Published: July 24, 2024
Upstate New York-based restaurateurs Brad Rowell and Caryn Dujanovich, along with veteran brewer PJ Dunn, opened Orchard Park, New York-based Wayland Brewing in early 2023 to bring people together. The 18,000-square-foot facility focuses on brewing high-quality craft beer but is also home to a farm-to-table restaurant, an events hall, a beer garden, a bocce court and other lawn games, and a beer shop.
It’s beyond a place to gather, as the company explains on its website. “In the process, we created an escape.”
“We’re a pretty aggressive startup brewery,” says Dunn. “When we opened, [Rowell and Dujanovich] had a well-established reputation.”
Being in Orchard Park, home of the NFL’s Buffalo Bills, Wayland added vibrance to a town looking for somewhere to spend their free time—when not cheering on their Bills.
“My partners’ restaurants [Hamburg-based The Grange and Ellicottville-based West Rose] are farm-to-table with a tremendous focus on high-quality food and fresh ingredients and hospitality,” notes Dunn, who manages the beer production, packaging, and sales. “Wayland is unique in that it’s a brewery. Here, the importance [of] quality of product and brand, as well as quality of guest experience, is paramount.”
The twenty-barrel brewhouse focuses on making stellar beer by using only the highest-quality raw materials.
“It’s important to put our best foot forward with the best example of beer each time,” Dunn says. “We focus on base malts, developing relationships with local hop vendors, and have great yeast-management processes.”
Wayland strives for that perfection in each batch. In the short time since opening, Dunn has made fifty-eight different beers, most of which flow through one of their seventeen draft lines.
“We do make a few consistently that are settling in as core beers,” says Dunn. “[But] we are constantly trying new things.”
In the company’s first year, they sold 1,350 of the 1,400 barrels of beer brewed. This second year, “The plan is to add production mainly for distribution,” Dunn says. “We don’t aim to be huge. Our aim is about 3,000 to 5,000 barrels, with wholesale and a second taproom elsewhere in the region.”
Wayland had been using Beer30 to manage all of their brewery operations, but Dunn says that, as they looked into adding features, the cost of the software continued to pile up. That’s why they changed to Ollie this year.
“I wasn’t actively looking [to switch software],” Dunn says. “But for a number of reasons, we were open to a change.”
Beer30 limited how Wayland could improve its efficiency and couldn’t match some of Ollie’s key features. Dunn says Ollie’s more affordable price—that remains locked in for four years—gives them the full functionality of brewery management software, including front-end customer relationship management (CRM), raw material forecasting, cost of goods reporting, and QuickBooks integration.
(Above photography courtesy of Wayland Brewing Company)
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Wayland Brewing Saves 10-15 Hours a Week With Ollie Ops
Photography courtesy of Wayland Brewing Company
Time is money. Running a small business and startup at Wayland, Dunn does a lot as the head brewer and manager of production, packaging, and sales. And with Beer30 unable to fulfill business operations as the brewery grew, he spent more time frustrated with numerous manual processes, countless clicks, and the rising potential for human error.
It makes my life easier and helps me make good decisions.
On the other hand, he recalls doing a demo with Ollie.“I told them about my struggles with Beer30 and had a conversation with [two members of the sales team], and it was all positive,” Dunn says. “I had a number of questions, and we went through a number of things. If I am going to [make the switch], I want to know what I’m getting into.”
Dunn says the Ollie team answered all of his questions.
Once integrated, Dunn got his feet wet with as much as he could—recipe creation, purchase order management, purchase order creation, materials acquisition, yeast management, and more.
Wayland makes new beers quite often, so Dunn says they have used the recipe creation tool quite a bit.
“The recipe creation is very clean and straightforward and easy to use,” Dunn says. “I picked it up with no problem.”
Specifically with purchase orders, Dunn says everything is mere taps.
“The system will automatically create purchase orders, and I just have to click and send them out,” Dunn says. “That has saved me a tremendous amount of time. And it takes away human error. It has sped things up and helped me be efficient.”
Additionally, the software accurately calculates the cost of all the materials, which saves time.
“It helps me price for taproom sales and wholesale. It’s been super important to me and why I opted to use this over spreadsheets,” Dunn says. “It makes my life easier and helps me make good decisions.”
In addition, the automatic QuickBooks integration with Ollie—instead of an upcharge to add the service elsewhere—makes wholesale invoicing easy to use.
“One thing that made me open to a change was there are so many clicks and touch points with Beer30,” Dunn says. “Moving to Ollie, it’s all in one shot and moves smoothly.”
Dunn compares operations six months ago with their old brewery management software to those now using Ollie; the time saved is immense.
“I have easily cut ten to fifteen hours a week, which allows me to do other essential work,” Dunn says. “I have a lot of balls to juggle, and I can’t afford to be at the computer all day.”
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Customer Service, Onboarding Made Switching to Ollie a No-Brainer
Photography courtesy of Wayland Brewing Company
Dunn says he was a fan of Beer30 and their team, but one thing always irked him: getting support.
“[When] I made mistakes, I had to submit a ticket, and it was days to resolve simple things,” Dunn says. “I haven’t had that issue with Ollie.”
Dunn even says that, with Ollie, the customer service has been so on point that even the issues he feels need to be ironed out, the Ollie team is already working internally to rectify them even before he brings them to their attention.
“The Ollie team has a hunger to make the system the best it can be,” Dunn says. “The interest in taking feedback and using it to update the software helped me make the decision to move over.”
When Wayland made the switch, Dunn stressed the need to do it quickly when the calendar flipped from Quarter 1 to Quarter 2 this year. Onboarding was vital in getting ready to execute.
“They were better than expected [at Ollie],” Dunn says. “I had some awareness of software from my previous career background, and I expected, with a lot of info to move over, that I’d be on my own for the most part. I was pleasantly surprised.”
The Ollie team had a “well-thought-out cadence of meetings and had real structure,” according to Dunn.
The Ollie team has a hunger to make the system the best it can be,
“[The onboarding staff] laid it out, and we tailored a plan to [fit] what I needed,” he says. “We had weekly meetings for a month—I wanted to move fast—and on April 1, it was officially my service.”
Dunn says the process was very hands-on, which he appreciated. He even admits that the Ollie team steered him down a path he wasn’t necessarily open to but acknowledged that it was the “better way to execute it.”
“I think if I needed more hand-holding, he could have done that,” Dunn says. “But he worked with me at the pace I wanted.”
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Wayland Pays Less Than Half the Cost of Beer30 but With Full Functionality
Photography courtesy of Wayland Brewing Company
With Ollie, the price is the price,
Saving time is critical, but nothing trumps saving the almighty dollar. Dunn says Ollie’s savings compared to other brewery management software are enormous.
“With Ollie, the price is the price,” Dunn says. “Beer30 is tiered on production and modules. It was relatively affordable, but I didn’t add on certain things because it didn’t make sense.”
Dunn adds, “However, if I paid Beer30 for all the things I get with Ollie, the price was [around] $1,000. I’m paying Ollie less than half of that for full functionality.”
In actual dollars, from what Wayland was paying with Beer30 to what they now pay with Ollie—with more features to boot—Dunn says they save “a couple hundred dollars a month.”
But Dunn says the price isn’t the be-all and end-all.
“I think the savings is more time and energy for me,” Dunn says. “The benefit is in the reduction of data entry, opportunities for human error, and just overall streamlining our processes.”
Dunn stresses that it’s more than the money saved. It’s about making the right business decision.
“I always go for the right thing,” Dunn says. “I felt Ollie was the best thing for functionality and price and was appropriate for our business.”
He adds, “Having the price locked in was really good, too.”
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About The Author
Giovanni Albanese
Giovanni is a content writer for Next Glass, contributing to the Ollie blog. He is a writer by day and a brewer/business owner by night, owning and operating Settle Down Brewery & Taproom in Gilroy, California.
Giovanni is passionate about a number of things, including history, documentaries and sports, but none more than reporting/writing and brewing beer. After receiving a radio broadcasting degree then a journalism degree from Salem State College in his home state of Massachusetts, he relocated to California in 2008.
Then, his writing career kicked off – covering sports, business, politics and more along the way – while concurrently dabbling in home brewing. The home brewing turned pro in 2021 when he launched SDB Brewing Company. Settle Down Beer officially opened in February.
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