"Ask non-drinkers WHY they drink WHAT they drink?"
"Free Local Delivery of Samples"
Theme 4: Shelves, channels, and the people who own them
The room named real places. Not categories, actual Minnesota businesses and channel types, and there were a lot of them. Notably, Members did not treat grocery as the only target. Coffee shops, non-alcoholic bottle shops, farm-to-table restaurants, co-ops, wellness studios, other breweries, and even pet and hobby shops all came up.
Ideas from the room:
Grocery and co-op placement, with a named list of Minnesota targets
Coffee shops as a functional beverage channel, not just a coffee channel
Non-alcoholic bottle shops and restaurants that are already expanding their NA menus
Selling at other breweries nearby rather than treating them as competition
Co-packing and private label as a route onto shelves without owning the whole chain
Key notes:
"Coop Grocery Stores -sell here"
"Connect with and leverage local NA bottle shops (ie Marigold)"
"Is your beer at local bars + restaurants? many are expanding their NA menu"
"Connect and sell at other breweries nearby"
"Be a joint market seller to groceries for Brühaven brand and the other brands or they copack"
"Get a grocer investor like Kowalskis"
"List the SALES PATHS."
Theme 5: Change the form, change the market
A strong cluster argued that the can is a constraint. Concentrates, syrups, and powders open home use, mixology, and shipping. Packaging ideas ran from cost and tariff avoidance to artist collaboration.
Ideas from the room:
Concentrates, syrups, and cordials that mix into tonics and cocktails
Powdered format for at-home preparation and cheaper shipping
Non-aluminum cartons and bulk packaging to cut cost and tariff exposure
A dry, beer-like NA flavor rather than a sweet one
Local Minnesota mushroom sourcing as a story and a supply chain
Key notes:
"can it be concentrated + could be mixed with something"
"packaging like an adult capri sun + no need for cans (to avoid tariffs)"
"Make a flavor that is dry, like beer, but NA"
"Don't feel the need to go sweet with beverages"
"Brew well → find the local growers in MN"
JAM 2: What Lands...
Theme 1: Own it, do not explain it away
The most direct advice of the night was about posture. Members wrote about what makes a response fail, and the answer was consistently not the facts but the stance. Two tables independently landed on the same idea: bad responses come from not listening.
Ideas from the room:
Accept responsibility rather than pointing at circumstances
Listen and ask questions before responding
Stay consistent so people know what to expect from you
Decide what is inside your control and stop spending energy outside it
Key notes:
"Responses Land Badly when a business makes excuses for external events instead of accepting responsibility"
"When a response ends badly, it usually means you didn't listen or ask questions well enough"
"Listen. Ask questions. Show up in community spaces"
"practice radical honesty"
"What can I control - what can't I control"
"stay flexible, adaptable, and ready to change"
"Don't Be Stubborn"
Theme 2: Know your neighbors before you need them
Members treated relationships as infrastructure that has to be built in advance. The recurring image was the front porch, which two different tables arrived at independently. Several notes pushed Brühaven toward being the room where the neighborhood already meets, so that when something happens the business is inside the conversation rather than reacting to it.
Ideas from the room:
Build the relationships during calm periods, not during a crisis
Host neighborhood meetings and quarterly listening sessions in the space
Treat other small businesses and breweries as allies rather than competitors
Learn from owners who have already survived a hard stretch
Key notes:
"Know Your Neighbors"
"Be the community front porch"
"THE CONCEPT OF THE FRONT PORCH"
"Cultivate Neighborly Behavior"
"Build Community to mitigate crisis in neighborhood"
"Collaboration with other small businesses or breweries will strengthen you"
"What have other businesses done? What has worked? Have you talked to other local businesses"
"quarterly listening to the unique community needs"
Theme 3: Get in the room with the people who decide
A smaller but very pointed cluster. Members told Brühaven to stop being a subject of city decisions and start being a participant in them, including forming an advisory board so the business is not deciding alone.
Ideas from the room:
Build relationships with local and state representatives as a constituent
Make yourself useful to city decision makers rather than only asking them for things
Form a board or advisory group for outside perspective
Treat parking, road work, and safety as things to negotiate and communicate, not endure
Key notes:
"Visibility w/ city decision makers → help me help the city."
"Local/State Rep Lobby Constituent"
"Ask For Multiple Perspectives (Form a Board)"
"Ask 4 Help / Advice Board of Advisors!"
"Incentiviz[e] when road + parking presenting challenges, big events"
Theme 4: Give first
One of the densest clusters of the night, and the one with the clearest through line. Members proposed that generosity is the practical strategy, not the soft one. The ideas were concrete: fundraising nights where other nonprofits take a cut, drives, free water, space donated to groups that need it.
Ideas from the room:
Host fundraising events where a percentage goes to local groups
Offer the space to nonprofits and volunteer organizations
Run drives tied to the calendar, from school supplies to Angel Tree
Give people a way to help, because they want one
Key notes:
"Host Fundraising Events and allow other non profits to benefit (10% proceeds go to)"
"People want an opportunity to help. Provide a Space."
"Give To Grow by Mo Bunnell - book about grow your generosity to your business"
"Non-Profit Event Space"
"3 year plan to give back to the community that fosters commitment to the neighborhood"
"FREE WATER STATION"
Theme 5: Make the room worth crossing town for
Here is where the night surprised everyone. Asked for advice on external pressure, the room answered with programming. Dozens of Members concluded that the way to survive conditions you do not control is to give people a reason to come anyway, and then make it easy to get there. The convention center came up repeatedly, unprompted, alongside buses, party buses, and hotel outreach.
Ideas from the room:
Fill the calendar with recurring, low-cost programming: live music, craft night, puzzle and game nights, karaoke, ping pong
Solve the getting-there problem with buses, party bus partnerships, and pickup arrangements
Go after convention center and hotel traffic directly
Give locals a reason that tourists do not get, such as a residency-based discount
Make the space work for families, for people under 21, and for early mornings
Key notes:
"Attack the Convention Center"
"How do we draw out of town visitors from convention center?"
"Promote Concerts to Hotels & Convention Center"
"Buses to events from here"
"Locals get discount, create radius, have them show ID/bill that proves they live here"
"3-4 Musicians a night. People come to listen, drink + eat."
"Lean in! Be a gathering place. Create space to give, donate, help."
Innovative Ideas: What Stands Out
The room answered a defensive topic with an offensive strategy. The topic asked what advice Members could offer a business facing events outside its control. Almost nobody offered damage control. The room's answer was to build so much gravity in the neighborhood that external conditions matter less. That is a strategic reframe, not a coping mechanism, and it arrived from nine tables at once without coordination. Supporting notes: "Attack the Convention Center," "Lean in! Be a gathering place. Create space to give, donate, help.," "Pivot to Community Support when needed," and "Build Community to mitigate crisis in neighborhood."
Two tables independently invented the same metaphor. "Be the community front porch" and "THE CONCEPT OF THE FRONT PORCH" came from separate groups. When separate groups reach for the same image without hearing each other, the image is doing real work. A front porch is semi-public, always open, costs nothing to sit on, and belongs to the house it is attached to. It is a usable brief for what the taproom could be, and it came from the room rather than from a strategy deck.
The confusion was the finding. Supporting notes: "What is Brew Well?," "I don't know the words you use.," "Is it controlled? Legal? Can I drive?," and "After I drink, WHAT IS the Big deal?" Several tables spent their first minutes not generating marketing ideas but writing down what they did not understand. Those notes are worth more than most of the ideas around them. This was a room of engaged Members sitting inside the brewery, drinking the product, and still unable to explain it. That is a positioning diagnosis delivered live, and the founders recognized it. Glenn said afterward that the team hasn't "put the time or the energy into that outside of like the branding and the flavoring," and that the takeaway was simple: "let's really put some time into this."
Customers designing the next flavor. Supporting note: "HAVE A 'BRANDING NITE' LET CUSTOMERS PLAY W/ FLAVOR COMBOS ...WINNERS GET THEIR NAME ON IT!..." This single idea does four jobs at once. It fills a slow weeknight, it generates product research, it creates a marketing story, and it turns participants into people with a personal stake in a can on a shelf. It also runs on a skeleton crew, which matters for this business.
Drop the mushroom push. Supporting notes: "Focus on benefits Drop Mushroom push," "market with wellness keywords rather than focusing on the ingredients," and "demystify 'mushroom water'/adaptagen - health & get high." The mushroom is the most distinctive thing about the product, which is exactly why it dominates the messaging. Members argued that the distinctive thing is also the confusing thing, and that leading with benefit rather than ingredient would remove the biggest barrier. That is a hard note to hear about the part of the product you are proudest of.
Sell alongside other breweries, not against them. Supporting note: "Connect and sell at other breweries nearby." Most breweries do not have an NA functional line. Brühaven does. That turns nearby taprooms from competitors into a distribution network that already has the right customer walking through the door, and it takes almost no new infrastructure to test.
In their words: after the jam
Brüwell came with the building. Alex explained that the mushroom line was not a plan they started with: "They had a brand that they were sort of R&D and beginning to release, and I saw the potential in that, and we kind of took that idea, ran with it." That context matters for the Lean In or Let It Stay Small topic. Brüwell is an inherited bet that Brühaven has kept alive, not one it has fully committed to yet.
The notes matter more than the share-outs. Glenn was most curious about what the room wrote rather than what it said out loud: "I think what I'm really interested to see is like the things that weren't said, like the things that are on the poster notes are the people that didn't say anything." He heard familiar advice in the share-outs on the external factors topic, calling it "not really new things." The less expected ideas in this recap mostly came from the boards.
Some ideas are already half-built. One Member pushed for salsa nights to come back, and Glenn's answer was immediate: "hook me up with the DJ, and we'll do it again, because we've done that before, and they were really great. It just kind of fell off." The same note shows up on the boards: "Free Dancing Salsa w/ DJ."
Something for every neighbor. Glenn described the surrounding community plainly: "our neighbors are very diverse here. So making sure that there's something for all of them." The boards pushed the same direction, with ideas for LGBTQ nights, under 21 events, family programming, and a note that read "BLACK PEOPLE NEED TO COME TO BRÜHAVEN."
Implementation Ideas
Near-term (next 30 days)
Rewrite the product's first sentence. Draft a one-line description of Brüwell that leads with what it does, answers the legal and driving questions, and uses no unfamiliar vocabulary. Test it on people in the taproom who have never bought one.
Put Brüwell on the homepage. Members could not find it on the website. This is a same-week fix.
Run one sampling table. A single farmers market or craft market booth, with a simple way to capture what people ask and what they say after tasting.
Medium-term (3-6 months)
Pick three channels and test them properly. One co-op or grocery, one coffee shop, and one nearby brewery. Different customers, different buying logic, and enough signal to tell which one is worth scaling.
Start a recurring weeknight. One night, every week, same time. Craft night, puzzle night, live music, whichever fits the room. The point is consistency, which was itself a theme.
Resolve the brand question. Decide whether Brüwell is a Brühaven product line, a campaign, or a separate brand, and make everything match that decision.
Long-term (6+ months)
Build the neighborhood relationships as a standing practice. Quarterly listening sessions in the space, named relationships with city and state representatives, and a place in the neighborhood conversation before the next hard stretch arrives.
Formalize the giving model. A repeatable fundraising night structure where local nonprofits take a defined share, run on a calendar rather than case by case.
Decide whether to lean in on Brüwell. With sampling data, channel tests, and a settled brand position, the lean-in-or-let-it-stay-small question stops being a guess and becomes a decision with evidence behind it.
Key Challenges and Considerations
Capacity is the real constraint. Brühaven runs lean by design, and nearly every idea above costs owner hours. The recurring weeknight, the sampling table, and the fundraising structure each need someone to own them. Choosing two and doing them properly will beat attempting eight. Members said this themselves: "Don't Do Too much. Focus, re-focus, refine, repeat."
The brand question blocks the channel work. Sampling, packaging, and retail conversations all require knowing what the product is called and what it stands for. Running channel tests before the brand question is settled means paying twice.
Community work is slow and does not show up in a quarter. The front porch strategy is almost certainly right, and it will not move next month's numbers. It needs to be funded as patience, not as a campaign.
Generosity has to be real to work. The give-first cluster only pays off if it is genuine. Members were alert to this, and a fundraising night that reads as marketing will do more harm than no fundraising night at all.
Some ideas conflict, and that is useful. Ditching the sub-brand and running Brüwell as its own campaign cannot both happen. The tension between the two is worth sitting with rather than splitting the difference.
You made it!
DISCLAIMER
The ideas, suggestions, and recommendations in this recap resulted from a collaborative brainstorming session conducted by Innovate MN community members. These concepts are based on limited information about the business operations, financial situation, market conditions, and customer base.
Recommendation: Before implementing suggested strategies or programs, the Spotlight Business should conduct thorough due diligence, including market research, financial analysis, and consultation with relevant professionals.
This recap is intended to provide creative inspiration and potential directions for further exploration, not definitive business guidance.
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