For Chantel Columna, her husband Tamir Danon, and close friend Ayana Coker, opening a brewery had always been a long term dream. The trio had bonded over beer and craft breweries as university students in upstate New York. They dreamed of launching their own brewery where people could foster friendships and find their community the way they did in school. When they moved to Colorado, the three found their opportunity.

In 2018, they launched Novel Strand Brewing Company. They see it as more than just a brewhouse – it’s a community. They pride themselves on providing the best beer they can, with no gimmicks, tricks, or shortcuts.

They carried that ethos into how they take care of their team. When they hired their first full-time employee, Chantel began looking into how to provide healthcare benefits. She knew that most people, including herself, found healthcare stressful. While the marketplace exists, employer sponsored plans looked like one of the best ways to manage access to proper care to Chantel.

As the co-owner of a small business and general manager, Chantel juggles many responsibilities, so she needed to find a way to administer health insurance easily and cost-effectively. She spoke to peers in the industry to see how they were providing benefits, looking into things like health reimbursement programs and plans through a brewers’ co-op program. But in the end, Chantel decided to go with Gusto.

Chantel used Gusto to set up the company’s payroll, taxes, and new hire forms when they opened Novel Strand Brewing Company and has been using the platform since then. After considering all of her options, Gusto was the easy answer, as it allowed her to access health insurance, payroll, benefits, and team management tools all in one place. It’s also easy for the brewery’s employees to understand what healthcare plans are available to them, how to select them, and what their enrollment deadlines are when they use Gusto.

• “Looking at the other options, there was a lot of paperwork and just so many hoops to go through to even just understand what was available…With all the documentation required and the costs with the other options, Gusto was the easier and better option that we kept going back to.”

• “It’s all a click of a button, whether it's health insurance, PTO policies, or sick time policies that we have to implement as well. It makes it really easy: a one-stop shop to manage all of that for our employees.”

• “Honestly, I can’t imagine getting payroll and benefits with any other provider. Gusto’s system is so easy.”

Healthcare benefits, even when they’re being administered to employees who all live in the same state, can be confusing and difficult to navigate. Before using Gusto for healthcare benefits management, Chantel was spending hours, adding up to a whole day’s worth of work every month, trying to get her questions about offering employee health benefits answered. Even after this research, it was unclear to her how to get started, which health plan options to provide her team with from the hundreds available, and how to get everyone enrolled.

Gusto’s benefits advisor helped Novel Strand Brewing Company get started with administering health benefits, gave them a shortlist of health plan options that made the most sense for the needs of the company, managed payments, helped get employees enrolled, and was there to answer any questions.

• “The sign up process was easy and straightforward. When we started, having the benefits advisor help us navigate all the different options made it a lot easier… I’m not a health insurance expert, so the fact that we have someone that can help us through the whole process is just perfect.”

• “Instead of having to spend hours on end just researching Google or going through different help desks, with Gusto, I can just ask the benefits advisor because it's so much easier and they have such a wealth of knowledge.”

The quality of healthcare being offered to her team is a priority for Chantel. While navigating personal health insurance over the years, she’s seen the disparities between different health plans. She wanted to ensure her team could access the best care possible within their budget.

• “I think the biggest thing was that the pool of providers that we had access to with Gusto was really good. They were high-quality but not overly costly."

Providing quality healthcare has also helped Novel Strand Brewing Company hire more full-time employees.

• “Being able to offer health insurance has helped us stay competitive and get to a point where we can make a good offer to a potential full-time applicant. Since being able to do so, we’ve taken on a couple of full-time hires who have enjoyed these benefits.”