Two men and a van: Strand Brewing Co.’s hard-working road to success
Strand Brewing’s Joel Elliot and Rich Marcello. Photo by Amy Theilig One day early in 2009, Rich Marcello picked up the phone to find his old friend Joel Elliot on the other end. Elliot, as is his way, was short and to the point. “Hey,” he said. “Do you want to do a brewery?” “Sure,” Marcello replied. “I’ll be there.” Marcello was working for a small winery in Paso Robles at the time and Elliot as a photographer’s assistant. They had little money and scant knowledge of brewing. Marcello knew the craft wine and the restaurant industry – he’d started as a teenager washing dishes at the Chart House in 1984. Elliot had homebrewed a bit. Mainly, they liked to surf, and they liked to drink beer. This was the nexus of their friendship, which had begun 20 years earlier when both were regulars at 24th Street in Hermosa Beach, and continued later when both happened to move to Hawaii at the same time. Neither, however, was prone to idle words or pipe dreams. Marcello wasted no time in moving back to the South Bay. Within a few months, they cobbled together $85,000 in loans from friends and family, rented a 1,000 sq. ft. warehouse in Torrance, and purchased a small fermenter, capable of…
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