In the latest installment of Brewbound’s A Round With – a weekly Insider-exclusive Q&A series with industry leaders – Atomic Clock co-founders Colleen and Brian Quinn chat about their vision for their new brewery and what has led them to start their own venture.
The siblings have each left their respective jobs in the beer industry to start their own craft brewery in Durham, North Carolina. Production is set to start out of the company’s new production facility at 606 United Drive this month, with a taproom and full-service kitchen opening at 501 Washington St. shortly after.
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How did your beer career start?
Colleen Quinn: I kind of stumbled into craft beer, though Brian sometimes likes to think I followed him into it. I loved craft beer as a consumer, but my work [was] in corporate strategy at a Fortune 500 used car retailer. I enjoyed my work but was not passionate about used cars.
When I started looking for new jobs, I saw a posting for a director of strategy job at Craft Brew Alliance: strategy + beer sounded perfect! I threw my hat in the ring, and they (shockingly) made me an offer. From there, I moved to Portland, Oregon. I was able to work in many roles, many markets, and with many breweries at CBA and since, giving me a lot of experience to pull from in opening Atomic Clock.
Brian Quinn: I was an avid homebrewer and craft beer enthusiast before I worked in craft beer. I began bartending at a craft beer bar, which helped me make some connections at local craft breweries. I did some unpaid “brewing intern” work to get my foot in the door, before finding a paid entry-level packaging job at another local brewery.
After realizing I wanted to make craft beer my career, I enrolled in Siebel’s World Brewing Academy Master Brewer Program in hopes of accelerating my brewing career and advancing my brewing knowledge and practical skills. After that, I worked at a few breweries in the Southeast, including a couple of startups, first as a shift brewer then advancing to head brewer and director of operations roles over the years.
Why did you want to open your own craft brewery in 2024?
Colleen: With Brian and I both in the industry, it was always a matter of when, not if we were going to join forces and open something together. The why is simply that we have a vision that we haven’t 100% seen out there, despite visiting a TON of breweries.
We want our brewery to value consumer experience as much as beer quality, and we make it a point to understand consumers taste evolution by embracing and encouraging cross-category beverage exploration (versus begrudgingly dabbling in it).
Brian: We did not want to open our brewery in 2024! Initially we had wanted to open in 2022 or 2023, but finding locations for both the brewery and taproom, construction permit delays, and the challenges associated with building out two locations simultaneously pushed our opening date into 2024.
Fortunately, we are in the home stretch and excited to commence brewing and open our doors in the coming weeks. While the last few years have been difficult for many craft breweries, we are confident that our business model and our experience in the industry will empower us to find success even in these challenging times.
How do you balance work and life when building a business with family?
Colleen: We’ve known each other for literally our entire lives, which means we have so much awareness and trust of each other’s strengths, weaknesses and personalities that it helps us divide and conquer with greater ease. Also, as siblings we know how to argue, fight and move on versus stressing too long about how to have those tough, but necessary conversations. That can drive some efficiency, which helps with balance, but more so just helps reduce stress even when the hours are long.
Brian: As a father of two young kids, carving out quality family time while opening a brewery is difficult. Drawing firm boundaries and making every second spent with family count is important, but the demands of a start-up life require a degree of flexibility and a willingness for owner-operators to put in long hours, especially in the early days of a new business. I am fortunate that my fiancée is extremely supportive and, having worked in craft beer for many years herself, understanding of the demands of brewing work.
My sister Colleen and I know that work-life balance for ourselves as owner-operators will not be the most ideal in the coming years, but we are committed to building a company culture that values work-life balance for everyone we bring on to our team.
What is the biggest challenge you’re facing right now?
Colleen: The normal startup things – getting construction across the finish line and managing pre-opening expenses. But all in all, we’re tracking pretty well and certainly not falling into the start-up trope of taking twice as long and twice the money!
Brian: Construction delays – building a brewery in a post-COVID world is a wild ride! Long lead times, higher costs of building materials, and supply chain issues continue to prove challenging to navigate, but seeing the final pieces of the puzzle come together in this last phase of the build out has been so exciting.
What’s the most unusual way you’ve found inspiration?
Colleen: Maybe not that unusual, but for me it’s travel. While the U.S. is still by far the leader in craft beer, being able to travel to so many places allowed us to pull a lot of global inspiration for Atomic Clock in beer styles, broader beverage and food programs, and experiences. A big shout out to the ruin pubs in Budapest, which remain my most memorable drinking experiences around the world!
Brian: For recipe development, I love drawing inspiration from historic beer styles and historic brewing traditions. Finding ways to reimagine a lesser-known historic beer style for the modern palate has always been a passion of mine.
Additionally, I love brewing with alternative grains or heirloom grain varieties not commonly used by brewers. I plan to work closely with Durham-based Epiphany Craft Malt to source regionally significant, unique malts that will truly allow me to infuse a sense of place and local terroir into each of my beers.
How do you plan to create a successful employee culture?
Colleen: Culture is built on transparency, respect, inclusion and fun. Cultures thrive when people are valued and fully “in it,” but they can’t do that if leaders aren’t willing to share what’s up, listen (really listen) to other perspectives and ideas, and foster collaboration.
And I always say “it’s beer, not brain surgery,” so if we’re not building time to have some beers and innovate with some crazy ideas, we’re losing a lot of the reason why we are in this industry. One of my favorite ways is monthly innovation happy hours, which are often 90% happy hour and 10% innovation meeting, but ultimately, the best ideas are created over beers!
Brian: It is vital to create a culture in which every employee, regardless of their role within the company, feels empowered and knows that their voice is heard. It is important to establish a brewery code of conduct and clearly outline our company values of inclusivity and empowerment to our staff from day one. Having worked my way up through the ranks in the brewing world from a humble packaging technician to a head brewer and brewery operations manager, I feel that I am in a good position to understand the needs of all of our employees.
Empathy from ownership goes a long way towards crafting a strong, close-knit team, and a safe, collaborative workspace.
If you could wave a magic wand and fix one troublesome part of the craft brewing industry, what would it be and what would you do?
Brian: The craft beer industry has always struggled with a lack of diversity and inclusivity. While there has certainly been a big push to tackle these issues in recent years, there is still a lot of work to be done.
I run a non-profit called the Many Faces Initiative that organizes and funds paid internships at breweries in North Carolina for people of color interested in exploring careers in craft beer. We have had some great placements for former interns coming out of the program, and I’m looking forward to hosting an intern at Atomic Clock in partnership with the Many Faces Initiative this summer.
Really, there is no “magic wand” to fix the lack of diversity and representation in craft beer. If anyone wants to make a real difference, they need to be prepared to have hard, uncomfortable conversations. Listen. Show up. Do the damn work.
Colleen: I completely agree with Brian about the issues on diversity and inclusivity, but since there’s two of us, I’ll assume we get two waves of this magic wand. So I’d add that I’d like to see fairer compensation that better reflects the value that individuals add to this industry.
Our industry is built on the backs of passionate brewers that are often underpaid versus the value they create for their brewery. We are very committed to living wages, value-added variable compensation components, and work-life balance at Atomic Clock, but it’s definitely something the industry will need to continue to focus on to avoid losing strong talent who can’t pay their bills with passion.
What’s the best advice you’ve received in your career?
Brian: Lamenting the state of academia, the low pay and the challenges of landing tenure-track positions, a mentor of mine in graduate school once told me that unless a career as a history professor was the only thing I could see myself doing in life, I should strongly consider exploring other career paths. At the time, that honest advice was pretty disheartening, but it ultimately led me down the path to the world of craft beer.
I’ve shared that same advice with people debating pursuing careers in craft beer, and there are obviously strong parallels with issues of low wage, long hours and thankless work in the craft brewing industry. This industry is certainly not for everyone, and no one should try to force a career in craft beer at the cost of their mental health and financial stability. I love what I do and could not see myself doing anything else, but there were moments throughout my career when I had to ask myself if the juice was worth the squeeze.
Colleen: Early on in my career, I was told that nothing is permanent. The real message there was to be open to change and new opportunities. That advice helped me take the crazy jump into craft beer, but it is equally – if not more – relevant in navigating this dynamic industry. We all need to stay open to change in this industry to navigate the evolution successfully.