Alexandra Ortiz started Shades of Pale Brewing with her husband Trent in 2010. Trent had been homebrewing for fifteen years. He was looking to change careers, and to Alex, it seemed obvious. He loved to brew and people loved his beer; he was open to the idea but he didn’t want to do it alone. For the first few years, he was handling operations and she was working on the brewery while keeping her other job on nights and weekends. She felt like they were both working in the business rather than on the business.

Shades of Pale started in a small, 500 square foot space in Park City. Alex and Trent live in Park City, thought it would be great to live and work in the same place. They quickly outgrew the space and moved into Salt Lake City. They have taken their business one step at a time. These days, Trent focuses on production, Alex works on expansion; finding new markets, exploring potential partnerships, expanding the taproom. She says when they started they were naive. The things they thought would be hard turned out not to be so tough, but the greatest challenges were unexpected. 

The building that houses the brewery used to be a meatpacking plant. A nonprofit purchased the building and was interested in revitalizing the neighborhood. They had trouble fundraising so they turned to investors, and the groups did not see eye to eye. The vision for revitalization began to fall through. Shades didn’t need the whole building, so they leased half of it. The investors took the other half of the building and received money from the state to build apartments. They sent people with saws to physically cut the building in half. The developers then tore down their half of the building in order to use the land to build apartments. Many of the utilities were housed in that half of the building. As business owners, Alex and Trent had to learn how to navigate the unexpected.