RAISING MONEY FOR CHARITIES

Wild west brewfest

The Event

Our Annual Wild West Brewfest event is one of our major fundraiser program. This event was formed as as fundraising vehicle to assist others in our local communities. What started out in 2013 at the Villagio Town Center with approximately 10-15 brewers and ~1,7000 patrons in attendance has now grown into the event in 2021 at the Katy Mills Mall with more than 500+ craft and local beers from over 100 brewers and expecting 8,000 people!!

Our Brewfest is a place where residents can go in their own hometown to have a good time with family and friends. The Rotary Club of Katy takes no fee from this event, as Rotarians and our volunteers all give of themselves to give back.

Voted #1 Brewfest in North America by BeerYeti.com for 3 years in a row.

With even more community support and attendees than ever before, let's make this year's WILD WEST BREWFEST bigger and better than ever !

The History

Genesis of the Brew Fest
The history of the Brew Fest started when David Loesch was in Breckenridge, Colorado, in 2012. He biked into Breckenridge from their home, during the summer, and stumbled on the Breckenridge Rotary Club Brew Fest. It was an amazing event, approximately four to five hundred people, roughly about 10 to 15 breweries occupying downtown main street. It was a neat time, neat experience, met a lot of neat folks.

Katy Rotary Club Needs More Charity Funds

At the time, our rotary club only had one fundraiser, and that was the Katy Triathlon. It was a successful event that was utilized to donate money to scholarships and scholarships only.

Like others in the Club, David was getting frustrated because it seemed like there was nothing else going on, other than scholarships, for our community. Many of us wanted to expand and find an additional fund raiser. We wanted more money to fund our Club’s Service Projects and more to support the local Katy based charities that provide essential charitable services to Katy.

Nick Schrader was the president at the time. When David was at the Brew Fest in Breckenridge, he called him so excited saying, "This is definitely something we need to do and explore." He came back in the fall of that year, pitched it to our club. With surprisingly results, most of the older members in our club, in the aged members, 60 years, 70 years, and even 80 years old were totally excited for this event. And yes, the concerns of serving alcohol came up. We worked through the issues so that we put the safety of our attendees at the top of the list. We found ways to mitigate risk.

Getting It Started

Getting It Started
There were three other Rotarians at the time, Ralph Brock, Malcolm Junior, David Loesch, and Nick Schrader that were really taking the helm and making this thing happen. We started the event at the Villagio Town Center in the Spring of 2013.

We had no idea what we were doing, had no idea how many people would show up. We had approximately 10 to 15 brewers at the time, and we had, to our amazement 1,700 people show up. It was a great time and generated $17,000 for us to give back to the community. And we looked at each other and said, we've got something let's make this happen and make it bigger.

The following year we stayed at the Villagio. We had roughly 3,000 people, 33 brewers, about 65 taps. We expanded into a VIP area, and it was just a super success. Gave back $40,000+ that year.

Making Changes to Continue the Growth

We knew that we did not have enough Rotarians to put on the increase in attendance. We went out to everyone we knew to ask for volunteers. Many of the local charities that we supported with grants helped us find non-Rotarian volunteers who share our values of making our community a better place through the WWBF. In the last few years, we have had the support of 400-600 fabulous volunteers.

Attendance continued to escalate. In year three, we had 3,600 people. We realized that we had outgrown the Villagio. There was not adequate parking, too many guest was in too small a space, beer serving lines were too long and it was not the quality of event we wanted to put on. We had to move.

David met with Simon Properties who owns Katy Mills Mall, Florida office which handles their marketing. We spoke to them about having the Brew Fest, advocating Mills Mall location, and occupying about a hundred-thousand square feet of their property of their overall parking lot. They agreed that it would be a good fit for both the WWBF and the Mall. We solved the problem.

The Move to Katy Mills & Major Sponsors
At the Villagio we occupied 30,000 square feet. Moving to Katy Mills Mall was a massive jump. We signed the contract on a year, over year basis and took 130,000 square feet of their parking lot for year four. Year four, we busted the 5,000-patron mark with 5,500 guest attending. We raised about $90,000 and now, we received city support.

The City of Katy was super excited to get on board. And to this day they're still on board and they're our largest partner along with H-E-B and BB&T Bank. With all of this said, looking back over the years, the success was only due to the vision, the people working, the events, the Rotarians & Volunteers that completed the hard work to make the event the best it could possibly be, we developed good teams and made good friends along the way. None of us get paid: no management fees, no salaries, just volunteer friends having a good time putting of a community event giving back.

At Katy Mills Mall, we experimented with new ideas. Here are just a few:

Air Conditioning of the now huge10,000+ HOP House: our VIP Tent
Savor local cuisine as part of the ticket price in the HOP House;
An airconditioned silent auction tent;
Adding Wine with a separate tent called the Wine Grotto;
A VIP room to our VIP Tent called the Reserved Craft Room (RCR) offering select vintages of rare beers along with food;
A High-Octane Tent for higher alcohol content crafts;
An Arcade Game Tent;
Friendship building games;
Multiple live bands;
Adding a Friday Evening Event called the Launch Party especially for Business Leaders, Sponsors, Rotarians, and Civic leaders in Katy;
Adding a 3^rd night called the K-Town Throw Down to serve as a networking event;