Rising Stars: Meet Abby Chandler of Ohio

Today we’d like to introduce you to Abby Chandler.

Hi Abby, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
My husband John and I started Paladin Brewing in 2015. That year was rough, to say the least. John had a 15-hour surgery to remove a stage 4, baseball-sized tumor from his sinus cavities. Our 9-year-old jumped out of a tree and broke his arm. We opened Paladin with 4 beers on tap. Then our 4-year-old broke his femur. This all happened in a matter of 3 months!
That beginning set us up to feel like we could tackle anything. We started with just my husband and some volunteers working at the brewery, with my father bartending. We now have 24 beers on tap and around 30 in cans, along with a staff of 9, including us.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It has never been smooth. It didn’t start that way, and it rarely felt that way since. We have been blessed with amazing support from friends, family, and customers who have become family. Without them, the setbacks would feel overwhelming. Growing pains (buying a bottling line, realizing we need a canning line instead, buying that, having our first batch of cans explode) are better than the pain of lack of growth. We are grateful for a growing staff that continuously tries to grow our sales.
The hardest struggle we are dealing with now is the overall decline in the brewing industry. This leaves us in a spot where we have to come up with reasons other than how great the beer is to get people in the door. Events, sales, food and promotions keep us in the green.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I started my professional career as a photographer, and I am still doing that whenever possible. As time has gone on, I have added graphic design to my list of skills. This isn’t just for posters and social media posts, but also for can designs.

I am not talented enough to create them from scratch, but in the beginning we had an artist in the country of Masadona who drew my visions for me to turn into can labels. He was hired as a full-time animated movie artist, so we bounced around a while looking for a replacement. We used stock images and dabbled in AI-assisted images. This is a sensitive subject for many, but I like to say, “I can’t do it without AI, but AI can’t do it without me either”.

As my 14-year-old daughter, Chloe, has gotten older, she has grown tremendously in her art skills and is now drawing label characters for us. We ask her for each design, and based on her school and extracurricular activities, along with the actual image we want, she decides which she wants to create. AI and I deal with the others. Our can designs are very eye-catching and stand out as art pieces, not just a list of beer names.

Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
The photos I am attaching include:
Me inside a fermentation tank that needed to be hand-scrubbed.
My favorite label design, for which my 14-year-old daughter, Chloe Chandler, drew the character art.
A family photo from opening day in 2015
Two more art pieces from Chloe.
A family photo from our oldest son’s wedding in the brewery backyard, summer of 25.
A photo of my husband and I at the brewery.

Pricing:

• $5 to $10 a beer

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.paladinbrewing.com