New Glarus

I also read the Tribune article yesterday and have to admit that I'm perplexed about certain aspects of this story. This "dilemma" that the article talks about seems to defy conventional wisdom in the marketing of beer for smaller companies. On one hand, as a brewer, you certainly want to instill a certain kinship with your hometown (or homestate) customers. At a certain point in the marketing of beer, however, limiting yourself to one market can kill you. As I think most brewing industry people would agree, hometown loyalty, in terms of future sales, can be a dangerous thing to rely on. What happens when the new XYZ beer brand gradually becomes the new darling of craft or specialty beer drinkers in your area of operation? There has to be some market diversification in order to buffer yourself against local competition and other forces that can eat into your home market. Pete Crowley says he understands the reason behind the move."Your local crowd of beer drinkers is going to be there a lot longer," the implication being, I think, that hometown/homestate loyalty will always win out. I don't necessarily think that's so. If you look back at the history of the brewing industry in Chicago, securing hometown loyalty was always an elusive objective. Why do you think the Pavichevich and Dinehart breweries started shipping out of state? Among other reasons, the Chicago market was too fickle for them to win over a large enough audience (though I'll admit that they had enough other problems, too). How do you think Schlitz or Old Style got into Chicago? Hometown loyalty? There is no such thing as hometown/homestate loyalty. In my second book, The History of Beer and Brewing in Chicago, Volume II, Randy Mosher's quoted as saying that "The 'Drink Local' strategy hasn't worked for 150 years...[that] it is arrogant to assume that local people will support you simply because you're local." He's right. A brewery needs to plan for this inevitable falling off in local sales or the possibility that it never will be able to fully exploit its local market. Without a "Plan B," a new market to exploit, you're going to have a problem when that day comes along...and it will. On the other hand, if a brewer is doing a poor job of serving two masters, better to isolate one for the sake of the other. Seems reasonable. Chicago, however, is an incredibly hard market to conquer, especially for the little guys without the deep pockets for mass advertising and promotion. But once you get in here, you better stay, no matter what the cost. Janet Bischoff of Glunz says they'll replace New Glarus products with "...Edmund Fitzgerald Porter and Burning River Pale Ale from Great Lakes Brewing Co. in Cleveland." Out of sight, out of mind. I'd like to be a fly on the wall when, and if, New Glarus comes back to Chicago and tries to convince Jack Glunz to take them back on. As for people going to Wisconsin for New Glarus beer...I simply ask "How many people and how many times will this happen before this gets a bit old?" Rather than pull-out of the Chicagoland area, why not contract the beer out to someone with some excess capacity? You might not make the kind of money you're pulling in by brewing the stuff yourself, but you also wouldn't be abandoning the most lucrative beer market in the Midwest. Maybe I'm reading more into this article than there really is, but I don't think we're getting the whole story here. As for the comment that "Some have likened the brewery and its following to that of Goose Island in Chicago," somebody let me in on what that's supposed to mean. I don't see an iota of similarity here. Bob Skilnik