TAMPA, Fla. – Tampa Bay Brewing Co. (TBBC), one of Florida’s oldest independent craft breweries, announced today that 2017 sales increased by more than 27% over the year previous, buoyed significantly by growing demand for their flagship Reef Donkey APA, Old Elephant Foot IPA, and a series of seasonal beers including Quat, Florida Tart, Last Days of Summer, Gourds Gone Wild, and Gingy. This marks the third year in a row of double-digit growth, putting the 23-year-old company on track to exceed 16,000 BBL in 2018.
“While TBBC has been in business since the mid-nineties, most people forget that we have only been distributing outside of our taprooms since late 2011,” remarked David Doble, managing partner and co-founder of TBBC. “We have grown sales organically by building resilient business partnerships with our distributors and purveyors, and allowing the quality of our beer to speak for itself.”
As part of TBBC’s continued growth strategy the brewery has steadily increased its distribution footprint from a handful of Tampa based distributors to more than a dozen statewide. Three more distributors were signed within just the last couple months including Champion Brands, Tri-Eagle Sales, and most recently S.R. Perrott, as a result of the increased demand for TBBC beers.
“Within the next 60 days, Reef Donkey APA and at least one of our seasonal beers will be on shelves in every Publix store from Gainesville to Miami,” added Doble. “This is a significant step for us and we expect it will lead to additional demand and interest in our beers.”
To support and further bolster this growth, TBBC has made significant investments into brewery operations and is mid-way through a refresh of its corporate identity including packaging, corporate logo, and associated marketing materials.
“We recently unveiled new packaging for our award-winning Old Elephant Foot IPA and will debut a similar refreshed design to Reef Donkey along with our TBBC logo in time for Tampa Bay Beer Week in early March,” stated Larry Costigan, TBBC’s creative director. “We have taken our time to create a fresh look that respects our history, reflects our personality, and reinforces our Florida lifestyle focus.”
“The key to our success has been our consistent, organic approach, built upon one thing – our beer,” concluded Doble. “While there are a lot of different ways to approach the business of craft brewing, we’ve seen people come and go when they have lost focus on quality and attempted to buy success instead of building upon a foundation of it. I want TBBC to be around 20, 30 years from now, even though I sure hope to be on my boat far more before then.”