53 - Dave Gingrich AKA Dave The Beer Guy
The Explore84 Podcast
English - March 17, 2020 07:00 - 54 minutes - 37.5 MBSociety & Culture Business personal growth entrepreneur wellness soul body mind healthy goals explore health topics self improvement Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
If you’ve ever been to Willow Park Wine & Spirits looking for advice on a great beer to try, there’s a very good chance you’ve already met Dave Gingrich, AKA Dave The Beer Guy. We have a great chat about how he acquired his highly coveted title, why he loves cheesy horror films, and how a heart attack in his 30s helped him grow up.
As we’ve discussed on some previous episodes of the podcast, retail is a hard business to do well and an even harder one to stick with. Dave has broken the mould on this with his 19 year history with Willow Park, which started out when he was just 21 years old and trying to get out of working as a janitor, a job he’d long grown bored of. As he puts it “I’m a little too bright and bubbly to be trapped in a boiler room.”
His time at Willow Park started with him picking orders for licenses, and even though he wasn’t crazy about packing pallets full of beer before long he was in charge of running the entire licensee department on weekends. Dave knew this wouldn’t be his final stop at Willow Park as on his very first day he told their previous “The Beer Guy” that he’d be coming for his job. Sooner or later he would achieve this goal and today he is a fixture in Calgary’s craft beer industry, bottling up the passion of brewers for his customers to enjoy.
We talk a bit about Dave’s heroes and inspirations including his dad, known affectionately as Positive Pete, the legendary Owen Hart, and former guest on the podcast and fellow Calgary beer veteran Alastair Smart. Dave shares how Alastair helps him stay focused in his career and always see the positives in his work, and how the ever positive outlook of his father has helped him overcome the physical and mental stresses of an early heart attack.
We also discuss his love for cheesy horror films and he leaves us with a couple of his own picks, which you can watch yourself with the links below!
—
Get your own copy of the books and music discussed in this episode:
—