Based in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, Pilot Project is a brewery incubator, tasting room, and café that was founded as a collaborative and artistically curious space to help support talented brewers in an industry with exceptionally high barriers.
Having helped launch more than 10 breweries since its August 2019 inception, Pilot touts itself as the country’s first incubator dedicated to the art of brewing and community inspired by the craft.
This month, Pilot will launch Funkytown Brewery, a Black-owned startup brewer in Chicago founded by three friends. Less than 1% of the nearly 8,500 craft breweries in America are Black-owned, and a representative for Pilot says Funkytown will be only the second Black-owned brewery to open in the city.
Fortune recently spoke with cofounders Dan Abel and Jordan Radke about Pilot’s first few years in operation and plans for its future.
The following interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Fortune: Can you share a bit about your professional background prior to launching Pilot?
Abel: Jordan and I both come from the arts. I played music professionally for a short period in Los Angeles before finding myself in music marketing at YouTube NYC for five years. Then, I was as the head of global marketing at Reverb, a marketplace for musicians based in Chicago, which sold to Etsy right as we were opening Pilot Project. In every instance, I was working for a company that was giving support to creatives in an industry with overwhelming barriers to entry.
Radke: Following undergrad, I went directly into a master’s program at Madison, Wis., which led me down a path into the nonprofit arts world. At one point I was curating for a small photography museum and ultimately running their entire archives program. All the while, Dan and I were hobbyist homebrewers realizing on the weekends how creative the fermented industries really are.
What inspired you to launch Pilot Project? What kind of companies are you looking to invest in and support?
Abel: Growing up in businesses that invested in creatives, Pilot Project felt like a very natural transition. Nobody expects a musician to build their own recording studio and music label, so why is owning your own brewing space a prerequisite to finding success in the brewing industry? Looking across the industry, the bulk of brewery owners launched them as second careers, so we felt this was a great space to invest in talent that wouldn’t otherwise have the resources to compete.
Radke: We host a fairly intensive audition process twice a year for our potential breweries. During the auditions, we’re not just focusing on whether or not you brew a good product, we also want to see that you have vision for your brand, a thoughtful business plan, and that you can differentiate yourself from a perceptively saturated industry. We don’t just want to invest in good products, we want to modernize and diversify the fermented malt beverage industry, all the while pushing you toward your main objective.
Pilot Project is described to be modeled more on the music industry than the tech industry. Can you explain how so?
Abel: At first, it was just in reference to recording studios being a resource for musicians, but the similarities are insane. Our brewers are the sound engineers, our marketing and sales teams perform independent label services, and then we physically distribute your product. Like artists, a creative brewer could come to us with their recipes and a brand vision, and we literally handle the rest.
Pilot’s newest launch is Funkytown Brewery this month, making it one of the newest but also one of the few Black-owned breweries in Chicago. How is Pilot working to amplify and support underrepresented communities?
Radke: Similar to other industries, we consider it our responsibility to help amplify the voices and talents of underrepresented communities because there is too much untapped talent and creativity out there.
Abel: That’s right. After launching our first woman-owned, woman-led business during Pilot Project’s inaugural days in 2019, it became pretty clear how well positioned we were to infuse the industry with unique perspectives and backgrounds. We saw an outpouring of support from the communities represented by our breweries, and it’s been one of the most rewarding parts of building this business. Since our opening, we’ve launched three women-owned businesses, an Indian-owned brewery, a Black-owned brewery, and have supported creatives from other parallel industries as well. We’re not just an incubator, we’re a launchpad, so we take that responsibility very seriously in helping to drive innovation across the industry. We coach on branding, legal, accounting, logistics, and of course, brewing at scale.
Looking forward, where do you want to see Pilot Project in five years?
Radke: We’re just getting started. With our investments into our brewery partners, we’re building a brewer’s network with the thickest skin in the industry. We plan to activate this strategy in many geographies with the ability to create a groundswell of innovation and scale businesses locally and globally.
Abel: In five years, we anticipate owning incubators in a dozen geographies, including some international markets, so we’re sourcing talent from all over the globe. With each incubator having its own cultural persuasion, we can develop 100 unique concepts a year and give power and the ability to grow to creatives everywhere.
This is an installment of Startup Year One, a special series of interviews with founders about the major lessons they have learned in the immediate aftermath of their businesses’ first year of operation.
