Meet Mike And Cathy Rape | entrepreneurs

We had the good fortune of connecting with Mike And Cathy Rape and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Mike and Cathy, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
Before the Covid shutdowns, we ran a live event based production business. Making mead was a beloved hobby that we enjoyed together in our free time. We had a dream of starting our own meadery some day during our “golden years”. When live events came to a screeching halt during the pandemic, so did our livelihood. We decided to “make lemonade out of those lemons” so to speak, and took advantage of the emergency legislation to redirect our retirement funds as start up capital for our new venture.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Mike: Worked in live event production in the hotel hospitality industry before starting his own production company and later a temporary event power and HVAC company. Real-world customer service, networking, and general business skills prepared him for our current venture in the wine making industry.

Cathy: Trained as a Registered Nurse. Took a break from nursing to home school 3 kids and in the process trained as a classical educator and worked for the CiRCE Institute training other educators. Networking and communication skills from working in education paired well with lab and pharmaceutical skills from nurse training to equip me for the wine making industry.

Lesson: The synergy of skills acquired in presumably unrelated fields of career experience can be very powerful when starting something new!

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
We LOVE our historic Downtown Conroe district! There is plenty there for a full day of fun. We would catch the Saturday morning market in front of the courthouse where vendors offer their handmade or hand-grown wares. Having worked up an appetite we would grab lunch at one of several unique mom-and-pop restaurants on the square and spend some time perusing the antique shops. An afternoon beer at Conroe’s German microbrewery, Fass Brewing, in the old Gentry Building. We’d catch a live performance at the historic 1930’s Creighton Theater for a little rest and entertainment, then grab dinner on the square followed by a mead tasting and tour of the production area at our place, The Ferm Meadery.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Big shoutout to our many mentors in the world of mead making especially Bruce and Bridgett Leslie of Gryphon Mead, Ken Schramm of Schramms Mead, and Mike Poole of Texas Mead Works. We also owe a debt of gratitude to Dave Fougeron of Skull and Potion Mead for expanding our resources so we could ramp up business growth. We are now partners with Dave, along with Bruce and Bridgett Leslie as BDM Beverages . As a team, we’ve built the first Mead Hall at the Texas Renaissance Festival.

Website: https://thefermmeadery.com/

Instagram: thefermmeadery

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheFermMeadery