3c hapter - Index of

160 Locavesting
the music were in fact owners of the pub. More than 2,000 people
had paid $100 (or made a downpayment) to become lifetime
members of Black Star. Two hundred people went even further,
investing an average of $3,000 apiece to raise the $600,000 needed
to build the brewpub. Blackstar has so many proud owners, that
when they assembled for a group portrait on the grand opening
weekend, the photographer had to climb a 15-foot ladder and use
a wide- angle lens to fi t them in.
Steven Yarak, a thirsty young man with a physics degree from
the University of Texas in Austin, began dreaming of opening
a microbrew pub back in late 2005. At the time, Austin had a lively
nightlife scene but surprisingly few brewpubs. Yarak envisioned
a community- owned bar along the lines of a neighborhood- owned
café he had visited in Belgium. He shared his idea with craft
brewer communities online and posted fl iers around town, and
soon a group of beer enthusiasts assembled —a few fellow math
geeks among them—who signed on to the mission. The idea of
structuring the microbrewery as a cooperative seemed a natural.
“We wanted something that was very community focused,” says
Mark Wochner, a 31- year- old research scientist studying underwater
acoustics at UT who is now president of Black Star’s board
of directors. “We liked the idea of having a bar where the people
that drink there are also the owners.”
Besides, they didn’t have the money to open a pub them selves.
It helped that one of the members of the group, Johnny
Livesay, was on the board of the Wheatsville Food Co- op, a longtime
Austin institution. Livesay explained the Texas cooperative
statute and described how Wheatsville had raised funds from
member- owners to open the initial store in 1976 and, more recently,
to complete a major expansion. It was also important to the
band of would- be microbrewers that they treat workers fairly and
give them a say in the management of the business. The result is
what the founders believe is the world’s fi rst cooperatively owned
and worker self- managed brewpub.
As Yarak, who now heads the Workers’ Assembly at Black
Star, explained to a local newspaper: “In a pub, you have a natural
gathering space in a community, built on a business model of