How can craft brewers expect to win away games if they’re not winning at home? That’s the sports analogy pFriem Family Brewers co-founder and CEO Rudy Kellner used to describe the Hood River, Oregon-based brewery’s strategy when it comes to expanding its distribution footprint.
This week’s Brewbound Podcast highlights a stage conversation from Brewbound Live featuring Kellner and Mike LaRosa, COO and partner at Williamsport, Pennsylvania-based New Trail Brewing. Both breweries have secured impressive volume growth within footprints that don’t stretch far beyond their neighboring states.
Family-owned pFriem was founded in 2013, just as craft was riding another growth wave.
“We had a sense then that at some point in time, there was gonna be really, really good beer everywhere, and that, if you can’t win the home games, it’s gonna be really hard to win the away games,” Kellner said.
The ethos, combined with pFriem’s “scrappy, organically built operation” led the brewery to focus on winning in the Pacific Northwest before thinking about expanding. Today, Oregon and Washington account for 95% of the brewery’s business, with satellite markets in Idaho, Los Angeles, San Diego and Las Vegas making up the remaining 5%, Kellner said.
On the East Coast, New Trail has a similar breakdown, with its home state of Pennsylvania accounting for about 85% of its volume. Combined, Maryland, New Jersey, West Virginia and Delaware make up the remaining 15%, LaRosa said.
Since its founding in 2018, New Trail’s definition of local has evolved.
“When we started eight years ago, we were thinking local was the 10 counties that surrounded Williamsport,” LaRosa shared. “Then as time went on, we’re like ‘Well, could local be larger? Could it be Philadelphia? Could Philadelphia be local to us? Can Pittsburgh or Erie be local to us?’ So it just grew and grew and grew.”
Before the featured conversation, Justin – freshly returned from parental leave – and Jess discuss recent headlines, including the return of Dos Equis’ Most Interesting Man in the World, and whether or not nostalgia can bring in new beer drinkers.
Listen here or on your preferred podcast platform.