Community Highlights: Meet Kenneth Thrower of Moon Dog Meadery

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kenneth Thrower

Hi Kenneth, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
We (Kenneth and Derrick) are Moon Dog Meadery. My business partner Derrick first tried mead at a renaissance fair about 10 years ago. After trying, he decided to try brewing mead himself with the help from his parents and their home brew wine experience.

After several years of making mead and fruit wines with his parents he surpassed them and became skilled enough at brewing that his parents began to just have him make all their wild ideas by himself.

I met Derrick in 2017 at a local rock climbing gym meetup where we became fast friends. Over the pandemic they both found themselves with a lot of free time and I decided to learn how to make mead from Derrick. After running several batches back to back and creating new flavors and recipes Derrick reached out to me about possibly starting a business making mead together. At first it was just an idea but it developed quickly into a full plan and commitment from both of us to start it and within a year we were open!

We strive to make the best mead for our customers. We also strive to create a safe and fun environment for all people with a wide variety of events for people to come and join.

We run board game nights, video game nights, paint and sips, trivia, karaoke, music bingo, fire spinning night, live music, open mic night, dance nights, comedy night and many other events. We love hearing what people want to bring to Moon Dog and we try our best to change things up and offer unique events. For example our occasional combination heavy metal and book lecture events with our local public library or our monthly combination art market and fire spinning event!

We love local. Local businesses, local brews and the local community. We try our best to keep the dollars we earn going back into the local economy. We primarily only buy North Carolina brewed beers, ciders, seltzers and wines, We use honey from local apiaries for our mead, We collaborate with our local fellow business Joe Van Gogh to create our coffee mead, We host and showcase a wide variety of artists in our art gallery and during some of our events. I have even brought my personal book shelf and collection to the shop to use as a public library for our customers! Our business lives and dies based on the local support and we want to show that same love back.

We have just hit our 3-year anniversary of being open this past December 26th and we have seen so much growth in that time. From all of the projects and upgrades to the space we are in, to the events that we run and to the community we have built in our area. We are hoping to continue that growth in all aspects and even push into other avenues like distribution of our products, attending more festivals in the area and maybe even hiring our first employee!

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The first year was by far the hardest. Getting everything set up with the business while both Derrick and I were working basically full time jobs on top of the business was incredibly stressful and we were at each other’s throats sometimes. In the end though, the business grew to where we can fully focus on it, we grew to become better at conflict resolution and overall a lot of that stress has been lifted. Having the knowledge that overall the business is not going to immediately fail as well as having a much better work life balance helped alleviate stress immensely.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
In general we just love and want to focus on the community we have built while also creating delicious mead! We have created what we believe to be a safe and relaxing place for people to hangout, drink and attend events. We are working towards expanding into local distribution, attending more festivals and potentially even expanding our staff by hiring our first employee! If you have any ideas for cool events to have here or if you are interested in renting out the space feel free to reach out to us!

Networking and finding a mentor can have such a positive impact on one’s life and career. Any advice?
Most of my networking starts by researching whatever topic or thing I am interested in. Then looking for a person, business or a group of people that share in that interest or are involved in that topic. Then simply reaching out or meeting up to get involved, learn and ask questions.

Pricing:

• Traditional Meads Bottle $28
• Flavored Meads Bottle $30
• Flight $12
• Mead Draft Pour between $7 and $12 (Room temp, Chilled, Warmed (Winter))

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.moondogmeadery.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moondogmeadery/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MoonDogMeadery/
• Other: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0/[email protected]&ctz=America/New_York