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Since graduating high school, Dayne Bartscht ‘04 has had an experienced career in consulting, tech, and business. But 20 years after graduation, Bartscht is hitting his stride in the craft beer industry, starting the first-of-its-kind self-serve brewery in the state of Michigan.
During high school, Bartscht was an outgoing and extroverted student. He was involved in various extracurriculars and the school community. Math teacher Barbara Rocci was the ninth-grade dean during Bartscht’s freshman year and also taught Bartscht.
“He was a bit gregarious at times,” Rocci said. “He had a lot of friends and loved socializing. I’m not surprised he ended up working in such a customer-oriented environment.”
Bartscht mostly participated in athletics and played both varsity basketball and soccer. Along with playing on the varsity teams all four years of high school, he was also named captain of both teams.
“He had a profound sense of his goals and it was most clear to me when I watched him play basketball,” English teacher Mark Randolph said. “He was tough, unassailable, intimidating, and he played way bigger than his size.”
One gesture by a faculty member has stuck with Bartscht after these years. Associate Director of Enrollment Eric Gajar, Bartscht’s senior advisor at the time, wrote him a note before he graduated.
“The note said that he believed in me, and he knew I was going to make a big impact on the world,” Bartscht said. “Even if it was just something he gave to every advisee, it meant a lot to me and I held on to it and thought about it a lot.”
Along with being Bartscht’s advisor, Gajar was also the athletic director and knew him as an athlete as well as a student throughout his entire time at the school.
“He was extremely bright, but he didn’t love school,” Gajar said. “During his senior year, he was having a particularly hard time, and he felt like people weren’t supportive and no one really had his back. So I wrote him a note, and he came back here years later and showed it to me.”
Bartscht attended Northwestern University after high school, where he majored in industrial engineering and economics. He then went on to work as a management consultant for Accenture and other consulting firms. After a few years in the consulting industry, Bartscht completed his master of business administration at the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England.
“I was in the tech sector of consulting,” Bartscht said. “I also worked for Expedia, which is what brought me to Cambridge and allowed me to spend some time there.”
After graduate school, Bartscht decided he wanted to focus on entrepreneurial ventures. He and his college friends took all of their savings and bought a run-down building with no plans for how they were going to use it.
“The real root of how it started was that I just wanted my friends to move to Michigan,” Bartscht said. “After college, most of my friends stayed in Chicago. So the way I convinced them to move here was by buying this building and starting a business.”
Bartscht currently serves as the managing director for Eastern Market Brewing Co., which owns three, soon-to-be four, breweries in Detroit, Ferndale, and Royal Oak, as well as a donut shop and a pizza company.
“It started with the one building which eventually turned into a brewery,” Bartscht said. “From there, we’ve ventured into other businesses and acquired many new ones.”
Out of the three breweries, the North End Taproom in Royal Oak has one big difference compared to the other two. It runs on a self-serve system, where customers come in and pour their own beers. As the first self-serve brewery in the state of Michigan, Bartscht and his partners first needed Governor Gretchen Whitmer to approve the legislation that allowed this type of self-distribution system.
“There were many reasons we chose to do it [self-serve],” Bartscht said. “Nobody in the state had done it, and we wanted to be the first. It’s also really cost-effective from a labor perspective because the customer pours their own beer, so you can staff less people and focus more on improving the customer experience.”
Another benefit of a self-serve brewery is data collection. Customers scan their ID when they first enter, which collects their date of birth and zip code.
“We can determine based on what type of beer they’re pouring what decisions they’re making,” Bartscht said. “And then we can use that to decide what type of beer we’re going to make.”
There is more of a legislative aspect in the brewery industry compared to other industries. Typically, places that sell alcohol have distributors that provide it for them, but Bartscht’s brewery is the only one in the state that has its own distribution system. They have a fleet of vehicles, drivers, and logistics software. The state of Michigan has a cap on how much someone can distribute, which has proven to be a small obstacle for Bartscht and his partners, but has also demonstrated the success he has had in the industry.
“Last year, we actually hit our cap, so we had to work with state legislators to increase the cap,” Bartscht said. “This year, we’re going to hit the cap, so I’m not sure what we’re going to do to get around that.”
In February, the school organized an alumni event at the North End Taproom. Current faculty and alumni from varying classes attended the event, including Randolph.
“He’s done amazing things and he brings back to his business a wealth of experience. Randolph said. “He has an appreciation for how to build a business for people and around people. It’s a warm place and you immediately feel when you go in there that it’s intended to make people happy.”
