Dean Rohan ’84

Dean Rohan ’84: ‘On The Fly’ thinking taps into success

• Yearbook, 1984

• Dean Rohan ’84 alongside a row of beer fermenters. I n the business world, there has been very little “new normal” during COVID-19. Ever-changing, mandated regulations at the state and federal level have made it nearly impossible for companies to find any consistency.

Since March 2020, businesses have had to adjust on the fly.

Co-founder Dean Rohan ’84, his partners and staff of 180 employees at Tree House Brewing Company in Charlton, Massachusetts, put a twist on that phrase, firmly establishing the 10-year-old company as a pillar among tap rooms in the world.

“We had to think on the fly to make On The Fly work,” Mr. Rohan said of the company’s new method of sales. “It lends itself to a pretty good business model moving forward.”

Tree House opened its current 70-acre, 80,000-squarefoot facility in 2017. Business was good. No ... business was GREAT—serving 15,000 people weekly on site, a figure any brewery on the planet would love to put into its books, and a far cry from its early days of operating in the kitchen of one of Mr. Rohan’s music-playing friends.

Rumblings about a novel coronavirus began in January 2020, but most people in the United States had no idea of the life-altering storm on the horizon.

Mr. Rohan, though, picked up an early indicator of what was looming. His daughter was supposed to travel to Shanghai, China, for the Mock G20 Summit in late January, and Mr. Rohan and his wife planned to spend two weeks in China prior to the event. The Chinese government, though, cancelled the summit due to COVID-19, which put Mr. Rohan into motion at Tree House well before any restrictions hit the U.S.

• Dean Rohan ’84 outside the main entrance in Charlton, Massachusetts.

“At that point I knew it wasn’t the flu, and it wasn’t a bug,” Mr. Rohan explained. “It wasn’t going to be contained.”

The team ordered massive amounts of personal protective equipment (which they later donated to hospitals in Massachusetts) online for the employees. Tree House doesn’t distribute beer, and only made money on site. The company had to stay open in order to survive.

First, the team built what Mr. Rohan labeled “The Great Wall of Tree House,” which were rows of plywood standing 8-feet high. Customers stood 10 feet apart and snaked through the property. Health-wise, it was safe and a way to stay open.

Mr. Rohan, however, wasn’t comfortable.

“I found myself so paranoid; the staff was paranoid,” Mr. Rohan said. “The customers kept coming. But we opted to say, ‘No, we’re done.’ It wasn’t safe for the psyche of our employees.”

The coronavirus had won, shutting down the successful tap room—but only for a day.

Quickly, Tree House drafted and put a new method in place so it could sell beer in a contactless format to customers on site: On The Fly.

With the new online order method, staff loaded beer in cardboard boxes from pallets onto hand trucks and wheeled them from the warehouse to outside. There, the staff retreated 10 feet as customers wearing masks got out of their vehicles to grab their liquid goodies.

The brilliance was in the efficiency. Upon arrival customers showed the code of their online order to a staff member, who relayed the information to a person in the warehouse. By the time the customer waited in a line of cars, the order was at the curb.

“This is more efficient than before, and we’ll adopt it postCOVID,” said Mr. Rohan, who noted the hand trucks are cleaned after each delivery. “We’ll more than likely build a building that’s strictly for ‘On The Fly.’

“(In the future) when you come to enjoy Tree House you can come and have a good time with your pints, get some food from food trucks, see bands; and then pick up your phone, order a couple cases through ‘On The Fly,’ drive through the drive-thru, pick up your cases and you’re off. It will be the ultimate experience. I’m so excited for it.”

Tree House didn’t serve as many customers during COVID-19, with a range of 300–1,600 people making the trip to the wooded campus every day. However, since people no longer had to carry their beer from the facility to their parked car, sales increased.

“A big order previously was two cases,” Mr. Rohan said. “Now, someone buying 3–4 cases is a normal order. Some people get 2–3 dollies full of cases.

“It’s common for people from Boston to rent cars or get a Zip Car to come here. We get people daily from New Jersey and New York, and cars from Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Florida are commonplace. During the summer, people take Beer-cations. Sometimes the out-of-state license plates dwarf the Massachusetts ones. It’s unbelievable.”

Tree House is inching closer toward opening a breathtaking 100,000-square-foot site in Deerfield, Massachusetts, and it bought another facility in Sandwich on Cape Cod complete with a spectacular ocean view.

“To be in the pandemic like we are,” Mr. Rohan said, “and to be scared for your friends and family and everyone around you, to be able to have our business and maintain and thrive in certain areas has been a blessing.”

• Overhead view of the entrance to the Charlton, Massachusetts, facility.

• Sign of the times.

• View of the Charlton, Massachusetts, facility.

• Enjoying the festive outdoor space is a big part of the experience for customers.

this PAgE: All photos courtesy of Nate Lanier Photography.