He Fell Asleep in a Tub of Beer in the Polish Alps

Jessica splashed water on his face to wake him from his slumber. “Damien, wake up! I had an epiphany just now.”  

The sleeping man was her husband and travel partner over the past 14 months. He had fallen asleep in a tub of beer at a beer spa in the Polish Alps.

Her mind raced with calculations about a business opportunity. She thought to herself, “Americans love beer and the US is behind on social wellness.”  

She continued, “This is our idea,” gesturing to their surroundings. “We’re going to open one of these.”

Still groggy, Damien rubbed his eyes. Not from the effects of the alcohol but rather from a lack of good sleep. They had backpacked through 25 countries by that point.

He responded with an outstretched hand, “Slow down. Drink a pint of beer while we run the numbers.”

That moment changed this couple's entire future.

The couple met in New York, got married and were moving up in their corporate careers. But they felt something was amiss. In the evenings they would discuss different business ideas.

One night they made a decision. They would quit their jobs, sell all of their possessions and travel the world. All in the pursuit of a business idea they could bring home and eventually franchise. 

That was how Oakwell Beer Spa began. They opened their first location in the River North Art District in Denver, Colorado in February, 2021. I'm originally from Colorado so the concept resonated with me.

Every brand has an origin story. But theirs was one of the most unique I’d heard.

I came across their story through a podcast about founders in the health and wellness space.

This was back in March. At the time, I didn’t know it was the first of 19 podcast shows they would appear on in 2026. Jessica mentioned they’d just started looking for franchisees the month before.

I researched their business and read several articles. They had been featured in top publications like Condé Nast, BBC, National Geographic, and Entrepreneur Magazine.

I even wrote a LinkedIn post about their story and tagged their Company page.  

Then I published a video to Instagram. I had tagged them in the video to get their attention.

Their social media team quickly responded, “Thanks for sharing our story! Just to clarify, our herbal beer baths contain no brewer’s yeast or actual beer. Just an unfermented blend of hops, barley, and herbs you soak in, like a giant beer tea.”

I was intrigued by the team's attention to detail to protect their brand.

Their Instagram had 20k followers and featured a well curated feed. Many of the highly produced Reels featured larger creators. They also published some videos in Spanish to cater to the local Hispanic market.

I quickly tabulated their views, over 3M. I was genuinely impressed and curious if they could replicate that success on other channels.

Their Facebook had 13k followers albeit with fewer Reels. Check.

Now here's where things started to take a dip. 

While they’d had a YouTube channel since 2021, it was practically abandoned and featured just a handful of videos. They didn't have accounts on either X or TikTok. 

I was a bit surprised that they didn’t push more content on these channels.  

Then I checked their paid ads on Meta. They were running a strict B2C play of about 50 campaigns with “come experience the spa” UGC vibes and messaging.

Their LinkedIn Company page had only three posts. 

Each of the founders posted sparingly. Even so, I sent each of them a connection request, not knowing if they would accept. But to my surprise they did.

So naturally I sent a message to Jessica, the CEO.

Since I didn’t hear back I moved on.

By May I began moving closer to AI search and how companies could shape how they show up in the results.  

I read a Semrush report that analyzed 89k LinkedIn URLs and Reddit was the top domain cited by LLMs.  

And began searching how different companies showed up on the platform.  I came across a thread "Has anyone been to Oakwell Beer Spa?" in a Denver sub-reddit. 

The feedback was largely positive. But there were comments like, "It’s a hot tub with essentially a tea bag in it." that had no response from the management team.

Interestingly, Jessica published an article on LinkedIn that explains exactly what Oakwell is and why social wellness is replacing the stuffy spa era.

The post answers nearly every Reddit objection in her own words.

This is a company that clearly cares about their brand image. And I was keeping an eye on their progress.

On another podcast, Jessica boasted of their 3,000+ 4.9-star reviews on Google Maps. So I checked and found that the owners responded to every last one of those reviews. I wrote another LinkedIn post about this occurrence.

My initial hunch in March was that Jessica and Damien were two incredibly busy operators running two locations. They launched their second location in the affluent Highlands Ranch suburb.

I was under the impression that their low output of LinkedIn posts on their personal profiles was the result.

Much to my surprise they began to share more of their story on their IG feed. Earlier this month they collabed with Sweat Community to promote a recent podcast appearance. 

The post focused on the B2C side. Topics like what a beer bath actually is, the challenges of leaving corporate life to build a business and why they chose Denver. Not a word on franchising.

I decided to listen to the episode to get an update on their journey over the past 5 months. They were clear that they were looking to build their franchise business slowly. 

Jessica said, “We’re very close to signing our first few." She also mentioned their franchising landing page oakwellfranchise.com.

I searched for their podcast appearances. They featured on 3 in 2024, 4 in 2025 and 19 in 2026. They were on to something.

So I grabbed the transcripts of each to uncover what they were up to.

Keep in mind only about five of these videos are uploaded to their press page. You have to scroll and expand to even find them. 

I’m not a franchise expert outright, but in my prior corporate career I did a couple M&A transactions. One of those entailed Walmart de México’s sales of its VIPS restaurant business, the largest casual dining chain in Mexico. The buyer was Alsea, the leading multi-brand restaurant operator in Latin America and Europe.

So I understood some of the mechanics.

They spent two years building the Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD), the operations manual, and the support system behind them. The FDD is a legal document companies like Oakwell need to provide to a potential franchisee before a contract.

They purposely built their second location as a franchise prototype. This meant they had to hire a professional general contractor and not the DIY approach they took on their first location in order to produce factual construction costs.

They staffed the second location with new hires. This allowed them to test the training on people who were not familiar with the original location.

Then they mapped out 100 target markets across the US.

On The Franchise Scale Up Show, the host Guy Coffey asked Jessica how they find franchisees. Her first answer was podcasts.

Appearing on so many podcast shows to move the needle for your business is a valiant effort. The challenge is that you leave a lot up to the host to drive the discussion.

Since their goal was to not only find more potential franchisees, but also to explain the franchising process it wasn't an easy target.

Across 17 of the 19 podcasts, their origin story was front and center. It's an incredible story, but the same person only needs to hear it once.

Facts like the franchise fee ($45,000) or estimated revenue per location ($2.5M) only came up once.

When you don't own the assets it's hard to control the narrative.

Then I looked at their paid ads. They're currently running around 80 campaigns, but only 20 relate to the business of franchising.

When I clicked the link from one ad it took me to a landing page that is not linked directly to their main website.

The embedded video is from another creator's YouTube account that has 855 subs and the video has 88 views, no likes or comments.

Here's the thing. The founders have the social media team and the channels to own what goes where.

And since I've moved into the newsletter space myself, I'm always up to learn more from other newsletter operators.

I was pumped to learn more about their business when I saw their newsletter sign-up page on their site. 

I quickly entered my email address.  

Then I pressed the subscribe button. Nothing. I tried multiple browsers on both my laptop and iPhone.  

The button didn't work and I was bummed I wasn't able to subscribe.

Here's a team that has pumped out 125 blog posts over three years.

Yet they've yet to correct an errant subscribe button.

Here's why that matters.

In the era where algorithms control who sees your videos and expensive paid media campaigns can underperform you need a better option.

That's where newsletters come into play.

Nathan May, the founder of The Feed Media, explained the mechanics of which metric to track.  Lifetime value or LTV of a client.

His point is that you shouldn't spend to acquire a subscriber until you know how much a subscriber is worth. For newsletters that have large followings and drive ad revenue, he points out that one subscriber generates a few cents per open.

Oakwell doesn't need an ad-supported newsletter for their franchising business. That's why the math is different for them. 

Let me explain.

A spa guest's visit is worth about $300. Oakwell takes 9% off the top of what each franchise location brings in. On a location pulling in $2.5M a year, that’s nearly $230K back to Jessica and Damien. Or nearly 800 times a single spa visit.

So Jessica and Damien don’t need a big email newsletter. They need the right people.

Nathan calls this Dream 100 outreach. Instead of paying to acquire subscribers you don't know, you hand-pick the hundred people most likely to buy. Then you invite them personally. At a 1% conversion that gets them their first franchise.

Sounds like a pipe dream? Not so fast. In 2019, Damien built a free Wix page by leaving a sign in the window asking passersby to sign up. 

They emailed the list twelve days prior to opening their first location and got two bookings a minute. The spa was completely full for the first two months.

On the Goal Crazy podcast, Jessica said a landing page on their site already collected 300 franchise leads over five years. Two podcast hosts literally told them live on the show they were interested in franchise opportunities.

They need to run the exact same play with the franchisees they're looking for.

They gave away their best material on fourteen hours of podcast interviews. Every one of them lives on someone else's channel.

- Antonio

P.S. Oakwell’s situation isn't unusual. Many founders are sitting on years of content that never gets published. If that sounds like your business, hit reply and I'll tell you where I’d focus first.