A new direction: Career changers

A new irection

From teaching to running a business

Photo by Annette Joyce/NWO After 10 years of teaching history at the high school level, Josh Cockman opened Village Beverage Co., a craft beer and wine shop and bar in Summerfi eld, last fall.

by ANNETTE JOYCE

When Josh Cockman entered Appalachian State University, his immediate future was already mapped out. Having excelled in history during high school, he planned to major in that subject in college while also playing football for the ASU Mountaineers.

Not surprisingly, after graduation Cockman began his career teaching history and coaching football at Reynolds High School in Winston-Salem. Over the next 10 years, he also taught in Nashville, Tennessee, and then at Northeast Guilford High School.

While Cockman said he thoroughly enjoyed working with the kids, the demands of teaching and coaching were very time-consuming, especially after he his wife, Courtney, started their family; the couple now has three children, Mac, 7, Brek, 5, and Callan, 2.

As their family and demands on their time and energy expanded, the couple knew they had to make some changes. An emergency room physician, Courtney worked a crazy schedule, and Cockman was spending extended hours after school with the football team. Plus, there was the expense of daycare.

“Basically, my paycheck was going to pay for daycare,” he said.

In 2015, Cockman, now 39, left his teaching career to stay at home and care for their kids. During that time, he also taught preschool music lessons and thought about what his next steps would be once the kids started school.

One of the most important things for him was doing something he loved. In the back of his mind, he had always wanted to run a pub. He enjoyed tasting different craft beers and wines and even spent some time doing home brewing.

“I brewed beer for personal consumption and friend consumption,” he said.

It wasn’t just the production and the taste of the beers that Cockman found fascinating, but also that each beer comes with its own history. Being able to incorporate his love of history into his home brewing was doubly satisfying.

As his ideas began to take shape, the Summerfield resident started looking for confirmation that a bottle shop and bar would be a good fit for the community.

One of those confirmations came when he went to the grocery store and saw about 30 people sitting around in the Beer Den drinking and talking.

“There seemed to be a pentup demand,” he said. “If you lived up this way (on the western side of

Summerfield), there just weren’t any places to go.”

Cockman began envisioning a place that was laid-back, community-oriented, and one where parents could feel comfortable bringing their kids and even their dogs. He wanted a place where people looked forward to spending time with friends and neighbors while trying out different beverages.

He sought out owners of similar businesses to get their input, and later got some of them to invest and become partners.

“I was able to assemble a good team of people who have given me advice and taught me the things I didn’t know,” he said.

Village Beverage Co. opened in October 2020 at the height of the pandemic. Fortunately, the business has an inviting outdoor patio area which attracted customers who wanted to socialize but weren’t able to do so indoors because of pandemic restrictions.

After being open for little more than a year, Village Beverage Co. is going strong and Cockman couldn’t be happier with his decision to leave his previous career and step out on his own.

“I value the autonomy that I have. Because I run my own business, I can make all the decisions,” he said. “I like being able to meet all the great people in the community. I have dozens, if not hundreds, of interactions on a daily basis.”

Cockman works hard to make his business unique and inviting. Village Beverage Co. offers around 150 labels with wide-ranging tastes, along with dedicated crew members who, like Cockman, are well educated about the various brews and enjoy talking about them with the shop’s patrons.

Besides the beverages, the establishment hosts a variety of events. Saturdays are live music nights and on Tuesdays lively games of trivia attract a good number of people. There are also craft nights twice a month where people spend time together doing such things as painting wine glasses and pouring candles.

Cockman feels fortunate at his business success so far, and is quite willing to share advice with others who might be looking to venture away from their current job and try something different.

“You have to be genuine with yourself and figure out something that you want to do seven days a week,” he said. “Something that makes you happy all the time.”

With that said, he’s not blind to the fact that not every day will be rosy, and he has to be very intentional about maintaining a healthy work/life balance.

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“It seems you’re always at work, even when you’re not” he said. “It’s hard to turn it off sometimes.”

Even with all the challenges, when asked if he felt he made the right decision in leaving his teaching career, Cockman said, “That would be a large yes!”

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