Local Brewery Reeling `Em In

CHERRY HILL, N.J. — Gene Muller, president of Flying Fish Brewery Co., remembers one busy Saturday when his inventory of Extra Pale Ale was barely below sales. So he got creative.

"My parents were away so I went over to their house and snuck into their basement," Muller said. "I knew my father had part of a case of the beer, so I took the pale ale."

Operating so close to the margin has been a tightrope walk at times, but it`s also been the key to his success, Muller said. In the six years since he started the brewery in a small industrial park here, Flying Fish has tripled its capacity and become the largest of about 25 microbreweries in New Jersey. This in an industry where just surviving is an art.

From 1990 to 1995, the number of microbreweries and brew pubs in the U.S. tripled and production grew sevenfold. An average of three brew pubs opened per week in 1995.

But that explosive growth came to a screeching halt in the late `90s when more than 400 pubs and breweries closed their doors.

For Muller and the 1,500 other microbreweries and brew pubs who`ve managed to stay afloat, their resolve is paying off. Craft brew sales nationally increased 4 percent in 2000 _ twice the rate of the previous year, according to the Institute for Brewing Studies.

Many prospective brewers weren`t fully aware of the considerable expense involved in opening a brewing facility or the difficulties of the marketplace, said Tom Stevenson, president of The Garden State Craft Brewers Guild and the brewer at Triumph Brewing Co. in Princeton.

"There were a number of breweries, not just in New Jersey, but all over the country, who felt that simply making really good beer was all they needed to do. They realized, too late, that just having great beer was not enough," he said.

Craft beer is continuing to grow in terms of consumption, said Bill Metzger, publisher of Mid-Atlantic Brewing News, a regional newspaper on the industry. "More people consume it every year. That`s never stopped. It`s just that it went past that fast-growth stage."

Brewing beer is an expensive venture. It can cost several hundred thousand dollars to install a commercial brewing system, said Metzger, who calls it a "very capital-intensive industry." And many brewers tried to recoup those expenses too quickly.

"They couldn`t get the return they needed to pay off loans," he said.

About half a dozen New Jersey breweries failed for just that reason, said Stevenson.

"There have been breweries that were open for less than a year after making tremendous investments in their physical plants and doing everything necessary to make an outstanding product," he said. "But they just didn`t sell enough and the cash flow wasn`t there."

Growing slowly, step by step, is the smart way, said Metzger.

That was Muller`s approach. His plan for growth was the same as the ideal way to pour a beer _ slowly and steadily.

"We could actually grow faster but I don`t want to fill this place with vats and ... lose quality," he said on a recent afternoon, raising his voice over the din while a batch of Extra Pale Ale was brewed.

Most of the beer brewed at Flying Fish is sold within 100 miles of the brewery, located in the South Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia. He has turned down requests from distributors as far away as California.

"You can`t control it when it`s shipped all over the place," he said. "The temperature varies."

The one exception is Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla. When Disney was building its "Boardwalk" section of restaurants, hotels and stores, it opened the Flying Fish Cafe. Disney learned of the brewery here and contacted Muller, asking if they could sell his beers.

That has helped enormously in persuading liquor stores in this region to make room on their shelves for Flying Fish.

"They`d say, `Who carries your beer?` and I`d say, `So and so, so and so, so and so and Disney World,"` he said.

A few other New Jersey breweries are growing slowly and carefully, too, Stevenson said, pointing to the Blue Collar Brewing Co. in Vineland, which opened in 1999, and Heavyweight Brewing Co. in Ocean Township, which specializes in recipes from the turn of the century and hard-to-find beers.

"Companies that make great products and support their products are hanging in there and moving ahead," Stevenson said.

Metzger said breweries need to start focusing more on marketing, especially with "echo boomers" _ children of baby boomers _ reaching beer-drinking age.

"There`s some real growth in terms of beer consumption that`s going to be going on in the next few years," Metzger said. "The question is which breweries will be able to reach out to them and convince them that they should try their beer."

"In the beginning it was such an exciting thing. It was an `if you brew it, they will come` type of thing," Metzger said.

But microbrews are no longer a novelty. In fact, he said, in Northwestern states, where the trend began, "kids are going back to drinking Pabst as a rebellion against their parents."

His advice to them: "Listen to your parents on this one."

(Copyright 2001 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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Author: 6 ABC - Action News (AP)