south carolina Startups
Step 1
The idea
By Licia Jackson
Naked Cask
Entrepreneur has plan to franchise craft brewing
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www.scbizmag.com
very business starts out at some point as just an idea. That may be the point at which the entrepreneur joins an incubator to find out what to do next. Naked Cask, the recently christened business of Pete Gasca and his cofounders, is at the idea stage but has joined the Startup.SC incubator in Myrtle Beach to make progress. “I kind of wanted to do for craft beer what Starbucks did for coffee,” Gasca explained. To get craft beer to a wider audience, he wants to set up a franchise system, collecting data along the way to make smarter decisions. There are about 3,000 individuallyowned craft breweries in the United States, Gasca said, and they represent just 8% of the beer consumed. So, as he sees it, there is plenty of room to grow. An admitted Starbucks holdout for a while, Gasca has become a fan. He became a Gold Card member and was surprised at the individualized marketing that followed. “They are looking at the data and sending me what I’m interested in,” he said. A part of Naked Cask’s model will be collecting that data and marketing almost at the individual consumers’ level, adding value to
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Pete Gasca of Naked Cask, right, and Barb Royal, founder of KidsCanGiveToo.com, work on their fledgling businesses at the Startup.SC incubator in Myrtle Beach. (Photo/Startup.SC)
their lives, he said. A home brewing hobbyist, Gasca had been wanting to start a business related to brewing beer. The first step will be finding capital partners, writing a plan and developing a franchise, then opening two or three brew pubs. After the business model is refined, “we’ll recruit brewers and would-be brewers into the franchise model,” he said. The brewers will benefit from Naked
Cask’s branding, and there will be economies of scale and operational efficiency, Gasca said. The central office will take care of such common needs as purchasing, accounting and legal work. After proving the business model works, Gasca and his co-founders hope to raise a second round of capital and open companyowned breweries. All along the way, data will be a big