David Holland took up brewing brewing beer after retiring from 30 years of service in the U.S. Army’s Special Forces.
Not content with brewing just being a hobby, he launched San Antonio’s Longtab Brewing Co. in 2020. Six years later, his brewpub at 4700 Timco West #105, serving up beer, coffee and pub fare while giving back to the military and veteran community.
We caught up with him talk about his military background, the meaning behind his brewery’s name and the loyalty that’s helped him weather a downturn in beer consumption.
Tell us about your time in the Green Berets.
Probably showing my age here, but I joined the military in 1988, and I served 20 years as a Special Forces medic. And then I served another 10 years as a Special Forces warrant officer. I’ve traveled all over Central and South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and went to Afghanistan early in the war in 2002.
Why get into beer?
I had already retired and was working overseas, and my wife had been diagnosed with cancer. She was at home going through chemo, and she’d bought me a beer kit as a present. The beer kit turned into a hobby, and then the hobby turned into a business. So, after I retired, you know, I wanted to do something to kind of give back, and opening up a brewery dedicated to something I had spent 30 years doing seemed like a good idea.
Explain the meaning behind Longtab Brewing.
I love the name, because it’s not so direct like Special Forces Brewing or something like that — it’s Longtab Brewing, and there’s a little bit of mystique behind it. There’s a lot of tabs in the Army that you wear on your uniform — there’s a Ranger tab, there’s an Airborne tab, there’s a Sapper tab.
Special Forces is the longest of the special skills tabs, so that’s the reason why Green Berets are nicknamed Long Tabbers. The Special Forces tab on the uniform is called the Long Tab. I like that there’s a little bit of mystery behind it. It kind of forces people to ask the question about what Long Tab means. That happens a lot!
The beers themselves have special names inspired by the military, don’t they?
One of the things I realized a while back is that if you drew a family tree off of our taps, they would all connect, because every name ties into military or Special Forces culture in some way. The Special Forces was founded in 1952, but prior to that there was an organization called the OSS (Office of Strategic Services).
When the OSS was dismantled, a lot of those folks went on to create the Special Forces, so we look at that as part of our lineage. We have a lot of beers that have names that date back to events or organizations from 1942 all the way to present — it’s all connected in some way.
Brewery have been commonplace not just in San Antonio but nationwide as beer consumption dwindles. What’s your strategy for staying afloat?
Veterans love beer. Not all of our patrons are veterans, but a good bit of them are, and they’re very loyal. So we’ve been fortunate to have that loyalty — customers with us today that have been with us since day one. We’re always trying to uncover ways to make things better. Whether it’s improving our process in beer, making our coffee better, making our food better, buying higher quality ingredients, better furniture or maybe even something as simple as a nicer napkin.
We also try to figure out a way to improve our customer service. I like to send my staff on research trips. I’ll give them a budget to go eat dinner at a nice place around town, and I tell them to pay attention to everything from the minute they walk in the door to the minute to when they leave — the customer service, the plateware, the way they serve the food, how they ask questions. Because we can embody all those things, even though we’re a little brewpub in a warehouse, there’s nothing that says that we can’t offer the same level of service as some of the best restaurants in town. We’re always striving to make things better, and I think the customer response has been very positive to that.
Is there anything about Longtab Brewing that you wish more people knew?
We do a lot of beers that raise money for charity. We’ve done beers for fallen Green Berets who have died or were killed in action. We work directly with the family to come up with the name and the beer style, and then they help us choose whatever charity they want a portion of the proceeds to go to. So, we’ve done 14 or 15 of those so far. We’ve also done some for women who were part of the Special Forces legacy. We did one for Virginia Hall, who was a spy in World War II — an OSS spy. We’ve also done beers that were specific to a Special Forces-supporting charity, like the Special Forces Trust. We’re the only brewery in town that actually brews a beer called Military City. We’re officially recognized by the Military and Veterans Affairs Office of the City of San Antonio to brew this beer. We’re the only ones that can do it, and it’s and it’s one of our best sellers.
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