Naukabout Brewery & Taproom

Building a Craft Brew Destination, One Brewery at a Time

While there are currently seven other craft brewers on the Cape and the Islands, that doesn’t bother Naukabout’s Ryan Ellis in the least. Ellis heads up sales and marketing for Naukabout Brewery and Taproom in Mashpee, and he thinks it’s “awesome” there are other craft breweries competing for the consumer and tourist dollar. Ellis, 28, believes in the maxim that a rising tide lifts all boats, therefore when one brewery is successful it reflects on them all. And even though he’s a wash-ashore from Somerville, Massachusetts, his loyalties lie staunchly with the Cape. “It’s an awesome way to develop a culture,” he says. “People travel across the country to places like Portland, Maine, for its craft beers. We could have that kind of culture happening on Cape Cod and it would be big business.”

The enthusiasm with which Ellis speaks extends beyond Naukabout profiting from beer drinkers making pilgrimages to the Cape. He has much broader, altruistic reasons. “Cape Cod has the reputation where people in general, but especially young people, can’t find a job that provides a livable wage,” he says, noting there are no media or tech companies on the Cape offering jobs that appeal to younger people’s tastes or that pay enough wages to support living here. “There are enough people my age who want to stay on the Cape but can’t,” he attests. Ellis sees craft-brewed beer as a way to generate jobs that allow young people to live on the Cape.

“This is not a Cape-specific problem,” said Lauren Barker, chief executive officer of Cape Cod Young Professionals (CCYP), a nonpartisan, non-profit organization that supports the careers of Cape Cod’s 45-and-under population. “The Cape, like many small to midsized communities across the country, has problems attracting and keeping younger people in the community.”

Barker cites findings from a 2014 report commissioned by CCYP from Northeastern University’s Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy, that between 2000 and 2010, the Cape saw a 26 percent reduction in year-round residents 45 years old and under. More conclusively, the study found that people are not only leaving the Cape, they are not being replaced.

The study also uncovered specific factors for this attrition. They include the Cape’s well-known high cost of housing and the lack of diverse rental and ownership housing. But respondents also said that it is not just the lack of well-paying jobs; more precisely it’s that jobs that offer upward mobility are desired. Plus, a sense of community and quality of life are lacking on the Cape. To put it another way, people want to do things like meet people on the weekends.

Barker cautions against generalizations. “It’s cross-generational to want things like affordable housing and job opportunities,” she said. “But specifically, millennials and Gen Zs do expect more fluidity in their lives, and aren’t interested in the status quo.” Gen Z is the first generation for which cell phones and the Internet were entirely everyday.

Everything Barker says and everything her organization learned plays right into the vision that Ellis has for the Cape as a craft brew destination. Craft brews have been around for a while—we’ve seen the four-packs taking up all of that real estate in local packies—so most people are aware of their popularity. Breweries with adjoining taprooms like Naukabout’s are not your father’s bar. Yes, there’s college basketball on the HD screen and music both recorded and live— Prince’s 1999 particularly caught this writer’s ironic attention—but it also has board games like Connect 4, Candyland, and food trucks, that uniquely 21st century culinary trend, and wifi.

“So people can come in, punch the keys for a while, then have a brew,” said Ellis. Naukabout’s vibe is almost akin to a coffeehouse, but not quite since it’s still the beer that fuels the conversation. But you can find the same basic model, even the same board games, in Brooklyn, Portland, and the PNW. You start seeing the same food trucks at concerts, fairs and farmers’ markets. The question becomes, after five or ten visits to different breweries: when do craft breweries, and craft brews, all begin to seem alike? The answer is, with the right vision and corresponding brew master, each craft brewery could offer its own experience to tourists and beer aficionados, and that’s how a destination is born.

Brook Conley, one of Naukabout’s three founders—all men born and raised on the Cape who remained friends and even now are coworkers at the same Boston financial services company—tries to explain Naukabout’s vision. “The original idea is a place to come and hang out with friends and family. We wanted to put structure to the idea of enjoying the things we like to do in life: hang out with friends and enjoy some beer and food with our friends and family.”

Pete Murner, a co-owner, said, “Family and friends have always been in our DNA.” The name, Naukabout, came from Conley’s father, Tim, thirty-some years ago when he would come home from work and change out of his “work-abouts” and encourage his kids and their friends to get in their “knock-about” clothes and have some fun. Over time, knock-about morphed into naukabout, and a lifestyle, and a brand, were born.