Today we’d like to introduce you to Julie Wartell.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I moved from Michigan to San Diego in 1986 to attend UCSD (and knew within a couple weeks I was never going to live in the cold again!). I got my 1st real job -= as a Crime Analyst for the San Diego Police Department — in 1992 and started making maps; coincidentally the same year I started drinking craft beer (introduced to me by a boyfriend).
Through the 90s and early 2000s, I traveled a lot for fun and work (relating to crime analysis) and always was looking for a local craft beer on my travels. I used a website to find the breweries but it was a list and very frustrating that you had to map each one out individually. In 2003, while sitting at a beer festival (one of Stone’s early ones out in a field in San Marcos!), I started thinking…”why are there maps of ‘wine country’ but none of the beer areas? I should make brewery maps!” I then asked my friend Dave (who I had worked with on a crime mapping website for the Redlands Police Dept) if he’d be interested in making a brewery mapping website – and PubQuest was born.
I started teaching “Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for Urban and Community Planning” at UCSD as an adjunct faculty for the Urban Studies & Planning Program in 2008. Since 2016, I also teach “Craft Breweries and the Urban Economy.” It’s a real class, I swear! I still have my day job mapping and analyzing crime (need to pay the bills!) but love doing the “research” to make sure PubQuest continues to be the most current and accurate brewery map available.
I used to say “I map crime by day and beer by night but never the 2 together,” but that has changed as I’m now doing research on breweries and the lack of crime (while at the same time breweries have been shown to have positive effects on communities). In between the beer and work, I also bike, surf, swim, and hike as much as I can.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The PubQuest road has been winding, hilly and filled with the occasional pothole.
Challenges include a combination of a lack of time and money to devote to it to a series of flaky website developers to not having a lot of business acumen (having worked for the government or non-profits my whole life!). I just wish I had more hours in the day to spend on making PubQuest even better (and a big pot of $ would also help).
Please tell us about PubQuest.
I mentioned the history of PubQuest in the “Your Story” section. More on that here…
In the summer of 2005, we launched our initial version of PubQuest with about 700 brewery locations on it. We now have over 8000 brewery locations covering the entire U.S. and Canada. We are currently working on a new and improved website as well as a Droid App (we launched an iOS App about 5 years ago). While the interactive map of breweries in the heart and soul of PubQuest, we also make custom brewery maps for events, tours, festivals and brewers guilds.
Keeping up with all the new breweries is a real challenge but we have people around the country that help us out and pride ourselves on the accuracy and currency of our data. I have really enjoyed getting to know a wide variety of awesome people in the “beer world” and always happy to talk to folks about breweries and how mapping and analyzing data can assist – from growing the brewery community to cities and neighbors better understanding the positives around breweries. The conversations are even better when on a bicycle ride and/or sipping a tasty craft beer.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
I had a happy childhood but have a terrible memory. And depends what you call “childhood.” 🙂 I was a pretty serious swimmer and softball player as a kid so many of my good memories revolve around that.
I enjoyed going to school and learning new things, especially 2nd grade (my fave teacher). I had some great childhood friends – still close with my best friend from 1st grade, 45 years later. Loved going to the cider mill for fresh apple cider and donuts (still go back when I visit my Mom in Michigan in the fall).
Contact Info:
- Address: 4629 Cass St. #333 San Diego, CA 92109
- Website: www.pubquest.com
- Email: julie@pubquest.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pubquest/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pubquest/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/pubquest
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