{"id":5388,"date":"2019-04-16T06:00:03","date_gmt":"2019-04-16T11:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=5388"},"modified":"2019-04-13T14:59:50","modified_gmt":"2019-04-13T19:59:50","slug":"hindsight-is-a-wonderful-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=5388","title":{"rendered":"Hindsight is a wonderful thing."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Last week Stone Brewing announced the sale of their Berlin facility\u00a0to BrewDog of Scotland for an undisclosed amount.\u00a0 Stone has owned the brewery since 2014, but has now decided to leave the Germany market.<\/p>\n

In an August 2014 edition of this blog, (Sound strategy starts with having the right goal.<\/a>), Greg Koch, Stone’s co-founder, blamed the closure of the brewery on multiple issues, one being building complications and the resulting delay in construction.\u00a0 Koch claimed that when concerns arose, construction was halted and no solutions were presented.\u00a0 He added that the delays cost Stone both time and money, stating that the project was “too big and bold” for Germany.\u00a0 Koch lamented that the brewery should have started smaller, thus giving all involved the opportunity to gain insight into what was necessary for successful growth.<\/p>\n

In the same post referenced above, the challenges that Stone Brewing faced in building a facility in Germany were outlined.\u00a0 \u00a0And as it turned out, those challenges were real and Stone is, in fact, closing.<\/p>\n

Various posts have addressed the topic of foreign ownership and management faced by beer companies hoping to establish in the U.S.\u00a0market. Such companies continue to fail or fall short of their goals by not adapting to the U.S. beer industry model.\u00a0 Leaders, who have been successful in other countries, fail to understand the American systems or they try to incorporate their<\/em> countries\u2019 systems in our country. The result is frequently failure.<\/p>\n

ABI, MC, Pabst, Heineken (to some degree) and others breweries are managed by non-American leaders.\u00a0 But the ongoing theme seems to be: is this working for these companies?<\/p>\n

Jeff Alworth, who writes a blog entitled Beervana<\/em>, criticized Koch when he, Koch, announced the Berlin project by smashing a pile of German beers with a rock. Shortly thereafter, Koch exclaimed that “Berlin is not really a beer city yet.”\u00a0 That is like saying Augusta, Georgia is not a golf town yet.\u00a0 That statement surely endeared Koch with many of the Germans.<\/p>\n

Simply because a brewery finds success in their home country does not mean that same success will be duplicate in another country.\u00a0 It does not matter whether you are dealing with the U.S. or another country, the facts are the same.\u00a0 As we discussed in the 2014 post, Germans have local breweries and support them, just like Americans support our local crafts.\u00a0 The German\u2019s might have tried one of Stone’s beers, but in the end, they will support their own countries\u2019 beers.<\/p>\n

Based on Stone\u2019s approach to the Berlin brewery, the chances of success were slim at best. \u00a0The same can be said of other breweries that approach business in a similar\u00a0fashion.\u00a0 \u00a0It is an historical fact.\u00a0 Having spent many years with German breweries, Stone\u2019s struggles come as no surprise.<\/p>\n

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week Stone Brewing announced the sale of their Berlin facility\u00a0to BrewDog of Scotland for an undisclosed amount.\u00a0 Stone has owned the brewery since 2014, but has now decided to leave the Germany market. In an August 2014 edition of this blog, (Sound strategy starts with having the right goal.), Greg Koch, Stone’s co-founder, blamed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2xRTi-1oU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5388"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5388"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5399,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5388\/revisions\/5399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}