GET FUNKY

HOW TWO LAKE HIGHLANDS HIGH GRADS TURNED THEIR HOBBY INTO A BUSINESS

IN A DETACHED GARAGE, a group of four friends get to brewing. Using portable fans in the summer to stay cool and try to retain heat in winter, they work through any condition.

The brewing process can take up to eight hours, so guests come in and out of the carport. Playing games, bringing an occasional dog and more recently, a baby, the group keeps brewing.

Teaching techniques and testing out new beers, award-winning recipes and a new brewery come out of this garage.

Collin Zreet and Jenni Hanley were born and raised in Lake Highlands and recently gave birth to their business, Funky Picnic, in Fort Worth.

The two Lake Highlands alumni started brewing together through a mutual friend and fellow Funky Picnic owner, Samantha Glenn.

Zreet met Glenn through ultimate Frisbee, and Hanley met her through a kickball team.

Hanley and her husband, John Koch, a fourth co-owner, opened up their Fort

Funky Picnic

401 Bryan Ave., Suite 117, Fort Worth funkypicnicbrewery.com

Worth garage to the team. Under the name “Panther Street,” the group began entering local brewing competitions.

After winning the 2014 Brew Riot competition, Panther Street’s brewing quickly escalated as they entered more competitions and started to gain a presence in the homebrew scene.

“Once you start scaling up, and the more technical your system gets, the more money you start throwing at it,” Hanley says. “We kind of did that pretty quickly.”

In the following years, their team won competitions at Riverside Shootout and Iron Mash.

“It was just a combination of entering all of these competitions and finishing really well and thinking, ‘Oh, maybe we can actually build a business plan around this,’” Zreet says.

They opened Funky Picnic Brewery and Café in the South Main District of Fort Worth in June.

Why Fort Worth?

“Our home brew club is Fort Worth-