When you ask Cody Schmick to talk about Kinkaider Brewing and its expansion on the Lincoln scene from tap house four years ago to three concepts now, he's quick to dive in.
"We love Nebraska," said Schmick, who ended up moving to Lincoln from Broken Bow with his family.
He and the three others at the core of Kinkaider — Dan Hodges, Barry Fox and Nate Bell — feel like doubling down and investing in Nebraska is extremely important, Schmick said.
"We all live here. We were all born and raised here. We want to see it grow. We want to be able to build cool things that keep people in communities. We want to help shape culture in the small way that we can," Schmick said. "Really that's our driving force behind all of this."
The four met 10 years ago in Broken Bow. Schmick and his wife moved there after buying the grocery store. And he started trying to bring in some unique craft beers to the market, something the area didn't have a ton of access to at the time.
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Hodges and Bell were in a brew club together and invited Schmick, the new kid in town. A dozen guys in the back of an insurance office in downtown Broken Bow, sharing beers and stories.
They became friends, and the four wrote up a business plan to start a craft brewery in "Busch Light country."
At the time there were 20 or 30 breweries in the state, compared to the more than 70 now.
"I saw what a thriving little community that was and I thought, man, I know this place can support a craft brewery," Schmick said. "So we invested in Broken Bow."
They bought a 4-acre farm looking out onto the Sandhills.
"We really didn't know each other all that well, the four of us. But we had that common goal of bringing craft beer and a local brewery to the community," he said.
In the nine years since, Kinkaider has grown into a community hub, the kind of place where people not only stop for a pint, but also go to celebrate weddings and birthdays, Schmick said.
"Honestly, they just get it," he said of Broken Bow.
Whether they were craft beer people or not, Schmick said, people were interested in what they were doing, appreciated their investment in the community and gave them a chance to show what they could do.
They've since expanded their space and added a restaurant and bed-and-breakfast. They opened a location in Grand Island in 2017.
In 2018, Kinkaider came to Lincoln, opening a tap room in the former train depot in the Haymarket.
"We found a home in Lincoln," Schmick said.
He said he and his wife moved here "because I saw so much potential in Lincoln. We've made a lot of investment in Lincoln."
In 2020, they opened Sideshow Spirits, which he describes as Lincoln's first legal distillery, near 17th and P streets.
"Now the beer house," Schmick said, referring to Bierhaus Maisschaler (the German word for cornhusker) at Eighth and P streets.
He said they'd been talking about the idea of starting a German beer house for a while.
"It just felt like a really good fit," he said.
Schmick said people thought they were crazy to put it so close to Kinkaider's tap room. You don't even have to cross a street to get from one to the other.
"But we felt like the concepts and the feel, the vibe were different enough, and it's really worked well. They feed off of each other," he said. "We love the Haymarket."
Asked what's in store next, given they've had new projects in Lincoln every two years, Schmick said: "100% be expecting something in 2024."
He said it's not something he can talk about yet. But they are working on something. Stay tuned.
"We've invested a lot, but it's been great," he said. "People seem really appreciative here of us bringing new concepts and new things to Lincoln. The first legal distillery ever. The only German beer house."
During a tough few years with the pandemic, Schmick said they didn't come away unscathed but fought their way through it and credits the internal culture of their crew, which has pulled together.
"Because we had so many of us pulling the same direction, while we got our bumps and our scrapes and bruises, we came out of it in a really good place," he said. "What we're seeing now is we're building back even better than we were pre-COVID."
Schmick said 2022 was their best year ever.
It really just kind of came together, he said.
"Our theme is continuing to sell Nebraska, to invest in Nebraska, whether it be in Lincoln or surrounding communities. That's super important to us," Schmick said.
Reach the writer at 402-473-7237 or lpilger@journalstar.com.
On Twitter @LJSpilger