|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Christian Moerlein beer baron expanding empire with Cincinnati brandsFrom: garrison@efn.org (Garrison Hilliard) beers to local ownership. Now, he's about to launch an even more ambitious project - taking them national. Hardman plans to roll out his Hudepohl and Burger brands in dozens of states, joining his Little Kings brand in near-nationwide distribution and turning his Christian Moerlein Brewing Co. into a billion-dollar seller in the process. "I want to be the largest independently owned and operated brewer in the United States," Hardman says. It won't be an easy sell, with beer sales in the U.S. gone sour in the past couple of years. And it's a tall order for a company that is only 6 years old and just recently completed assembling the core Cincinnati brands, some of which have suffered from years of neglect. ? Photos: Moerlein Lager house ? Photos: Moerlein Brewing history ? Quiz: Local beers ? Quiz: How much do you know about beer? But Hardman believes the nation's beer drinkers will go for something different, an antidote to the mass-produced Budweisers and Millers of the world. Little Kings, with its quirky green, 7-ounce bottles, is already sold in 36 states, giving Hardman the distribution network to sell Hudepohl and Burger in those states, too. "That gives us a platform to systematically roll out our entire brand portfolio," he says. He'll be armed with a new offering from well-loved Cincinnati brand Hudepohl, Hudepohl Amber Lager, and a new marketing campaign behind Little Kings that's aimed at 20-somethings. But Hardman's most valuable asset may be his easy-going salesmanship and his enthusiasm for returning Cincinnati to its long-lost place in the nation's brewing pantheon. "It's about recapturing our brewing heritage," Hardman says. "Our goal is to be a top 10 brewer in America again." His goal is to capture 1 percent of the $101 billion U.S. beer market, which would put his privately held Christian Moerlein Co. on par with Boston-based Boston Beer Co., maker of Samuel Adams beers, and Yuengling Beer Co. of Pottsville, Pa. That would be quite a turnaround from just a few years ago, when the Cincinnati beer brands had nearly disappeared after being sold to out-of-town owners. And it would be a major milestone in achieving Hardman's vision to put some froth back into Cincinnati's once-hearty brewing business. It's a vision that began about a decade ago when Hardman was running the North American sales network for Warsteiner, the high-end German imported beer. Hardman, as he says, chased his wife to Cincinnati and eventually rose to the top of Warsteiner's U.S. operations. For a long time, he commuted to Warsteiner's offices in Chicago, until the company even moved its U.S. headquarters here to accommodate him. Even though he's a native of Rhode Island, Hardman, 48, is a beer lover with a soft spot for history and was taken by Cincinnati's lost brewing heritage. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, brewing was a major industry in Cincinnati's German-influenced culture. Prohibition killed much of the brewing business, but even as late as the 1980s, Cincinnati was home to strong regional brands such as Hudepohl, Schoenling, Burger and Wiedemann. But sales to other companies, and general neglect of the brands had, by the late '90s, made them not much more than a distant memory to Cincinnati beer drinkers. Hudepohl was even owned by a Cleveland company, a depressing blow to the psyche of proud Cincinnati beer drinkers. Hardman saw a business opportunity and an audience thirsting for a return to Genuine 14-K. He devoted himself to Storage Building">building a business with a larger purpose - restore the glory days of Cincinnati beers. Building the stable But first he had to win over his wife, Patty, who was less than thrilled with his leaving a high-level role with an established company for a venture that seemed grounded as much in a romantic notion of a bygone era as it was in hard-headed business. She urged him to get a second opinion, so he hired a consulting firm, Cincinnati Growth Partners, to examine whether his idea could work financially. Their verdict, according to Hardman: "You know, this might work." So he negotiated rights of first refusal to buy the old brands if they came up for sale. Over five years, he acquired Christian Moerlein, Hudepohl, Burger and Little Kings, the best-known of the Cincinnati brands. He purchased not only those, but 63 other long-forgotten brand names, such as Top Hat, Hauck and Windisch-Muhlhauser. They're now owned by Christian Moerlein Brewing Co., whose offices and small staff are based in Middletown, with plans to move to Over-the-Rhine later this year. What he bought were the brand names, logos, recipes, marketing rights and some contracts - there were no breweries involved. All those beers are still brewed out-of-town, in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania - for now. The next phase of Hardman's plan is to bring brewing back to Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, the hotbed of brewing in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Sometime in the first quarter of 2011, he plans to relocate the production of some Christian Moerlein and Hudepohl into the former Husman's potato chip plant on Moore Street, part of which was once part of the Kaufmann brewing complex. Sometime in the fall of 2011, Hardman plans to open the Moerlein Lager House, a pub and microbrewery strategically located next door to Great American Ball Park and the Cincinnati Reds. He'll spread the gospel about Cincinnati beer there with a Beer Barons Hall of Fame, whose first inductees are likely to be Christian Moerlein and Ludwig Hudepohl. A modern-day beer baron National distribution, new brewery, riverfront brew pub, Beer Barons Hall of Fame - Hardman is almost single-handedly recreating the story of Cincinnati beer. "I've been running hard, but I love it," he says. "And it's working. We're doing it profitably; we're doing it logically." Hardman won't reveal company revenues, but says they grew 197 percent in 2009, largely due to the Little Kings purchase in 2008. Revenue and volume for all the brands are up from a year ago, he says: 34 percent for Moerlein, 200 percent for Hudepohl and 38 percent for Little Kings. Part of the marketing plan is to tout the American-ness of his beers. "Our new slogan is, 'America's Great Small Brewery,' " he says. That's partly a swipe at the giants that dominate U.S. beer sales, most of whom have merged with foreign companies in recent years. Milwaukee's Miller Brewing was bought by a South African company in 2002. Canada's Molson Inc. bought Colorado's Coors in 2005; and St. Louis' Anheuser Busch was swallowed by Belgium-based InBev in 2008. Combined, they control 80 percent of beer sales in the U.S., according to IBISWorld, a Los Angeles-based market researcher. Overall, the U.S. beer market has been stale in recent years. Revenue was flat in 2009 as consumers cut back and switched to cheaper beers. IBISWorld predicts slow growth, averaging 1.3 percent a year, through 2015. But beer drinkers have an appetite for something different, says George Van Horn, senior analyst with the firm. "That's what helps beer stand out these days," he says. Even though groceries and other retailers are cutting back on brands in general, "Beverages seem to be one area when they can carve out space for unique products," he says. That could help sell Little Kings, which is being repositioned as a retro-hip brand; American-owned Hudepohl; and even Burger, a budget-priced brand with links to baseball's oldest team, the Reds. Moerlein, the company's craft beer, will be sold market by market, rather than statewide as the others will be. (Nice photo at website)
|
