It started, like so many good ideas in Acton, with a problem worth solving. During the long social drought of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dave Cote, a father of two preschoolers who lives at the corner of Foster and School Street, found himself looking around the neighborhood and noticing how disconnected everyone had become. Dads waved from driveways. Kids played on opposite sides of streets. The casual, spontaneous conversations that once happened over backyard fences had quietly disappeared.
“I wanted a way to reconnect with other dads that felt natural, not forced or formal,” Cote recalls. “Something low-key, something fun, something with a little structure but a lot of room to just be human.”
The answer, it turns out, was beer.
The Exchange: A Yankee Swap with hops
The Happy Dad Beer Exchange — HDBX, to its regulars — recently completed its sixth iteration, having run successfully each spring and fall since 2023. On the evening of May 2, 2026, 26 fathers from across Acton and neighboring towns gathered at a home near Heritage Road for the spring 2026 edition. That’s 312 beers exchanged in a single night.
The mechanics are deceptively clever. Before the event, each participant submits a “slate”, their personal wishlist of beer styles. Want six lagers, three IPAs, and three non-alcoholic brews? Submit that. Prefer four mystery beers, a couple of stouts, and a few wheat ales? That works too. There’s even a gluten-free category. Cote collects all the slates, scrambles them, and sends each participant a customized “shopping list”, a specific assortment of beer types to purchase for someone else, without knowing for whom.
Participants wrap and label each beer only by style abbreviation (“L/P” for Lager/Pilsner, “PA” for Pale Ale, “M” for Mystery) and bring the pack to the exchange. At the event, beers are sorted by type across the yard. Then, after a round of quick introductions — name, street, hobby, kids — comes what Cote calls “the fishing”: every dad selects the 12 beers that match his original slate, choosing only by the labeled type. The actual brands remain a surprise until the wrapping comes off at home.
The genius of the system is that everyone is guaranteed to take home what they wanted — while still getting the thrill of the unknown. A dad who asked for six mystery beers might unwrap a beloved local craft brew or something he’d never have found on his own. Meanwhile, the social glue of the evening is laid down over shared snacks, a fire pit, and the kind of easy conversation that happens when there’s no agenda, no pressure, and no phones required.
Thinking local: A nod to neighborhood brewers
One of the quiet joys of HDBX is how naturally it supports local commerce. Cote distributes a shopping guide to participants each season, pointing them to Acton’s own bottle shops: Colonial Spirits on Great Road, Buscemi’s Liquors on Main Street, Red White and Brew on Massachusetts Avenue, and Idylwilde Farms on Central Street. Nan’s Rustic Kitchen in Stow makes the list too.
This spring, Greg Jarboe, who served with Cote on Acton’s Economic Development Committee from 2024 to 2025, suggested that the group explore beers from Dirigible Brewing Company, a craft operation located at 24 Porter Road in Littleton. Dirigible’s beers are already available locally at Idylwilde Farms and Colonial Spirits, and the brewery has an Acton connection that matters: they’ve brewed a limited-edition Isaac Davis Brown Ale, named for the Acton minuteman who was among the first to fall at the North Bridge in Concord on April 19, 1775.
“As someone who still follows Acton’s economic development efforts, I think it’s worth encouraging that relationship,” Jarboe noted.
The deeper purpose: Men, community, and belonging
Ask Dave Cote what HDBX is really about, and he’ll tell you: it’s not the beer.
Research consistently shows that adult men in America face a quiet crisis of social isolation. Friendships formed in school or early adulthood tend to erode after marriage, children, and demanding careers. The neighborhood acquaintance who waves from the driveway rarely becomes the friend you can call on a hard day, not because the goodwill isn’t there, but because the simple structures for building that kind of connection have disappeared from most adults’ lives.
HDBX is designed to be one of those structures. It’s repeatable — twice a year, rain or shine. It’s accessible — no committee, no bylaws, no dues. It’s outdoors and device-free, with the proven mood-lifting effects of fresh air and face-to-face conversation. And it has just enough structure — the slates, the shopping, the exchange itself — so the dads feel they have skin in the game to show up, while leaving plenty of room for the organic, unplanned conversations that are the real currency of community.
“Loneliness and social isolation quietly impact men’s mental health in ways we don’t talk about enough,” Cote says. “But something as simple as showing up regularly, reliably builds belonging and resilience. HDBX is a mood-boosting engine. That’s the whole point.”
Jim Carey, a Happy Dad from Acton with grown children who attends regularly, said, “It’s a great excuse to get together with neighbors I hardly ever see and want to know better. New beer is just a plus.”
The WhatsApp group that connects HDBX participants has become its own small community, a place where dads post photos of their haul after the event, trade compliments on a particularly well-chosen stout, and eventually track down the mystery donor of a standout six-pack. It’s the kind of low-stakes connection that, over time, becomes something much more substantial.
What’s next
With growing interest, proven success, and a broader need, Cote believes HDBX should expand beyond Acton. He is seeking a mobile app developer to help build a simple, scalable platform to streamline exchanges, logistics, and communication. The goal is to make the model easy to replicate anywhere and, in his words, “share a blueprint with the Happy Dad community so anyone can launch their own local HDBX.”
The Spring 2026 HDBX, the sixth in the series, took place on May 2 at a home near Foster and School Streets. The next event is already on the calendar: October 24, 2026, location to be confirmed.
Cote made a point to the Acton Exchange: “I am mindful that the beer, or any gift, facilitates human connection, but is actually arbitrary. We could be the Happy Dad Book Exchange. So we don’t want to over focus on the alcohol piece. We consume responsibly and don’t want that to be a barrier to joining up.”
If you’re a dad (or grandad, stepdad, soon-to-be dad, dog-dad, plant-dad, someday-dad, or any other kind of happy dad) in Acton or the surrounding towns, you’re invited. There are no qualifications beyond showing up. Scan the QR code on the HDBX one-pager to join the WhatsApp group, or reach out to Dave Cote directly at djc164@gmail.com.
Bring 12 beers. Leave with 12 different ones. And maybe make a few friends along the way.
Dave Cote is an Acton resident and the founder of the Happy Dad Beer Exchange. Greg Jarboe is a reporter for The Acton Exchange.
