Beer School: Bottling Success at the Brooklyn Brewery
Steve Hindy
Language: English
Pages: 306
ISBN: 0470068671
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
What do you get when you cross a journalist and a banker? A brewery, of course.
"A great city should have great beer. New York finally has, thanks to Brooklyn. Steve Hindy and Tom Potter provided it. Beer School explains how they did it: their mistakes as well as their triumphs. Steve writes with a journalist's skepticism-as though he has forgotten that he is reporting on himself. Tom is even less forgiving-he's a banker, after all. The inside story reads at times like a cautionary tale, but it is an account of a great and welcome achievement."
—Michael Jackson, The Beer Hunter(r)
"An accessible and insightful case study with terrific insight for aspiring entrepreneurs. And if that's not enough, it is all about beer!"
—Professor Murray Low, Executive Director, Lang Center for Entrepreneurship, Columbia Business School
"Great lessons on what every first-time entrepreneur will experience. Being down the block from the Brooklyn Brewery, I had firsthand witness to their positive impact on our community. I give Steve and Tom's book an A++!"
—Norm Brodsky, Senior Contributing Editor, Inc. magazine
"Beer School is a useful and entertaining book. In essence, this is the story of starting a beer business from scratch in New York City. The product is one readers can relate to, and the market is as tough as they get. What a fun challenge! The book can help not only those entrepreneurs who are starting a business but also those trying to grow one once it is established. Steve and Tom write with enthusiasm and insight about building their business. It is clear that they learned a lot along the way. Readers can learn from these lessons too."
—Michael Preston, Adjunct Professor, Lang Center for Entrepreneurship, Columbia Business School, and coauthor, The Road to Success: How to Manage Growth
"Although we (thankfully!) never had to deal with the Mob, being held up at gunpoint, or having our beer and equipment ripped off, we definitely identified with the challenges faced in those early days of cobbling a brewery together. The revealing story Steve and Tom tell about two partners entering a business out of passion, in an industry they knew little about, being seriously undercapitalized, with an overly naive business plan, and their ultimate success, is an inspiring tale."
—Ken Grossman, founder, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.
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Manhattan Brewing Company, a brewery restaurant in Soho that was one of the first such establishments on the East Coast. I am sure he took a whopping salary cut to become the assistant brewer there. He was apprenticed to Mark Witty, an Englishman who had been a brewer at Samuel Smith’s in Yorkshire, one of the companies that we were distributing in New York City by 1991. Mark and Garrett made fantastic beers at Manhattan Brewing Company, but the company struggled under several owners who seemed
company, making $24,000 a year. At home, I worked to sell this idea to Ellen and also tried to sell it to Tom. Ellen accepted the idea with some hesitation, but Tom balked. He said we could not afford, and did not need, an office manager at this time. Tom and I planned to pay ourselves $48,000 each in the first year. (In reality, it would be much less.) At the time, we hoped to be able to hire our first salesperson in the early part of 1988. Tom was right, but he also was reneging on his offer of
minimum.) Tip number three: You won’t convince everyone, so don’t try. In fact, it’s highly unlikely that you will convince even one person in four that your plan is good enough to deserve their money or their time. If everyone around you tells you they think you’ve really got a winner, congratulations—you’re surrounded by people who love you. That’s a good thing, but just don’t start believing them. The hard truth is that every new idea initially looks like a long shot. You can’t convince
sort of guy who looked like he was going to make a lot of money at whatever he eventually put his mind to. Mike had a degree in business from the C.W. Post Campus of STEVE DISCUSSES THE KEYS TO SUCCESSFULLY MOTIVATING EMPLOYEES ★ 111 Long Island University. When I began talking about starting a brewery, Mike was fascinated. I think I would count Mike as my first convert, even before Tom. He embraced the idea of the Brooklyn Brewery with enthusiasm, and he was more than ready and willing to go
and restaurants. Reich was raising money to build a brewery in Manhattan. His confident, smiling 10 ★ BEER SCHOOL face appeared in articles in the New York Times and New York magazine. About the same time, the Manhattan Brewery, a brewery restaurant, successfully started up in Soho. In Albany, Bill Newman’s four-year-old Newman Brewing Company was thriving. All these ventures seemed to be successful. They were developing a new market for domestic beer brewed to the standards of imported