A brewmaster and a designer walk into a bar

How Meanwhile became the best brewery in Texas

The first time I went to Meanwhile Brewing, it was for a Yacht Z show.

Yacht Z are my friends' yacht rock cover band. My wife, Dee Dee, and I made it a date night, met up with some friends, and hung out. They're incredible, and the sound was great; I'm sure Meanwhile had top-notch sound people get the stage and audio dialed in. And I was kind of blown away by the space. The food trucks were curated. They don't have a ton of them, but the range is good and the quality is high, and they're located in a sort of food court near the entrance so you know it's there. The taproom was really nice and comfortable, with clear, well-designed signage. The beers were tasty and varied, all brewed in house. I don't remember really noticing the quality of the beer that first time, but there was a lot to take in.

The quality of the beer surprised me later, after I picked up a six-pack of Little Darling lager at my corner store. The print on the can has a little bit of a grippy texture, not overbearing, but enough to feel a bit luxe and help prevent slippage. And the design is well executed and clearly on-brand. The beer itself is just perfect. There's something about what they do with the water, their process, that makes everything feel clean and delicious. That’s my hunch, at least. It’s almost like it's good for you… but it's beer, so maybe not. I bought a 4-pack of their Pilsner the next time. Same thing. Clean clean clean.

My wife threw me a birthday gathering at Meanwhile during South by Southwest. It was 10 times busier than we expected (which was silly because SXSW is always busy) but the space is humongous, we still got a table, everyone got drinks, and the bands sounded great. The kids played on the playground and we all had a good time.

So over three separate experiences (an evening concert, the retail cans, and a packed day show during the busiest week of the year) everything was executed at an 11. Call me impressed.

I wanted to know how, so I did a little research. Excellent beer is definitely the foundation, but what makes Meanwhile the best brewery in Texas is that from the very beginning, the founders valued the design of their brand with the same seriousness as their beer.

A brief history

Founder Will Jaquiss came down from Portland after years as an R&D brewer at Breakside Brewing. He brought his director of operations, Nao Ohdera, with him (or was it the other way around?). They opened as Meanwhile in October 2020 on about 4 acres in Southeast Austin.

Kudos to them for finding great partners from the beginning. For the brand, identity, and creative direction, Jaquiss hired Guerilla Suit, an Austin agency that has been doing this kind of work since 2010. If memory serves, Guerilla Suit grew up branding the Mohawk (the Red River music venue that's been a fixture of Austin live music for two decades) and other experiential projects and institutions. Meanwhile then hired OPA Design Studio as architects and McCray & Co to handle the interior of the tasting room. The outdoor stage and sound system were designed and equipped with the help of Mohawk. The rest of what you encounter (the soccer field, the playground, the food truck arrangement, the coffee program) is a long list of intentional choices made by people who knew what they were doing and were given the room to do it well.

What Meanwhile got right

It would be easy to read all of that as "founder hired good agencies." That's the surface. What’s really notable is the timing.

Jaquiss got Guerilla Suit involved before there was a brewery to design for. He brought in brand and architecture and interior at a moment when the project was still mostly an idea — the only window where a creative partner can actually help shape a project instead of just decorating it and trying to reconcile competing priorities. Most founders don't do this. Most founders hire designers after they've made the hard decisions, which means the design becomes a surface fix, not a structure.

You can feel the difference. The hand-drawn doodle meets structured grid systems at Meanwhile isn't a frivolous idea; it's the connective tissue between the can in your hand, a t-shirt you might buy, a sign on the way to the bathroom, and the feel of the space you're standing in. That only happens because the agency was brought in at the sketch stage.

Same with the stage. Getting Mohawk to help design and source the sound equipment is not what you do if you're trying to save money. It's what you do if you've decided live music is going to be a signature part of the experience and you want it done right the first time. Same with the architect who specializes in breweries. Same with the separate interior designer making the tasting room feel like Austin meets a pub in Oxford. All of these decisions were intentional and part of the budget planning. Not an afterthought in the least.

And six years in, with a craft beer market that has been brutal (U.S. craft production has been down year-over-year for the past several), Meanwhile’s business seems to be going in the other direction. They’ve expanded distribution throughout Austin and into San Antonio and hired dedicated sales reps to lead their expansion. Their stated goal is to become a Texas brand, and they’re on their way as one of the largest independent craft breweries in Central Texas. The bet on doing it right is, by every visible measure, paying off.

What Guerilla Suit got right

The other side of it.

Guerilla Suit didn't try to make Meanwhile look like every other Austin brewery. They didn't reach for the obvious craft beer visual vocabulary. They built a flexible identity system (a set of tools, really) that could carry the brand across a can, a menu board, a t-shirt, an Instagram post, and a six-foot wall mural without ever feeling stretched or repeated. That kind of system requires real thinking up front. It is not what you get when you hire someone to design a logo.

They also clearly listened. The hand-drawn doodle direction is the right answer for a brewery called Meanwhile, a name that already implies the in-between, the unhurried, the thing happening on the side. Most agencies would have tried to be more literal or conceptual. Guerilla Suit was confident enough to be loose, and it landed just right.

And they knew how to work within a larger team, partnering with McCray & Co on the interior and architects OPA. The stage and sound via Mohawk connections. Even the local craftspeople who built the bar top and the brewer's table get named in the press materials. That's a creative agency operating without the ego that usually attends an "identity launch." It reads like a group of professionals working in the service of something larger than any one of their portfolios.

Why I'm bothering to point this out

The kind of work I love to do looks like the Meanwhile project. Not in the sense of "let me brand a brewery." In the sense of: I love working on projects where the design choices and the business choices are the same choices, with founders who care, early enough to shape what gets built.

I've spent twenty-plus years learning how to do that… and then actually doing it as part of agencies and brands. I've done it as an employee, partner and founder. The pattern that produces the best outcomes is the one Jaquiss used. Hire creative partners before the foundation is poured. Pay them like the decision matters. Trust them to do their best.

There are a few directions I’m considering to do more of this in the next phase of my career.

I could go to work for Guerilla Suit or a shop like them. That's the most direct path. The catch is that those agencies are already staffed by very talented people who have been working together for years, and headcount in a small shop is the rarest currency.

I could play the role Guerilla Suit played for Meanwhile: a creative director working with founders who care about craft, involved early enough to help shape what’s built and long enough to see it through. Not a sprint, not a project, but a partnership.

I could keep writing about my thoughts and trust that the right people will find their way to me, and then maybe they will. Probably it’ll be a combination of all three.

For me, the projects worth working on are the ones where someone with a vision values craft enough to hire for it early, and is humble enough to let the people they hire do their best. Those projects exist. Meanwhile is one of them. I'd like to be involved with more of them.

If you're building something and want it to have staying power, I'd love to talk.