Operations During COVID-19 & Stay-Home Mandates

Dear fellow homebrewers, 

It's been a heck of a week here in Sacramento, California. In the last week alone, we've received a fury of guidelines and orders from both Sacramento County and the Governors office regarding operations during the COVID-19 outbreak. We've received varying sources regarding information on the current Stay-Home essential business only order.

During this all, we've received an absolutely amazing out-pour of support and solidarity from customers and fellow homebrewers on our social media and email. It is truly heartwarming to know we have the support from our community, fellow hobbyist, and friends in the industry. For that, we truly thank you from the bottom of our hearts. This support keeps us going and hopeful during rough patches, and reaffirms our belief in the homebrewing community. So to you as well, if you're here reading this, thank you for being here and supporting us through this.

Regarding the mandates and orders from the county and state offices; we absolutely understand where these orders and guidelines have come from, and fully understand the difficulty of the situation behind them. We've unfortunately gone back and forth several times on our ability to stay open, while abiding by the law put forth. As of today, 3/20/2020, we believe at this time we are able to stay open and operate as normal with some rule changes. As a food ingredient store, we believe we are within guidelines set forth as a food retail store as an essential business. California Department of Health also defined beer as a "food" item, further solidifying our interpretation of the law currently. We will operate our shipping as normal as well.

For now, we'll only allow one customer in each of the brick and mortar stores at one time, to comply with the social distancing order. Our staffing for each store usually is only one clerk at a time, so we are essentially operating with essential staff already. We believe these factors of our operations going forward will comply with orders handed down from the county and state. This should keep potential exposure to COVID-19 to a very minimal level, and will keep both staff and customers safe during this outbreak.

As a safety measure, our staff has a modified cleaning routine that includes sanitizing shared spaces and items. If you are a customer 65 years or older (many of our customers are), we do encourage you to take advantage of online ordering with in-store pickup. Our Brewmeister staff will assemble these orders for you, and can walk them out to your vehicles; so your exposure to shared spaces would be minimized further. These orders can be placed and picked up same-day, with minimal waits required. 

That's all for now, we'll keep you folks posted on our operations if anything changes. If you are not a current follower of our Facebook page, we strongly encourage you to follow us to receive frequent updates on current operations. Again, thank you so much for being a supporter and customer at this time. Your continued support means the world to us, and we look forward to seeing you soon (from a distance).

Cheers,
-Owen