“It’s a
beautiful mess!” said Simon Thorpe, CEO of Brewery Ommegang, as he wrestled his
way through the crowds at “Belgium Comes to Cooperstown”. BCTC is a three day
camping beer festival held at Brewery Ommegang in upstate New York every
August. The enthusiasm for this festival is evident when the $200.00 VIP
tickets sold out in a mere 46 seconds. As with most beer fests, a non-VIP
ticket holder would find over 50 breweries to drink from and numerous bands
playing music throughout the event. What makes this festival unique is the
juxtaposition of having high-end venues next to… well… typical beer fest
venues. From fine dining Belgian beer dinners and Hop Chef gourmet pairing
competitions to hundreds of patrons camped in tents around the brewery, BCTC
looks like a mesh of a beautiful Sonoma vineyard with a large camping beer
party. The brewery itself is designed to capture the grace and beauty of a
Belgian style farmhouse on what used to be a hop farm. It is a romantic setting
with fun, excitement, and high quality Belgian beer that makes actual Belgian
brewers proud. In fact, the Knighthood of the Brewers’ Mash staff really are
proud and have inducted Simon Thorpe to be knighted. We sat with Simon at BCTC
to learn more about this honor, his background, and his vision for the future
of Brewery Ommegang.
So tell us about the Knighthood of Belgian
Brewers Induction:
I’m really quite
humbled by it because I never expect these things. For me, I’ve got the dream
job that every boy would ever want anyway and I get to run a beautiful brewery
in upstate New York, in America, and it’s taken me 30 years to find my way here
and for me to just be here is really special. To get on the b… well it’s
totally unexpected you know. I mean I really didn’t…
So you didn’t
lobby for it or there’s no application process?
Honestly, I was
truly very humbled and I’d rather talk about my people, brewers, and I’d rather
do that and in all honesty I am really humbled by it, it’s a beautiful thing.
Congratulations.
Thanks, yeah,
Phil Lienart is the master brewer and he said the most important thing is on
that day you get to wear the sash with the medal on it that allows you to get
free beer at any bar in Brussels. So we’re planning to test out whether that
really works. But it’s very serious, the academic ceremony goes back for
hundreds of years to the mutual guild of brewers in Brussels and from that
point of view it’s a great honor. There’s the academic installation in the
morning where you meet and then go to the church for the blessing then you
process through in robes and it’s fantastic, a great honor. Very wonderful.
When you hear of a brewer and what kind of recognition could you have and well…
the guild of brewers.
Well I’m
curious, I know you don’t want to talk about yourself, but how does one go from
InBev to getting knighted by the Belgians? I know that is a long winded
question but…
It’s a very fair
question. I’ve been very very fortunate to be in the right place at the right
time in my career and, to me, my own career has been default rather than by
design. It’s rare that I actually think more than about a week ahead. Some of
the things that I’ve been fortunate to be a part of, in what was then Interbrew
and became InBev and then became ABI they were… I was in the right place at the
right time. In developing Stella Artois in Belgium I was fortunate to be a part
of that. As the brewing industry had this cathartic heave and consolidation
that happened over the 10 year period I happened to be in the right places. As
we were here in North America and as China was exploding for international
brewers I was lucky to be running an acquisition for InBev at that point. So I
got involved in the acquiring of Chinese – big, big, BIG- Chinese breweries in
developing and as well in Asia. As Eastern Europe developed the same thing
applied and I was lucky to be, initially, developing some of the global brands
like Becks and Stella. As InBev was looking at taking what had been a lot of
regional brands and making them global power house brands so I’ve been very
lucky, very lucky. And then when I left there and went into projects in Europe,
went on to meet the Moortgat family. I tried to buy the Duvel market twice in
my career and Duvel has always been my brand. For seven years I tried to buy
the business and Michel would say ‘oh that’s interesting’ and ‘No we don’t need
to do that, thank you’ and ‘oh that’s interesting evaluation of the company,
I’ll make a note of that’. (When I was working for InBev, they would always
come and say to me ‘well what breweries do you want us to buy in America’ and I
would say ‘go back home to Belgium, buy Duvel Moortgat, and bring it back here
to America’.) Finally, I managed to find myself at the door of Michel Moortgat’s
office and he said ‘come around this US business’ and I jumped at it. So I say
it was 30 years finding my road here and I am the least likely English boy to
be in love with Cooperstown in upstate New York but it’s a dream.
So what’s the
relationship with Duvel? Is it a situation where they allow Ommegang total
freedom to experiment or are you somewhat restricted?
That’s a great
question because if you look at the relationship in companies, it doesn’t
matter if they are brewing companies or sub manufacturers. The relationship
between the investors, the share holders, and the management is often one of
the most critical things to a success or a failure of a business. We are,
obviously, a family driven business. 25% of the stock is public, 75% is in the
hands of the family. We are, I think, extraordinarily fortunate to have the
type of family share holders that we do. They take a very very long term view.
There are people that talk that, but very few people that walk that. So
decisions about investments are very long term 50-100 year investment decisions,
thinking long term on how to develop the brand. Michel is extraordinary. He is
the younger of the three brothers. He is remarkably talented. As a family share
holding they are more supportive than any other share holder group that I have
ever worked with. Twice a year we have board meetings here in the US and every
time they come they ask one question: “What can we do to help?” And that is
pretty amazing. And sure, you have to be running a business properly for the
share holders, developing brands in the right terms, maintaining top of the
pyramid quality, that’s the philosophy that the Moortgat family has about all
that. It’s a very simple recipe and it works if we stay on top of the quality
pyramid for a long period of time and when we develop that reputation you are
insulated from a lot of the ups and downs businesses have at times and it’s a remarkable
relationship the way they choose to manage their legacy.
Did you always
envision Ommegang being what it is now?
I’ve always
believed that Duvel had the potential to be the next big high quality
breakthrough in America. That’s the foundation. I’ve only been here three years
and I think we’ve done really good things to develop it. The business here has
doubled in three years. We’re on track to doubling it again in the next three.
We focus very much on selective distribution. Frankly, I don’t care about being
in the big volume beer bars. I want to be in high end hotels and restaurants. I
want to be in the chi-chi bars of Los Angeles where the environment, the
experience, the romance around what you are drinking is very exciting. We ask
ourselves very often, how big is special? We will cap this business off at a
certain quantity level if we thought that we were losing the specialness, the
cache, of the brands. And again, there are a lot of people that talk that talk,
it is very difficult to walk it. We’ve gone from basically 35,000 barrels to
75,000 barrels. Today, if you asked me how big is this going to be? That is
about as big as it’s going to be. I think a lot of people are seduced by the
notion of bigger is better. For us, special is better.
It sounds like
that is the European influence since overseas everything is about quality vs.
quantity?
It’s the Moortgat
family. That is what they believe. We look at our margin pool of what we take,
what our wholesalers take, what our retailers take. And part of our philosophy
is we want everyone to make money. Some people put a lot of pressure on the
wholeseller margin and the relationship falls apart. I want our wholesellers to
be very happy with the money that they make on distributing our brands and
similarly for retail. If everyone has been successful with our brands they will
grow. We try to be the #1 or #2 most profitable brewery in their portfolio, if
we do that then we’ll grow 30% a year – they will always take our calls.
We couldn’t
agree more! Congratulations Simon and everyone at Brewery Ommegang!
James Hartle, Simon Thorpe, Aimee
Hartle
Check out our Facebook Page at www.facebook.com/SpreadingtheCraftBeerGospel for more fun pictures of BCTC.
