A Visit To Craft Beer’s Alternate Universe
Story by:
Marty Jones
This past April, Portland, Oregon hosted the Craft Brewers Conference, the annual mind-boggling pep rally and trade seminar for America’s exploding craft beer trade. But a few blocks across town and miles off of the beer radar, a gathering of America’s other rapidly growing beer-industry segment took place: The Former Craft Brewers Conference.
Did you hear about it? Attended by what the local paper described as a “small but affluent” audience, the debut FCBC helped newly purchased brewers tackle the problems that come with going from owner to owned.
As you can imagine, the FCBC was not without controversy. Prior to its start a mob of angry beer nuts (many in faded Elysian, Goose Island and Blue Point brewery shirts) swarmed the host Ritz-Carlton hotel to protest the co-opting of their beloved breweries. After impassioned bullhorn-amplified speeches, the group chugged bottles of a peach & pumpkin ale (aged on locally sourced beechwood) before smashing the empties in FCBC recycling bins.
The FCBC had distinctly different features from its CBC counterpart. CBCers were greeted with gift backpacks holding a beer glass, a collaboration beer and the latest issue of The New Brewer. FCBCers were welcomed with briefcases containing reading glasses, a collaborative NYSE/NASDAQ/Dow Jones craft beer report and the latest issue of Money.
While anthropologist Simon Sinek roused craft brewers with his keynote address, Warren Buffet brought a room of suits and FCBs to their feet with his speech on the investment potential of craft beer. He eschewed talk of IBUs and ABVs to focus on ROI and EBITDA.
FCBC seminars were fascinating. On the production side, the “Cheaper Ingredients, Better Beer” and “Microbrewing in 200-Barrel Batches” were popular. “Brewing Good Beer with One Hand” drew a larger crowd and instructed fresh FCBs on the art of mashing in while holding your nose.
Maketing seminars (the FCBC boasted 50 of these for every one production seminar) were also noteworthy. “The Risks of Super Bowl Ads” and “Increasing Crafty Beer Sales While Attacking Craft Beer” included vital info for FCB owners. “Fuss Off” was a hit with brewers and investors looking to “brew the hard way” and free themselves of beer-nosing customers.
A presentation led by Elysian and 10-Barrel marketers entitled “Actually, Words Can Hurt You” warned a visibly shaken room of future FCBs about the backlash to expect when shifting to “former” status.
While the CBC featured a sprawling array of 500 vendors of must-have equipment, the FCBC hosted a room of 500 must-meet venture capitalists, hedge funders and small-brewery swallowers.
In lieu of a World Beer Cup-style gathering, FCBCers attended a “This Cup’s For You: Urine Analysis for FirstTimers” instructional before enjoying a former-craft-beer dinner prepared by Giada De Laurentiis and Mario Batali.
That feast led into the final and most anticipated segment of the FCBC: “How to Contact the Acquisitions Departments at SABMiller, AB/InBev and MillerCoors.” The program drew the biggest crowd of the week, including several hundred CBC badge holders who’d crashed the seminar.
It began with a handout of an FCBC-branded zip drive (bearing a slogan of “Beer Too Big to Fail”) that held contact info for the check writers at the world’s biggest beer buyers. It ended 60 seconds later when attendees abruptly raced from the room, zip drives in hand and CBC and FCBC badges flying over their shoulders, to boot up their laptops and hit cell phones to place “urgent” calls. OMG.
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