About Us

My name is Jess Faucette. In 1973 I was 25 years old. Don Baker and I were neighbors at Fountain Square Apartments on Eastway Drive in Charlotte. Both of us were disgruntled employees at businesses that did not offer the opportunities that we were seeking. Memorial Day weekend was coming up and we decided that come hell or high water we were going to the beach. Unfortunately, we both had to work half a day on Saturday of this big holiday weekend. So, when we got off work, we loaded into my ‘69 MG-C British racing green convertible with the top down. Boy, that was a sweet car. I miss it. But first, we had to buy beer at Party Beverage on Central Avenue before heading out. Leaving later than we wanted, we just turned the trip into a leisurely drive, to avoid speeding and derailing our shortened weekend. Our conversations were tailored around our current employers and how we would like to do something more rewarding. While at the beach, we ran out of beer and had to find a new source for this magic elixir. We eventually found a “beverage store” but, boy, their prices were outrageous. This experience just fueled our “beverage store” conversation for our trip on the way back to Charlotte.

After 6-months of research and planning, we each borrowed $3K from our parents so we could become operational. We opened the doors of Alternative Beverage on November 9th 1973 as a "beverage store" in a converted 3-bay gas station. We erected a large walk-in refrigerator that took up the entire 3rd bay and we had the coldest beer in town. It’s funny, when the beer distributors starting rolling our first shipment of beer through the doors and asked what price we wanted on the beer, our response was the same price as Party Beverage on Central. This turned out to be a mistake. We now had the same prices as the convenient stores in town. It didn’t take long to figure out that we had to create our own niche to be successful so I worked on convincing Don that we should lower our prices. After 2-3 weeks of low sales, he consented. There was a Food Lion grocery store a block away from us and they used beer and wine as a lost leader, so they were working on a 10% margin. Convenient stores were using a 100% margin, we needed to find a sweet spot in between. We found it. Besides gas, we sold everything from Budweiser to Chateau Lafite Rothschild and everything in between or at least we were trying.

The oil embargo of 1973 started in October before we opened our doors in November. Everything ran fine for a month or so but demand for gas exceeded supply around Christmas of '73. This meant that we could only sell a percentage of our gallonage of sells from the previous year. In 1973, 90% of all gas stations were full service. Full service meant that you drove up to the pumps and an attendant would come to your car, ask what you wanted and proceed to pump your gas, check your oil and vital fluids, was your windshield and send you off having collected the $2-3 it would cost to fill your tank. Gas was 25 cents per gallon. When the oil embargo made its impact, the price of gas quadrupled overnight and diminishing supply led to gasoline rationing and gas lines. Full service stations would turn their pumps on at 6am and they would have sold their daily allotment for the day by8am. No more gas to sell until the next day.

Since AltBev operated from 10am to 11pm, we decided to turn our pumps on at 4pm. We had gas lines over a mile long. We had a captive audience, we handed out flyers about our beer and wine stock with prices and services we offered. We had cars lining up at noon to buy gas at 4pm. We were so successful at promoting our business that customers would line up for gas and leave with a 6-pack of beer or some wine.

On our first July 4th in business, we were given the keys to a Budweiser truck with 12 bays full of beer, a Schlitz and Old Milwaukee truck with 12 bays full of beer and a Miller Lite van full of beer. July 4th was on a Thursday and we had survived the oil embargo / gas crisis that ended in March of ’74. Everyone had reasons to celebrate. When they picked the trucks up on Monday morning, we had sold all the beer except for 1 bay of Old Milwaukee. We were the “source” for beer in Charlotte. In fact, we sold so much beer that we became one of the 10 largest retailers of beer & wine in North Carolina in less than a year.

In 1975, we lost our lease on our first location. We packed everything into storage until we could find a location.  While we were looking for a new location, I was able to buy out Don’s stake in the business.

Within 6 months of closing, I worked out a lease with Gulf Oil for a location on Albemarle Road. We were so successful, that they gave us a kiosk location on Independence, another kiosk location on Woodlawn Rd and a prime location of another 3-bay gas station at the corner of South Blvd and Archdale Drive.

In 1977, after getting about 3-4 calls asking about beer making supplies within a 2-3 week prior to Thanksgiving, I started looking into homebrewing as an another profit center. AltBev became the 25th customer for LD Carlson and the 100th customer for Crosby & Baker. We started stocking ingredients just before Christmas of ‘77; however, nothing sold during that holiday season so I had learn how to make beer in order to be able to sell the stuff.

Out of the blue, Mike Waker stopped in as a gas customer. Recognizing the ingredients from his brewing experience in English, we started talking. He was in need of employment and I needed to sell these ingredient so we  teamed up. He taught me how to make beer and we taught Charlotte how to make beer.

At this time, the only books on the hobby were from England and a typical recipe would consist of a can of hopped malt extract in a given style, (i.e. Canadian Ale, Irish Stout, etc.) supplemented by 3-5 pounds of household sugar.
No hops were added at any time. The results would have been a cidery, winey beer that lacked any hops detection besides bitterness. True homebrew and that’s why homebrew had a bad reputation at first.

So, we started to modify the components to produce a more palatable beer. First, we substituted three (3) of Dried Malt Extract (DME) for the sugar. This produced a maltier beer without the cidery taste. Then we started supplementing both flavoring and aromatic hop additions if style appropriate. Next we started to supplement with a small amount of specialty malts and this further improvement on taste and mouth feel was getting closer to our goals. Finally, we come up with the right combination of ingredients for extract brewing, a 5-6-ot-7 pound bag of light DME (when possible), supplemented with special malts (already cracked with a muslin bag) to achieve color and flavor for the style plus bittering, flavoring and aromatic hops as appropriate for style. Also we included Irish moss for clarity and priming sugar for bottling. The quality of the beer improved immensely and so did out recipe kit sells.

We started running full page ads in Zymurgy with prices. Our business just took off and we became one of the largest homebrew shops in the country at the time. Our UPS bill in the early ‘80’s would be in $2.5K range weekly.

By '79, we closed our "beverage store" and moved into a warehouse off Minuet Lane where we could concentrate on beer and wine making exclusively. We ran full page ads in Zymurgy with prices and our mail order business became top notch. We became one of the largest homebrew shops in the country and our UPS bill in the early ‘80’s would be in $2.5K range weekly

Sometime in the early ’80’s, we started a homebrew club called the Lagerheads. That club eventually changed its name to Alternative Brewers. As it became more of a social (drinking) club, I had to back away from it because of my concerns about liabilities. After a period of time, the club changed its direction and changed its name to The Carolina Brewmasters and became one of, if not the best home brewing clubs in the country.

The 80's and 90's are a little fuzzy but we moved from a Minuet location to a retail location on Freeland Lane. Everything was not all roses and champagne, we had some tough times during the 80’ and 90’ that had me second guessing myself at times. I was embezzled and I even had a couple of employees steal my mailing list and recipes and branched off on their own to open a competing operation. We persevered and forged through the obstacles thrown at us, learning as we went.

In 2006, I was able to buy out the store started by my former employees though they had long been removed from ownership.

In 2007, we lost our Freeland Lane lease in Charlotte to redevelopment so we moved to our present warehouse location in Belmont in September of that year.

In October of 2008, we re-opened a store in Charlotte in space cut out of the Sleepy Poet Antique Mall.

In June of 2011, we opened a store in Mooresville. It was a good location but the overhead absolutely killed any chance we had at being successful.

In June of 2016, we relocated the Charlotte store to 3911 South Blvd. In September, we relocated our Mooresville location to Cornelius.

By early 2019, we had lost so much money with our ventures to the North that I decided to stop beating a dead horse. So closed Cornelius.

Later in the year, York Chester Brewing, located in the same building as us had to close and we were able to buy their equipment, rent the space and apply for a brewery license. But Covid hit before we could get our Belmont Brewhouse brewery licensed because all new ABC license applications were pigeon holed until the Covid Crisis of 2019 was under control.

Covid had a dramatic effect on everyone and every walk of life. Wearing mask, social distancing was the new normal. Lots of businesses had to close their doors because they weren’t essential. We requested and received a certificate as an “essential Business” and we never had to close our doors.

Retail business for both our Belmont location and Charlotte-South Blvd location took major hits because of the Covid and the public fear of the Covid virus. We tried everything from curbside pick-up, limiting the number customers in the store at one time. Our South Blvd location lost 75% of its business in slightly over a years time once Covid hit, so we closed that location that spring. A month after we closed South Blvd, our server crashed after 10 years of service. We lost our inventory software, our POS system, our customer contact info and pretty much everything it took to run AltBev. Money was tight because Covid had been so devastating to our business so we weren’t able to purchase a $5K+ new server so we had to figure out a way to survive.

Our website, which wasn’t the best, was the only way we had to ring customers out and it was allot worse than I I imagined. I quickly found out why we weren’t getting much business from the internet. It was horrendous. I spent night & day repairing and linking products so we could keep our doors open, and only by the grace of God were we able to stay open.

We closed Belmont Brewhouse in June of 2024. We made good beer but our location sucked and the facilities just were not inviting.

I am now 76 and I don’t know how much longer I will want to work. But each day that I work, there is chance  of a new customers getting started in beer or wine making for the first time, I draw off their new found excitement and it renews my own spirit and desire to serve them so they can fully achieve their goals.

With close to one hundred breweries, cideries, meaderies and wineries in the Charlotte marketplace, I can’t help but think that Alternative Beverage has had some impact in this area. I also take great pride in the number of our former employees that have been very successful as professional brewers in the Charlotte market and beyond. I can’t even venture to guess how many of our customers have turned their hobbies into successful commercial operations. Now, I can’t wait to talk to the next person wanting to get started in these wonderful hobbies or the next customer beaming with pride about the beer or wine that they have brought in to sample.

This has never been a job for me, it has been and I hope will always be a love that keeps me active and seeking new horizons. If you are interested in these hobbies, me and my staff will be there to help you.

Thank you for your time and interest.

Jess