Name: newbelgium_080514v2-H264 1920x1080 High
Uploaded: 2014-08-05
Duration: 3 min 30 s
Description: newbelgium_080514v2-H264 1920x1080 High

[ MUSIC ] New Belgium is one of those crazy American success stories, you know. Entrepreneurial, food- strapping kind of thing. My, then husband, Jeff Lebish, and I started in the basement of our house in 1991. We had more beer than furniture in the house and we were kind of busting at all of the seams. We started here, just in Fort Collins. And I would guess we've done, about 30 expansions. Since that time. We are at the absolute top of our capacity here. We are producing beer here that we never thought we could produce. [ MUSIC ] We wanted. And to showcase American interpretation of Belgium beers. So we were very rigid about that for a very long time. No we can't make hoppy beers because Belgium's don't make hoppy beers. You know, we have to kind of stick to what's Belgium, so we have this line up of beers that we thought were pretty. Representative of of a Belgium portfolio of, of beers, if you will. One of those beers was called Abbey. And we thought that Abbey would be our flagship beer because it's a really quintessential Belgium style. These are those entrepreneurial moments. It's where you think, you know this is gonna be great, people are gonna love this, and they didn't really. So Fat Tire which is probably the beer that we're most well known for became or Flagship beer which. Makes all the sense in the world. It's a lovely, well- balanced, easy drinking sessionable beer. But that was a surprise to us. We're in 37 states and so we're not in much of the Atlantic seaboard, and we're not in New England. We made a commitment in 2010. To become a national brewery, and when we did that, we knew that that would mean that we would have to build the second brewery, and if everything goes as planned, we'll be opening in December of 2015. As we've been in more states, I think our profile has just increased in that time, and I think that combination ,. Of artistry mixed with a business role model, practice is interesting for people. We've been practising open book- management, high involvement culture and the expectation that all of our co- workers participate in the business of running the business since 1996. We wanted to acknowledge that it took all of us to get beer out the door. And then, at the end of 2012, we sold the balance of our company to my coworkers through an employee stock ownership plan, or ESOP, and that's just been for us a really elegant and natural process [ MUSIC ] We have been busy at New Belgium. Our purpose is to, make our love and talent manifest while brewing our customers' favorite beers and proving that business can be a force for good. And that may sound corny, but that's really what we do. We're here everyday. [ MUSIC ]