Taking a leap of faith can be a challenging thing to do, so when Rob Hopkins did that by opening a brewery in Kalamazoo, he named it after the wings that allowed the mythological Icarus to fly. He called his brewery Wax Wings Brewing Co.
Hopkins, who had been a home brewer, opened Wax Wings in 2018 in a small strip mall at 3489 Gull Road. Despite the risk, he had confidence in his product. But unlike Icarus, he didn’t allow overconfidence to kill his dream.
“This all happened as a result of finally home brewing enough times to where I made a beer and I was like, ‘OK, this is a New England IPA that has legs. It could have legs if it was made commercially,’” Hopkins recalls. “As soon as that happened, that weekend I’m in Atlanta and my uncle Mark Hopkins and I put together a business plan, and then I got with a Realtor to find a spot.”
Hopkins purchased a three-barrel brewing system that was a steep upgrade from his home brewing equipment but also brought new complexities to deal with.
“You’re going from plastic, converted agricultural tanks to stainless, proper brewing equipment. Going from filling four cans a minute with four guys to 30 cans a minute with a line. So, No. 1 was figuring all that stuff out,” explains Hopkins. “Then having to pay for itself is a big steep learning curve. But we had the opportunity, so it made sense at the time. I’m glad we did, because at the time everything back there (he points to the brewing room) was homemade and plastic, and now it’s all proper, beautiful stainless.”
With the huge shift in the scale of beer produced, the running of a taphouse and the challenges of being the head brewer, Hopkins needed help to run the front of the business so he could focus on brewing. “I did this for a year just on my own, which was too much. I started to get burned out,” Hopkins says. “That’s why I approached T.J.”
Enter T.J. Waldofsky.
Waldofsky has a long history on the local brewing scene as well as other business experience. He was a co-founder of One Well Brewing, filled in as interim president and CEO of Discover Kalamazoo from April 2020 to January 2021, and was working as a consultant when Hopkins approached him.
“I didn’t think it would work out that he would come on board,” Hopkins says. “But it ended up working. Things have changed. I’m in a better spot now.”
And Waldofsky says he was happy to get back into brewing. “I always just liked the culture of breweries. Before I opened my former brewery, I’d been to, like, 150,” he says. “Whether the beer is good, mediocre, bad, the culture at all these places was just so cool. It’s hyperlocal, and you see your regulars. It becomes more like a family.”
Brewing community
That family aspect is evident at Wax Wings Brewing. While Hopkins and Waldofsky were being interviewed, a potluck celebration of an employee’s 21st birthday was in progress at the brewery.
And when Wax Wings brewer Andrew Evans, a two-time Olympian in the discus throw, needed to prepare for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, the brewers converted a storage room on-site into a practice facility where Evans could throw a foam disc during the winter months. The brewery also created a beer called Comeback Kid, not only to honor Evans, but to give part of its proceeds to support Evans’ Olympic journey.
“He is 33, working a blue-collar job full time,” Hopkins says. “He had to be able to train, not only to make Paris, but to win the U.S trials. He wasn’t sponsored. He needed to work to be able to afford to take the flights, to book the hotels, and so we brewed a beer to support that.” (At the 2024 Olympics, Evans came in 17th.)
Another part of the brewing culture that both Hopkins and Waldofsky find alluring is “the camaraderie between the breweries” in Kalamazoo, which Hopkins notes was especially important during Wax Wings’ early days of “taking a leap of faith before you’re maybe ready.”
“But I had good help that walked in through the door,” Hopkins says. “Adam Wisniewski was brewing at (the former brewery) Ruperts, and he just would hang out at night and show me (how to do it), because I went from (brewing in) a five-gallon Coleman cooler to making a hundred gallons at a time. There was a lot of stuff that I didn’t anticipate.”
Among that stuff was ending up with brews not worth drinking. Hopkins dumped five batches right after he opened, forcing him to close the shop for two weeks until he could brew more good beer to sell.
Another unexpected trial, albeit one with a happy ending, was running a brewery during the Covid-19 pandemic. With the establishment closed, Hopkins and Waldofsky discovered that the only way to sell their products was in cans-to-go, and that drove innovation.
“Covid was kind of like a pressure cooker for creating new stuff,” says Hopkins, who estimates that the brewery has created more than 400 beers in its history. “We did really good during that time. Now we’re trying to get into more of a rhythm with flagship brews and rotate in one to two new or experimental beers a month.”
Of the thousands of gallons of beer created at Wax Wings, Hopkins admits he has his favorites — not because of the way they taste, but because of the work it took to make them and what they represent.
“I love Kalamazoo’s Finest (a lager). That whole project was probably the most fun I’ve had in the last few years,” Hopkins says. “It is designed to resonate with the average consumer, but what’s cool about it are the pieces from Kalamazoo, like the peregrine falcon imagery (on the label) and T.J. being able to involve the Audubon Society of Kalamazoo to raise money for the peregrine falcon cam (a camera located downtown) or whatever they need.”
Waldofsky echoes Hopkins, saying one of the highlights of the job for him is getting to work with other businesses or nonprofits — “tying in a nonprofit that you care about to raise money for them, bring in their audience and expose them to your product, while at the same time you give back to an organization that’s giving to the community and raise them up because you have a platform to do that.”
Eyeing more growth
Despite having hundreds of beers under their belts, Hopkins and Waldofsky say they are still anticipating growth, both in space and what the brewery offers.
“I’d say that the next big step is a consistent food option,” says Waldofsky. “We have food trucks that come through here, and customers love it, but we want to bring the food in-house at some point.”
Wax Wings currently rents an adjoining storefront, which “is packed” with miscellenous items for the business, he notes, but the goal is to eventually expand the taphouse’s operation into that space as well.
“Everything’s a year out six months ago,” Wadolfsky says with a laugh.
For the present time, though, the duo say that the business is doing well.
“We are in a difficult location on Gull Road,” says Waldofsky, “because it’s not super residential right by us, but the local community has embraced us and (so has) the craft beer community in Kalamazoo. You have to drive across town to get here, and they do that.”
Hopkins takes great pride in the beers they produce.
“We’ve lived and died by the product. It’s always been product first,” he says. “I think my palate is one that is able to relate to the average consumer and pick up on maybe what twist would excite them. It’s not like (I have) a strong science background or brewing background. I think it’s just the relatability because I existed in that sector as a consumer first, so designing beers for those types of people has made it intuitive.
”And the product is good and stands on its own after six years. We’ve evolved as craft beer has evolved.”
