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One Way
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developed a thirst for craft beer — Tsitso has always had one, and Schwartz’s developed over time.
“I would say we got him into craft beer four ounces at a time,” Tsitso said of Schwartz, adding that they and other friends would do a lot of tasting over the years, activity that would eventually lead them down that stimulating but challenging path that would take them from tasters to brewers.
“We got tired of waiting in line,” Tsitso said with a laugh, adding that, rather than queuing up for other brewers’ offerings (although they still did some of that, too), they decided to brew their own.
They started attending brew fests, which back then drew both professional and home brewers, and found themselves often mistaken for the former.
“At our first brew fest, we had a logo, we had
a brand, we looked like pro brewers,” Schwartz recalled. “We were at a beer fest in Vermont, and people kept asking, ‘where’s your brewery? We want to check out your brewery.’ And we said, ‘we brew out of our garage.’
“And at every brew fest after that, people would enjoy and ask the same thing — ‘where’s your brew- ery?’” he went on, noting that with those comments as inspiration — and as the pandemic forced brew fests to take a lengthy pause — they eventually went about creating one.
They began with cans and eventually opened their taproom after COVID restrictions were fully lifted in the spring of 2021.
As for beers, they started with ... Kick Starter, a beer that would in many ways set the tone for this venture.
“It came about as West Coast IPAs were really popular and New Englands were just getting started,” Tsitso recalled. “Our whole concept with that beer was to create something that was really approachable for non-IPA drinkers, was well-balanced, and really got them into enjoying IPAs and broadening their beer drinking.”
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“At our first brew fest, we had a logo, we had a brand, we looked like pro brewers. We were at a beer fest in Vermont,
and people kept asking, ‘where’s your brewery? We want to check out your brewery.’ And we said, ‘we brew out of our garage.’”
Draught Choice
This same thought process has gone into subse- quent additions to the portfolio, including Brraaap!, which was created to mark the two-year anniversary of the opening of the taproom; One Hard Lime Selt- zer; One Rustic Cranberry Stout; and Spilled Milk Mango, a mango milkshake IPA and another popular seller.
While Tsitso is the head brewer and recipe devel- oper, the two will work together on potential additions to the roster, looking at what might be missing from the lineup and what the next logical new label should be.
The same is essentially true of the broad business plan, said the partners, adding that the goal is sustain- able growth and building on the solid base they’ve created.
“One thing we’ve always tried to do is not overex- tend ourselves and get to the point where we can’t manage it, either from the stress level or it just doesn’t become fun anymore,” Tsitso said. “As we get the bandwidth to expand, we expand.”
Possible avenues for expansion include a larger footprint in the plaza where they’re currently operat-
“Manufacturers are tired of the revolving door,” he explained. “They bring someone in, they train them for a week, and then they’re gone. So, increasingly, they’re looking at robots.”
Indeed, he said he’s taking calls from potential customers ranging from bakeries to machine shops exploring the possibility of using robots to handle some of the work currently carried out by people.
Elaborating, Ames said he’s given two quotes to machine shops for robots that can handle what’s known as ‘machine tending,’ yielding yet another acro- nym (MT). And as he talked, he played a video of a NACHI robot picking and placing parts and putting them into a chuck on a computer numerical control system.
“This machine costs $92,000 — it comes with a cart and a robot,” he told BusinessWest. “If you can keep loading that, it will work all day and all night long; we just quoted one company where the ROI on one of these was three months.”
The company hasn’t installed any robotic systems yet, but Ames said the pace of phone calls inquiring about the equipment and what it can do has cer- tainly picked up over the past several months. And he expects that call volume to only increase as workforce issues across all sectors continue.
ing, and enhanced distribution, with most of it coming currently at the taproom, with beers on tap in only a few area restaurants.
Moving forward, the partners say they’re looking forward to operating with the nearby shopping plaza rebuilt. Former anchor Armata’s grocery store will not be part of the new mix, as it was destroyed by fire just a few months after they opened in the spring of 2021, but they could already see that it helped drive traffic to their business, and they long for the day when that busy intersection can turn back the clock and become a true destination.
“We’re excited that they’re rebuilding across the street, because that will really enhance traffic,” said Schwartz, adding that the taproom has a solid work- ing relationship with a pizza shop next door and other businesses at that intersection.
Meanwhile, the partners are already drawing visi- tors from Longmeadow, East Longmeadow, Spring- field, Enfield, and well beyond, he went on, noting that craft-beer enthusiasts travel well and are willing to put some miles on the odometer to experience something new and different.
Still, the taproom’s bread and butter is a cadre of regulars who come, as Schwartz noted earlier, not simply to drink beer, but to talk beer and experience beer.
“In the beginning, we bartended Thursday and Friday nights; we alternated every week,” he went on. “And those regulars ... we developed relationships with them, talked beer with them, and shared our pas- sion and dream with them. A lot of them come here to drink beer and visit — it’s that kind of atmosphere here.”
All this has made One Way not just a business, although it is certainly that, but also a passion, one that has taken the high road to success and is certain- ly revved up about what might come next. BW
Wired for Growth
Returning to the matter of that Willy Wonka/Rube Goldberg contraption he developed for Yankee Can- dle, Ames said that Michael Kittredge, who passed away in 2019, told him years ago that someone from the Smithsonian Institution called, saying they would be very interested in putting it on display once Yankee Candle was done with it.
Unfortunately, the toy machine had been taken down and dismantled by that time, Ames went on, adding that he never thought about his work winding up in the Smithsonian one day.
Instead, he’d gladly settle for satisfied custom- ers and continued growth of the business he started from scratch and developed into something that has remained on the cutting edge of an emerging sector.
You certainly can’t see any of that driving past the company’s soon-to-be-former home on Greenfield Street, and that’s part of this engaging story — one with some intriguing chapters still to come. BW
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Ames
pandemic, and thrived mostly by growing and diver- sifying its portfolio of customers while developing strong partnerships with both those clients and the makers of the equipment it installs.
Elaborating, Ames said the company takes a col- laborative approach to what amounts to finding solu- tions for a client, whether it’s a manufacturer looking to automate a production process or a municipality operating its wastewater treatment plant.
He said the phone started ringing again in 2011, and with few exceptions, it hasn’t stopped ringing since, with customers finding Ames mostly through its vendors and all-important word-of-mouth from existing clients. Along the way, it has developed a niche — mostly smaller systems — and a reputation for being able to move quickly and nimbly, separating it from its much larger competitors.
Most of its customers are along the I-91 corridor in Western Mass., but it has also expanded into the North Shore, the Worcester area, and other parts of New England.
This expansion process may be accelerated by the partnership with NACHI Robotic Systems, Ames said, noting that a growing number of companies, including machine shops, are looking to robots as their work- force challenges mount.
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