SCHLAFLY BEER
AND THE
RENAISSANCE IN
英石. LOUIS
INNOVATIONS CASE NARRATIVE:
SCHLAFLY BEER
TOM SCHLAFLY
时间. S. Eliot, the St. Louis native who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948,
wrote in The Dry Salvages:
I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable . . .
His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom.
Eliot’s nursery bedroom was located on Locust Street in the City of St. 路易斯,
three blocks west of where The Schlafly Tap Room sits today. Although he
wrote these lines while living in London, we know from his allusion to his
nursery bedroom that he was referring to the Mississippi, not the Thames.
These words are especially appropriate for
the story of Schlafly Beer for several reasons.
第一的, the Mississippi River is the reason St.
Louis was founded more than 250 几年前
and one of the reasons it grew to become the
city it is today. 第二, the journey of any
entrepreneur is as unpredictable as the flow
of a mighty, untamed river. 最后, this is a
story about beer . . . a strong brown god that
has its own deities in the religions of ancient
Sumeria and Egypt.1
Beer also has the status of a strong brown
god in St. 路易斯, where it has been crucial to
之后, when German
the city’s identity since the first half of the
19th century. While the first brewery in St.
Louis opened in 1809, the story really began
20 年
律师
Gottfried Duden published Eine Reise zu
den westlichen Staaten von Nordamerika (A
Journey to the Western States of North
美国), which prompted a wave of
German immigration to Missouri in the
1830s.
The failed German revolution of 1848
caused more Germans to emigrate, 和
many of the so-called Forty-Eighters ended
46
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Schlafly Beer and the Renaissance in St. 路易斯
up in St. 路易斯. These revolutionaries
brought with them strong convictions
about freedom and an opposition to slav-
埃里, which led many of them to fight for the
Union during the Civil War. They also
brought an appreciation for beer.
The Germans who came to St. Louis found
a geography perfectly suited for brewing
beer. The Mississippi provided an abun-
dance of good water, which accounts for
多于 90 percent of the content of beer.
The region also had an extensive network of
underground limestone caves with year-
round temperatures in the 50s, which made
them ideal for storing beer.
German immigrant Adam Lemp is credited
by some with having brewed the first lager
beer in the United States, perhaps as early as
1838. Whether or not Lemp started brewing
lager that early, it is generally accepted that
经过 1842 he had built a large commercial
brewery that was primarily producing lager
beer, the style most common in the United
States today.
它是 18 多年后, 在 1860, that Eberhard
Anheuser acquired sole ownership of the
Bavarian Brewery, a local company that had
gone bankrupt. The following year his
daughter Lilly married Adolphus Busch, A
partner in a firm that sold brewing supplies.
在 1865 Adolphus purchased an interest in
the Anheuser brewery, which was then
brewing 4,000 barrels per year, far less than
the Lemp brewery. Upon the death of
Eberhard Anheuser in 1880, Adolphus
assumed ownership of the brewery, 现在
known as Anheuser-Busch. This was four
years after the brewery had started selling a
beer called Budweiser, named for a town in
what is now the Czech Republic.
One hundred years later, Anheuser-Busch
was the dominant brewery in St. Louis and
Budweiser was its flagship brand. The Lemp
brewery, like many others, had shut down
在 1920 with the advent of Prohibition.
William Lemp Jr., the last president of the
brewery, had committed suicide in 1922.
Based on my personal recollection from the
late 1960s, the Van Dyke Brewery had
opened in St. 查尔斯, slightly west of St.
路易斯, and reportedly attempted to lure cus-
tomers with a questionable commercial
campaign that encouraged them to “Take a
case of VD home to your wife.” It closed its
doors soon thereafter. As late as the 1960s,
Falstaff, a brand originally produced by
Lemp, was challenging Budweiser for the
hearts, minds, and palates of St. Louis beer
drinkers, but it closed its local brewery in
1977, leaving Anheuser-Busch as the only
brewery in St. 路易斯.
Anheuser-Busch soon had, and still has, A
status unlike that of any other corporation
in St. 路易斯. Even today, when other large
companies are known by their official
名字, A-B is simply called “The Brewery.”
No one ever called McDonnell-Douglass
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tom Schlafly is the Chairman and Cofounder of The Saint Louis Brewery, LLC, which has brewed
Schlafly Beer since 1991 and is now the largest American-owned brewery in Missouri. Tom is
also a partner at the St. Louis law firm Thompson Coburn LLP. He received his undergraduate and
law degrees from Georgetown University. Tom is a St. Louis native and lives in the Central West
End neighborhood in St. Louis with his wife, Ulrike, a native of Cologne, 德国.
© 2016 Tom Schlafly
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Tom Schlafly
“The Aircraft Company” or refers to
Monsanto as “The Chemical Company.”
Even the media accepted and accept this
convention. Traffic reports still refer to con-
gestion or the lack thereof on I-55 by The
Brewery.
Two vignettes illustrate the depth of St.
Louis’s attachment to The Brewery:
read,
在 1980 I saw a bumper sticker on
an American-made car in South
“这
那
英石. 路易斯
Ayatollah
Coors.”
drinks
Ayatollah Khomeini was the
Iranian cleric who held 63
Americans hostage in Tehran,
while Coors was the Colorado
beer company trying to make
inroads in St. 路易斯, Anheuser-
Busch’s hometown. I’m sure the
owner of the vehicle could think of
nothing worse to say about either
the Ayatollah or Coors. While the
thought of an Islamic fundamen-
talist drinking any kind of beer
was and is preposterous, 这
bumper sticker left little doubt as
to the allegiance of the car’s
owner.
这
to hear
期间
period when
Anheuser-Busch owned the St.
Louis Cardinals baseball team,
visitors to Busch Stadium were
often surprised
这
Budweiser jingle, “When you say
芽 . . .” instead of “Take Me Out
to the Ballgame” during the sev-
enth-inning stretch. On special
场合, August A. Busch Jr.
would ride into the stadium on a
wagon pulled by Clydesdales to a
reception typical of that given
European royalty. Fans readily
spent an hour’s wages for a cup of
Budweiser, happily putting more
money into the pockets of the bil-
lionaire
the horse-drawn
wagon who was fondly known as
Gussie.
在
This was the atmosphere in St. Louis in the
late-1980s when I decided to open a micro-
brewery in the shadow of The Brewery. 在
the 15th anniversary of Schlafly Beer, I wrote
that my decision was akin to proselytizing
for a new religion in the shadow of the
Grand Mosque in Mecca. 尽管如此, 我的
intuition told me that a microbrewery in St.
Louis could succeed. After all, such brew-
eries were having great success in other
cities that weren’t all that different from St
路易斯, notwithstanding the domineering
presence of The Brewery. 更重要, 我
was certain that someone would be operat-
ing a successful microbrewery in St. Louis in
the not too distant future and that if I didn’t
at least try I’d be kicking myself for the rest
of my life. If I tried and failed, at least I’d
know I’d given it my best shot.
Initially I simply wanted to brew good
beer—that is, the styles I liked to drink—
and felt I’d be satisfied if I made enough
money to stay in business. I soon realized,
然而, that the social and economic ben-
efits Schlafly Beer was bringing to St. 路易斯
were both unexpected and rewarding.
The economic benefits are easy to docu-
蒙特. We bought a building that had been
vacant for 22 年. Almost overnight we
有 75 employees receiving paychecks, 支付-
ing taxes, and spending money in the com-
社区. We were generating hundreds of
thousands of dollars per year in new sales
tax revenue for the city and state, 和
business was paying thousands of dollars in
new property taxes on our building and
equipment.
The psychological impact was even more
重要的. By any measure, Schlafly Beer
was and still is a small business. 但是
media attention we received and continue
to receive has been disproportionate to the
size of the business. Before we opened, all of
the major news outlets did stories on our
plans to start a new brewery in St. 路易斯,
and the local TV stations covered our grand
opening on December 26, 1991. It wasn’t
the size of our operation that was newswor-
48
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Schlafly Beer and the Renaissance in St. 路易斯
thy but the idea of a new brewery in St.
路易斯, compounded by our decision to set
up shop in an abandoned building in a
neighborhood that many people had writ-
ten off long ago.
在 1991 we paid $137,000 for a 40,000- square-foot building and an adjacent park- ing lot. When we opened, we were sur- rounded by vacant buildings and warehous- 英语. One such building a block north of us had once been the home of The Sporting News. Units there now sell for more than we paid for our building. Within a few blocks of our original location, dozens of other buildings have experienced a similar trans- 形成. In a neighborhood that once was desolate parking has become a problem. I realized that we were viewed as pioneers for two reasons: we had introduced the con- cept of microbrewed beer to a city that few locals thought would accept it, and we had ventured into a neighborhood that few peo- ple thought had any potential for develop- 蒙特. I like to think that in challenging these taboos, Schlafly Beer was a catalyst for the revitalization of St. 路易斯. In The Dry Salvages, Eliot describes the Mississippi as Patient to some degree, at first recognized as a frontier; Useful, untrustworthy, as a con- veyor of commerce; Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges. The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten. Three-quarters of a century after Eliot wrote these words, the “brown god” is still “almost forgotten” in the city it spawned. 英石. Louisans have turned their backs not only on the river but on the city itself. With the benefit of hindsight, I will tell the story of how Schlafly Beer improved two zip codes in the urban core of St. 路易斯, and with them the community at large. HOW DID A LAWYER END UP IN THE BEER BUSINESS? And malt does more than Milton can To justify God’s ways to man. These lines were written by A. 乙. Housman in “A Shropshire Lad,” which I studied while majoring in English at Georgetown University. The message at the time seemed pretty clear to me—that I could learn more over a pitcher of beer at The Tombs, a stu- dent hangout, than by reading Paradise Lost. Fortuitously, the legal drinking age for beer and wine in the District of Columbia at the time was 18, making it that much easier to follow a Shropshire lad’s example. In the late 1960s, the universe of beer in the United States was largely limited to light American lagers, with a few exceptions. At Matt Kane’s Bit o’ Ireland, near Thomas Circle on 13th Street in Washington, I had my first taste of Irish stout, probably in 1967. Around the same time, my classmates and I discovered imported German beer at the Old Stein on Connecticut Avenue, near Dupont Circle. In the summer of 1983, 13 years after receiving my undergraduate degree from Georgetown, I embarked on additional beer studies at the University of Oxford. By this time I was a lawyer in private practice in St. 路易斯, having received my law degree from Georgetown in 1977. I had enrolled in a continuing legal education course at St. Edmund’s Hall at Oxford that compared the English and American legal systems. Perhaps under the lingering influence of A. 乙. Housman, who had studied at St. John’s College, 牛津, I learned a lot more that summer about English beer than about English law. My introduction to Oxford was at The Bear, a traditional pub not far from St. Edmund’s (a.k.a. Teddy Hall), where part of my neck- tie was clipped off and added to the collec- tion on the ceiling. I later ventured to The innovations / 体积 11, 数字 1/2 49 从http下载的://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/11/1-2/46/705198/inov_a_00247.pdf by guest on 08 九月 2023 Tom Schlafly Trout and The Perch, both well worth the walk from town on a pleasant summer evening. At these and other establishments I frequented during my time at Oxford the drink of choice was always “real ale,” which was served at cellar temperature from the cask in which it had been conditioned. It dawned on me that these very ales were the answer to the question Housman posed in “A Shropshire Lad”: Say, for what were hop-yards meant, 或者, why was Burton built on Trent? Soon after returning from Oxford I ran into Charles Kopman, a former law partner. When he asked about the program, I men- tioned offhandedly that I had tasted some delicious beers in England, 添加, “It’s a shame no one here is brewing beers like that.” Charles said simply, “You need to talk to my son Dan.” It was Dan who opened my eyes to the pos- sibility of starting a microbrewery in St. 路易斯. Dan Kopman had grown up here. He attended Kenyon College in Ohio and spent his junior year at the University of Edinburgh. After graduating from Kenyon, Dan worked as an export manager for Young’s, an English brewery, and he spent a lot of time promoting the brand in the United States. He discovered that, in some cities, the wholesalers who carried imported beers also carried beers from local micro- breweries. Microbreweries were distinguished from industrial breweries not just by size but also by the styles of beer they produced. The microbreweries’ aim was to brew styles of beer not offered by the large breweries. At the time, most Americans were completely unaware of the rich variety of beers in the world, 以及超过 30 多年后, many still are. For all the distinctions TV com- mercials promote among Coors, 芽, 磨坊主, ETC。, there’s really little difference among the light lagers that account for over 90 percent of the beer sold in the United States—they’re basically no more dissimilar than different types of Chablis. 实际上, the universe of beer is at least as large as that of wine, and the differences among styles of beer are even greater than those among Chardonnays, Cabernets, and Ports. While craft beers only represent 12% of market share, they account for more than 95 每- cent of the styles on the beer spectrum. Back in the 1980s, 英石. Louis was perceived as unreceptive to the notion of microbreweries for two main reasons: the dominance of The Brewery was a huge deterrent, and there was a feeling among some locals that St. Louis wasn’t as “cool” as the cities where microbreweries were flourishing, which in some ways was the bigger hurdle to over- come. Looking back to an era when St. Louis was the fourth largest city in the country and Union Station one of the busiest railroad terminals in the United States, many St. Louisans believed our hal- cyon days were behind us. The world had flocked to the city during the 1904 World’s Fair, but with the decline of the smokestack economy in which St. Louis had thrived it became just another declining rustbelt city. Cool things were happening on the coasts, not at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers . . . time had passed us by. Compounding the city’s self-image problem was the suburban flight that began in the 1950s and has continued ever since. 自从 1950 the population of the City of St. Louis has declined from 856,796 到 319,294, a loss of over 60 百分. Whatever the problems of the greater metropolitan area, those of the city proper have seemed even more pro- nounced. The appeal of city-living in Boston, 旧金山, 芝加哥, and else- where was not recognized in St. 路易斯. On top of St. Louisans’ loyalty to Anheuser- Busch and the perception that St. Louis was- n’t trendy enough to support microbrew- eries, we faced a more solid obstacle to 50 创新 / Thriving Cities Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/11/1-2/46/705198/inov_a_00247.pdf by guest on 08 九月 2023 Schlafly Beer and the Renaissance in St. Louis back traced Amendment, which opening a microbrewery: it was illegal. The to problem the 21st repealed Prohibition and gave states and municipali- ties greater authority over alcoholic bever- ages than any other aspect of interstate commerce. This resulted in a proliferation of inconsistent and sometimes bizarre regulations statutes, ordinances, and around the United States. Missouri, like most states, had enacted a three-tiered system of beer distribution to avoid the presumed dangers of breweries’ owning and controlling taverns, which could suppress competition. The three lev- els of distribution were strictly segregated (more strictly in some states than in others). Breweries were allowed to sell only to wholesalers, which in turn were allowed to sell to retailers, and breweries were strictly forbidden from owning an interest in tav- erns or other retailers. Our vision was to open a brewery with a restaurant on the premises, but the state of Missouri clearly would not allow us to do so: if we opened a brewery we would not be granted a retail liquor license. 有, 然而, an exception in the law that gave us a possible window of opportu- 本质. 部分 311.070 of Missouri Statutes forbade breweries or any of their employees, officers, or agents from having any kind of financial interest in a retail liquor license, but it did allow breweries to own a financial interest in “entertainment facilities . . . 包括, but not limited to arenas and sta- diums used primarily for concerts, shows and sporting events of all kinds.” This language appeared to give us a solu- 的: as long as we opened a brewpub in conjunction with an entertainment facility, the brewery would be allowed to own an interest in a retail establishment. Or so we the Missouri thought. 很遗憾, Division of Liquor Control didn’t share our interpretation of the statute. When we asked what kind of entertainment facility would meet the statutory requirements, we were told that nothing we could operate would qualify for the exception. In short, the statute really meant, “including and absolutely limited to Busch Stadium and the Anheuser-Busch Soccer Park.” While we were exploring entertainment facilities that might qualify us for a retail license, several home-brewing enthusiasts persuaded the General Assembly to pass a “microbrewery” law in the spring of 1990. The bill, which became Section 311.195 of Missouri Statutes, allowed breweries hold- ing such licenses to brew a maximum of 2,500 barrels per year (a barrel being 31 加仑- lons or the equivalent of 13.77 cases of 12- ounce bottles) and to hold a retail liquor license. The law allowed microbreweries to sell beer directly to consumers, but only on their own premises. We applied for the microbrewery license after realizing there was no other way the state would allow us to brew beer and hold a retail license. We didn’t like the 2,500-barrel cap on produc- tion or the prohibition on selling to other retailers, but we decided to focus on open- ing the brewery and worry about these restrictions later. The year after this bill became law, The Saint Louis Brewery, 公司, maker of Schlafly brand beers, was issued the first microbrewery license in Missouri. We had initially considered opening our brewpub in the Grand Center entertain- ment district in Midtown St. 路易斯. In its heyday, Grand Center was home to several grand movie palaces, the grandest of which was the Fabulous Fox, with a capacity of 4,500 and an organist who played the Mighty Wurlitzer during intermissions. By the 1980s all the movie theaters had closed, but a group of business leaders had come together to reinvigorate the area as an arts and entertainment district. After realizing that we could not obtain a license as an “entertainment facility,” we looked at hun- dreds of other possible locations before set- tling on the John S. Swift Building at 2100 Locust Street slightly west of Downtown, former home of the Swift Printing Company. 创新 / 体积 11, 数字 1/2 51 从http下载的://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/11/1-2/46/705198/inov_a_00247.pdf by guest on 08 九月 2023 Tom Schlafly The Swift Building was a beautiful structure listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but it had fallen on hard times. Swift had moved out in 1969, 22 years earlier, and the intervening years had not been kind. The building had suffered the predations that typically befall any vacant building in an urban area, as well as extensive damage from a huge firestorm that engulfed the neighborhood in 1976. In the intervening years, the building’s main claim to fame had been a “cameo appearance” in Escape from New York, John Carpenter’s 1981 film. We bought the building on July 17, 1991, 和, after five months of furious rehabbing, The Saint Louis Brewery officially opened on December 26. “THE LAW IS A ASS, A IDIOT” In the first eight months of 1992, business at The Schlafly Tap Room was good. People were discovering Schlafly beer and liking it, and we were hearing more and more from customers who wondered where else they could find it. The answer always surprised them: “Nowhere but here.” “Why is that?” they asked. “Because Missouri law won’t allow us to sell anywhere else.” One disap- pointed customer, obviously familiar with Oliver Twist, exclaimed indignantly, “The law is a ass, a idiot.” We heard this kind of comment often enough to convince us that we ought to try to change the law. In the fall of 1992, I began three state senators— meeting with Democrats Wayne Goode and John Schneider, and Republican Franc Flotron— who were all sympathetic. With their help I drafted an amendment to the Missouri microbrewery law that would raise the annual production limit for microbreweries from 2,500 barrels to 60,000, which corre- sponded with the federal definition of small breweries for excise tax purposes. It also would allow microbreweries to sell beer not just on their own premises but also to licensed wholesalers. When the Missouri General Assembly con- vened in January 1993, one of the highest priorities on Anheuser-Busch’s legislative agenda was a bill that would allow grocery and convenience stores to sell beer on Sunday, which was not then permitted. When Senator John Scott introduced the Sunday sales bill on behalf of A-B, Senator Goode, with senators Flotron and Schneider as cosponsors, attached our bill as an amendment. His strategy was to prevent our bill from languishing in an obscure committee. At this point the news media had developed a keen interest in the story. My picture appeared in color on the front page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch under the headline, “Tiny Brewery May Come Up Against A- B.” When A-B’s lobbyist John Britton denounced our amendment, 说, “60,000 barrels, that’s an inordinate amount of beer” (this from someone whose client was then producing close to 87 million barrels per year, 几乎 150,000 percent of the amount he called “inordinate”), The St. Louis Business Journal ran the headline, “Busch Lobbyist Britton Helps Dilute Brew Pub Bill.” The dilution to which the Business Journal referred was Senator Scott’s subsequent amendment to our amendment, which low- ered the annual production limit for micro- breweries to 10,000 barrels but allowed us to sell beer to other accounts through licensed wholesalers. The same story quoted Senator Goode as saying he advised me to talk to representatives from Anheuser-Busch to negotiate a mutually agreeable production limit. I took his advice and had numerous discus- sions with Mark Boranyak, who handled state government affairs for A-B. Boranyak eventually gave me his personal guarantee that Anheuser-Busch would not oppose a production ceiling of 17,500 barrels per year for microbreweries. I relayed this informa- tion to Senator Goode, who added an amendment to A-B’s Sunday sales bill that 52 创新 / Thriving Cities Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/11/1-2/46/705198/inov_a_00247.pdf by guest on 08 九月 2023 Schlafly Beer and the Renaissance in St. Louis reflected the deal we had reached. I wasn’t happy about having a cap on our beer pro- 归纳法, but I figured this deal was the best I could expect at the time. What happened next drew the attention of the Wall Street Journal, which ran a story on May 14, 1993, with the headline, “Battling a Goliath Remains as Daunting a Task as Ever.” Behind closed doors, 这 17,500 bar- rel production limit had been reduced to 10,000. Anheuser-Busch claimed not to know how the language was changed, even though it had micromanaged every other detail of the legislation. According to the Journal, “In a statement yesterday, Stephen K. Lambright, a vice president and group executive of Anheuser-Busch, said his com- pany didn’t oppose the 17,500 barrel figure. ‘However, some legislators felt the increase to 17,500 barrels was too big.’” No member of the General Assembly, including the three cosponsors of our bill, admitted to knowing who “some legisla- tors” could be. 也不, in all fairness, did Mark Boranyak, who had given me his word and seemed genuinely surprised that the bill had been rewritten. Disappointed though we were, we moved ahead with plans to get our draft beer into the market. Three local establishments— Blueberry Hill, Cardwell’s in Clayton and The Trainwreck on Manchester—were the first to offer Schlafly. I still remember my sense of exhilaration when, on an August evening in 1993, I was able to walk up to a bar that was not The Tap Room and order a Schlafly. Some restaurants weren’t equipped to offer our draft beer, and before too long cus- tomers began asking for bottled Schlafly. It’s worth noting that 80 percent of all the beer sold in the United States is bought at “off- premise” locations, such as supermarkets and convenience stores. Of the 20 percent that’s sold in “on-premise” locations, such as bars and restaurants, draft beer accounts for about 50 百分. 换句话说, until we offered packaged beer we were going to miss out on 90 percent of the market. We still faced the legislatively imposed annual production limit, and it simply didn’t make economic sense to add a bot- tling line if we weren’t able to brew more than 10,000 barrels per year. We therefore began to look for a contract brewery that would brew and bottle Schlafly beer accord- ing to our specifications. We eventually struck a deal with August Schell in New Ulm, Minnesota, and introduced bottled Schlafly in the St. Louis market in June 1996. line—provided Once again, the reception we got was very gratifying, so much so that we soon con- cluded there really was enough demand for bottled Schlafly to justify putting in our own bottling state of Missouri would allow us to brew enough beer to meet this demand. 在 1997, when I went back to the General Assembly with another bill to raise the production limit for microbreweries, I found the climate had changed. the There was no longer any organized opposi- tion to our brewing more beer—in fact, I didn’t have to change the microbrewery law. We only had to apply for a “22 Percent License,” which was similar to those issued to wineries. It would permit us to produce an unlimited amount of fermented alco- holic beverages, as long as the alcoholic content was below 22 百分, which was far higher than that of any beer we would want to brew. Apart from the licensing, opening a new brewery with its own bottling line was still a major step, far bigger than any we had con- templated since we opened in 1991. Most of our expansion had been incremental: we had gradually added more fermentation tanks and expanded the kitchen and our workforce had grown accordingly. We now were contemplating establishing a much bigger brewery in a much more expensive building. 创新 / 体积 11, 数字 1/2 53 从http下载的://direct.mit.edu/itgg/article-pdf/11/1-2/46/705198/inov_a_00247.pdf by guest on 08 九月 2023 Tom Schlafly After finding some good used equipment at affordable prices, we set out to find a loca- tion for the new brewery, as we had reached capacity on Locust Street. We wanted a new facility that could produce 25,000 到 35,000 barrels per year. We concentrated our search on former supermarkets, as they had sufficient ground floor square footage to accommodate a brewery and packaging line, and good loading dock access. Unlike a lot of industrial buildings, supermarkets also tended to be near residential areas, thereby providing a good location for a restaurant. We finally chose a former Shop ‘n’ Save store in Maplewood, an inner-ring suburb adjoining the City of St. 路易斯. The building had been vacant for eight years when we bought it in September 2001, shortly after 9/11. Because of its location at the eastern edge of town, the city of Maplewood and its chamber of commerce were eager for us to move in and start generating commercial activity near that portion of Manchester Road, the city’s main thoroughfare. It was perhaps this community pressure that con- vinced Citizens National Bank, which was directly across the street, to give us financ- ing at rates much more favorable than any others we were offered. With a project much greater in scope—and far more expensive—than our renovation of the Swift Building, construction took longer than we anticipated. We finally celebrated the grand opening of Schlafly Bottleworks on April 7, 2003—which coincidentally was the 70th anniversary of an important day in brewing history: on April 7, 1933, 邮政- Prohibition legislation took effect that legal- ized beer with an alcoholic content up to 3.2% by weight (4.0% by volume). This law, which we have celebrated with a dozen subsequent “Repeal Festivals,” is per- haps nearer and dearer to the hearts of beer drinkers since the Reinheitsgebot, the beer purity law pro- claimed by Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria in 1516, which limited the ingredients allowed than any in beer to barley, hops, and water. What many beer drinkers might not realize, 如何- 曾经, is that two and a half centuries earlier, 在 1268, King Louis IX of France had issued a “consumer protection” law for beer drinkers, which declared that “nothing shall enter the composition of beer, but good malt and hops.” How fitting that such a law should be decreed by a king who would later become the patron saint of a city renowned throughout the world for its beer. A TALE OF TWO ZIP CODES The Schlafly Tap Room sits roughly midway between the Grand Center arts and enter- tainment district and the Downtown busi- ness district. While Downtown and Grand Center were the foci of planning and revital- ization efforts when we opened in December 1991, our neighborhood was treated with benign neglect. One night I overheard two college students who discov- ered The Tap Room while home for Christmas vacation. One of them said, “This place is really cool.” His friend replied, “You’re right. What’s it doing in St. 路易斯?” My reaction was mixed—I was pleased to get the students’ thumbs up but offended by their attitude toward their home town. 实际上, around the time we set up shop, the artists began to move into the area, attracted by the affordable space in empty warehous- 英语. Other residents came in the wake of the artists, as did other bars and restaurants and businesses as varied as an advertising agency, a dentist’s office, and an architec- tural firm. The St. Louis Police Department recently moved its headquarters to a build- ing a block from The Tap Room. The St. Louis Fashion Fund has just opened an incubator for fashion designers five blocks east of The Tap Room in the historic St. Louis garment district. Earlier this year the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency announced its decision to spend $1.75 曾是-
lion on its new western headquarters north
of the Tap Room on land next to where the
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Schlafly Beer and the Renaissance in St. 路易斯
infamous Pruitt-Igoe public housing project
once stood.
Before we opened Schlafly Bottleworks,
Maplewood had been struggling. As a small
inner-ring suburb, it had lost much of its tax
根据. The community mood was a mix of
malaise and optimism. I still remember our
opening celebration, when an older gentle-
man approached me and asked, “Are you
先生. Schlafly?” When I said I was, he told me
he was a longtime resident of Maplewood
and lived a block away. I braced myself for a
complaint, as I was sure he was going to
complain about the noise or tell me that
someone was blocking his driveway. 反而
he held out his hand and said, “I want to
shake your hand and thank you for what
you’re doing here. A lot of people in
Maplewood have the feeling the world has
passed them by. It’s wonderful to see some-
thing like this happening in the neighbor-
hood.”
Thirteen years later, Maplewood is a
melange. You can find a variety of restau-
rants, an old-style barber shop, an old-style
bowling alley, an independent hardware
store, antique stores, art galleries, a spice
store, a bookstore, a bicycle shop, 乃至
a typewriter store. There’s a lively arts and
music scene that somehow coexists with
Sam’s Club at the other end of town. 这
community is racially, culturally, and eco-
nomically diverse. Some of what has hap-
pened was the result of careful planning on
the part of the City of Maplewood, 哪个
strongly encouraged us to locate there, 和
some was spontaneous. I don’t think the
artists and hipsters who migrated to
Maplewood were motivated by any particu-
lar government policy. They just moved
there because they liked the scene and could
afford it.
Maplewood, unlike the neighborhood
around The Tap Room, had a lot of resi-
dents when we located there. From the
beginning we were embraced by the com-
社区. One of our earliest efforts was a
partnership with the Maplewood Richmond
Heights School District to establish a com-
munity garden. We later opened our own
garden, where we grow some of the produce
served in our restaurant. The community
room at Bottleworks has served as a forum
for discussing everything from theology to
science to politics to gardening to old
电影.
At both Bottleworks and The Tap Room we
had to be adaptable with the special events
we offered. As with our menus and beers,
the process was one of trial and error. 一些
events we thought would be a huge success
不是, while others came about by acci-
凹痕. 我们的 1992 Oktoberfest, 例如,
offered music and other events, including a
pig roast, but it was a bust.
在 1998, 另一方面, we finally got
around to opening the north building at
The Tap Room. The Swift Building, 哪个
we had purchased in 1991, actually consist-
ed of two buildings joined by a passageway.
Initially we only had enough money to
redevelop the south building and had left
the north building vacant. Our program for
officially opening the bar in the north build-
ing included blessings by a Rabbi, a Catholic
priest, and an Episcopal priest, and a may-
oral proclamation of Saint Louis Brewery
Day in the City of St. 路易斯. It was so suc-
cessful that we decided to make it an annual
事件, which has evolved into Hop in the
City and now attracts thousands of people
every year.
Other successes are Burns Night, which fea-
tures bagpipes, haggis, Scotch Ale, 这
recitation of poems by Robert Burns, 我的
donning a kilt and reciting a poem I wrote
about the ghost of Robert Burns; and our
Stout and Oyster Festival, featuring skilled
oyster shuckers and more than 50,000 oys-
ters shipped in from both coasts. The value
of these events is more intangible than the
revenue they produce. We offer our patrons
an opportunity to relax, have fun, and feel a
sense of community pride.
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Tom Schlafly
Schlafly has endured because we’re small
and nimble. We have had to think on our
feet and respond to changing situations.
We’ve survived for a quarter-century by
changing our menus, our beer portfolio,
and our overall business plan to adapt to
what the market has told us. I’m happy to
say that attitudes have changed since that
夜晚 25 years ago when the young college
students derided St Louis. Talented young
adults who have grown up in the city no
longer feel compelled to leave town, 和
their peers who come here temporarily for
school or work now have a reason to stay.
It’s rewarding to think that Schlafly beer has
played a role in retaining this population.
As I’ve often said, we can’t claim to have
changed the world. We can, 然而, 说
that two zip codes are measurably better
because of our being here. Something cool
is happening in St. 路易斯, and we are proud
to be part of it.
PASSING THE BATON
It’s tough to make predictions,
especially about the future.
— Yogi Berra
Yogi’s wisdom was particularly apt on
十一月 12, 2008, when Anheuser-Busch
announced that it had been acquired by
InBev, the brewing company formed by a
merger between Belgium-based Interbrew
and Brazilian brewer AmBev. Reporters
from local TV stations showed up at The
Tap Room to get my reaction, but what
could I say? Schlafly was now the largest
American-owned brewery in St. 路易斯. 我们
had become The Brewery.
As this reality started to sink in, my entire
perspective changed. Since our founding 17
years earlier, my focus had been on short-
term demands, like making payroll and
keeping up our payments to the bank. I had-
n’t sat back and asked myself, what next?
What’s going to happen not next month or
next year but ten years from now? Twenty
年? I reflected on the fact that the brew-
ery was likely to outlast me, a possibility I
hadn’t considered when we opened. I don’t
have any children to whom I would pass it
在, so it was certain that someone else
would eventually own the brewery. I wanted
this transition to be orderly.
I thought about what I had gotten out of the
brewery. It had been profitable, and while
making money isn’t the greatest benefit I’ve
received, it was a prerequisite to all the oth-
呃. I also had some friends I never would
have met if not in the beer business. 它是
even fair to say that I met my wife because
of the brewery: without it I probably would-
n’t have enrolled in a German class, and if I
hadn’t taken German I probably wouldn’t
have introduced myself to Ulrike at the
Missouri Botanical Garden Christmas party
在 1993.
I had a sense of satisfaction that we had
done something beneficial for St. 路易斯. 我们
also had benefited communities surround-
ing the city, such as Maplewood, not just the
city proper. We’ve probably employed more
比 2,000 people over the years, we reno-
vated two buildings that had been vacant a
long time, and we reinvigorated two lan-
guishing neighborhoods. 和, 最后, I had
earned a seat at the table of civic involve-
蒙特. Seventeen years earlier I was merely
one of more than 7,000 lawyers in St. 路易斯,
but as president of a brewery I had a posi-
tion in the community that was out of pro-
portion to the size of our business.
I then thought about the constituencies that
need to be accommodated in any transition.
First were the employees. While it might
seem like a cliché to say we owe our success
to our employees, in this case the cliché was
true. I signed close to 200 biweekly pay-
checks and couldn’t do any one of those
people’s jobs. I wanted to be sure they were
treated fairly under a new owner.
Then of course there were our customers.
When we opened in 1991, the conventional
wisdom was that a craft brewery could not
succeed in St. 路易斯. From day one our
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Schlafly Beer and the Renaissance in St. 路易斯
patrons had helped us prove otherwise and
I wanted to reward their loyalty. I felt I
owed it to them to be sure that Schlafly
would continue to offer the quality of beer,
食物, and service they had a right to expect.
Finally there were the two communities—
one on the western edge of Downtown and
the other in Maplewood—that had wel-
comed and embraced us, and I didn’t want
to abandon them. My worst nightmare
would be for InBev to acquire the Schlafly
brand, close the local facilities and fire the
雇员, and abandon St. 路易斯.
As word got out about our effort to create a
succession plan, I received dozens of unso-
licited offers, typically from out-of-town
venture capital firms. I politely declined
each one, as I was looking for local investors
who weren’t planning to sell the business or
move it out of town. I also wanted to remain
involved as long as I could contribute in a
productive way, and I wanted a place for
employee ownership. While these require-
ments were very demanding, I had one
优势: I didn’t need to sell. The busi-
ness was experiencing double-digit growth
so we had time to wait for the right deal.
In May 2012, more than three years later,
we closed a deal with Sage Capital, a firm
based in St. 路易斯. Sage now had majority
控制, 和 60 percent ownership, 尽管
my share was reduced from over 70 百分
to just under 20 百分. Dan Kopman’s
share was 10 百分, and the rest was
owned by employees and a few other share-
持有者. Dan and I signed employment con-
tracts that obligated us to maintain at least
10 percent ownership. My hope was, 和
还是, to see employee ownership increase
with the purchase of additional shares from
我.
Four years later I’m still pleased with the
交易. My role is now that of non-
executive chairman, meaning I’m very
much involved but not on a day-to-day
基础. We have a new CEO, which frees Dan
to spend more time on government rela-
tions and representing us in the industry,
two areas where he excels. Although the
new majority owners acknowledge the free-
spirited entrepreneurism that enabled the
business to grow for over 20 年, 我们的
financial controls and reporting have
improved considerably under their watch.
There’s bound to be some culture clash
whenever there’s a merger or a business is
acquired, which happened to us, but I think
it’s fair to say that we’ve maintained mutual
respect among the various cultures and the
company is thriving as a result.
Schlafly has grown almost exponentially
自从 1991. Whereas we once were limited
by law to selling in a single location with a
footprint of about 10,000 square feet, 我们
now distribute our products in 15 states and
the District of Columbia. Our annual pro-
duction is about 60,000 barrels, four times
the maximum for what the industry classi-
fies as microbreweries. Although a regional
brewery, we have achieved national and
international recognition, including some
interviews I did for German TV stations in
faltering German. We’ve outgrown our
capacity at Bottleworks in Maplewood and
are exploring various expansion options. 在
事实, we’re now among the 75 largest brew-
eries in the United States—not bad for a
fledgling enterprise that few people in St.
Louis thought had a snowball’s chance in
hell of surviving.
The universe of beer has also changed con-
siderably since we opened in 1991. The big
breweries are losing market share while
craft breweries are growing. Recognizing
the potential of craft beer, foreign conglom-
erates are buying independent craft brew-
eries or producing their own pseudo-craft
brands. Consider Blue Moon, 例如,
which promotes itself as a craft beer rather
than a wholly owned subsidiary of Coors.
Whatever their advertising methods, 这
fact is that more than 90 percent of the
American beer market is now foreign
owned.
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Tom Schlafly
同时, back in St. 路易斯, dozens of
legitimate craft breweries are thriving in the
shadow of what remains of The Brewery.
Looking at this development, I’m reminded
of the song, “You came a long way from St.
Louis.” St. Louis itself has indeed come a
long way since 1991, when the presence of
The Brewery made the concept of a local
microbrewery unthinkable. The prolifera-
tion of competitors is a challenge for
Schlafly, but it’s good for consumers, 好的
for the community at large, and good for
the neighborhoods where the breweries are
located. I’m pleased that Schlafly has con-
tributed to this progress.
1. Ninkasi, the Sumerian goddess of alcohol,
was born of “sparkling fresh water.” She is
the goddess made to “satisfy the desire” and
“sate the heart.” She would prepare the bev-
erage daily. Tenesit, an ancient Egyptian
deity,
the goddess of beer. 看
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninkasi,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenenet.
是
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