Poll: Would you sell out?

This. Exactly.

 

What I learned from this poll is that roughly 80% of us are honest.

 

It must be nice to know that your own view of the world is shared by everyone else.

 

My view of the world is that if someone offered you a check for $500 million and the only hang-up was that it would marginally benefit a company with whose business practices you disagreed, you would say yes. It's possible I'm wrong, but I highly doubt it, and we likely won't have the opportunity to test my theory in practice.

 

When I read the first post I assumed that "m" must denote thousand, but I saw it was later clarified that it did indeed mean million

I am totally with you guys about the basic premise of the argument (sell my brewery if I want to, to give my family a comfortable life and reward my hard work)

But if I'm the founder and owner of a brewery making a "tidy" profit of $30mm/year then my kids are already at the best schools in the country (they each got a ferrari for their 18th birthdays), my wife (who's been retired for a long time at this point) and I spend time at any one of our 10+ properties located all over the globe, and unless I'm a fucking moron, I don't worry too much about the future because I have tens of millions tucked away in diversified investments. So really this is the one case where I don't worry too much about selling - me and my family are very comfortable already.

I mean are there any privately owned breweries that clear anything close to $30mm/yr profit?

 

In theory couldn't you sell out, make a good chunk of change and just open up a new brewery? Financially you would be better off and you could continue operating a "micro" brewery if that's your shtick.

 

But this is a perfect example of how this discussion has all sorts of pre-conceived ideas about a) what the offer would be and b) what the current life situation is of the person being offered it.

If you were just barely making ends meet and someone offered you a boatload of cash, then sure, nearly all people - myself included - would take the money. But if, as someone posited earlier in the thread, you were already making 30 million a year to begin with then one would have the luxury of taking other factors into account since "providing for your family and retirement" is not an issue. Maybe you are a person who values independence? Or maybe you are a person who feels strongly that it's not a good idea to have the whole world under the umbrella of 5 or 6 mega conglomerates. Or maybe you just don't give a damn and are happy the way your life already is.

People are talking about this as if there is some sort of biological imperative that simply can't be resisted when instead what we're talking about are a lot of culturally and personally determined priorities.

On top of everything else, it's almost surely the case that there *are* any number of breweries or companies who have turned down such offers. I can't imagine InBev has secured every company they've ever shown interest in, and we simply don't hear about those. Surely Ken Grossman, for example, has been approached with overtures in the past at some point along the way. There are other definitions of success apart from selling one's company to a mega-conglomerate, and acting as if anyone who thinks differently has something wrong with them is a part of our particular culture that I don't really care for.

 

I just meant, like they would want to say NO to stay true to the CRAFT but will say YES.
But thanks I can see the Poll stats.

 

So far 304 people thought the poll was worthy of replying to (I replied to it).

Is it a 'perfect' poll question? There is no thing as a 'perfect' poll question.

Was it constructed in an acceptable manner? 304 (so far) BAs think so.

Cheers to @Badfish for his efforts here!!!

 

I would assume there is some type of clause in the contract. Like when restaurants change owners, previous owners cant operate in a certain mile radius.

 

But they aren't doing this. It would be very easy to vote NO and appear like you are a BA principled to the goal of craft breweries remaining independent. But the opposite has occurred; even in the absence of a real check for $x million dollars BAs are replying that if they had the chance to make some imaginary money they would sell out.

I have to give credit to @rightcoast7 for his post above on this topic.

Cheers!

 

But the person who is selling their restaurant could refuse to accept this clause. Maybe the person who is buying would say this is a deal breaker or maybe not.

All of these agreements of sale are negotiable (within the context of state or local laws).

Cheers!

 

Seems like we are losing some type of communication through social media . we are saying the same thing i guess in different words.

I agree it would be easy to say NO but BA is saying yes.

I'm just saying we all want to say NO but YES is what most us would say with $ in front of us.

Cheers!

 

Distribution is a state-by-state thing, for sure. I mean, isn't that why The Bandit had to drive to Texas to pick up the Coors?

But seriously, if Big Beer (a national/international entity) isn't involved in the local/state distribution laws, shouldn't it be? Those laws have a huge impact on their dollars. When we talk about distribution laws designed to help Big Beer, I just assume (being a beer-law dummy) that it's Big Beer pushing these laws via lobbyists, power and influence.

I've also always assumed Big Beer more or less controlled distribution through power and influence. The majority of distribution contracts run through Big Beer, so it seemed the natural order of things.

I'm not always a good assumer, though.

As for PA's laws, I dipped a toe in that quagmire back in 2011 buying beer for a family reunion ... I might be wrong, but the only place in our little part of PA that sold beer I think had very limited hours, and if we didn't buy from them, our next option was miles away, which made it a big deal that we get to this one place by a certain time or we were screwed. Next time I'm around the family, I need to ask about all this to see how much (or if) it's changed. It's a pretty rural, isolated community (Hastings) a couple hours drive east of Pittsburgh, and part of the beer finding problem there may have more to do with its isolation than PA's laws, unless we were running into dry county laws?

I'm going to Jester King on Sunday and plan on bugging some poor brewer with about a hundred beer-distribution questions. I'm generally interested in the topic, and JK's staff loves to chat, so hopefully I'll learn something while drinking good beer.

 

FYI, you can remove the "probably not" from the Trappists. They have repeatedly and publicly said they brew only enough beer to provide for the needs of the Abbey and their charitable work. (And I think we can emphasize "work.")

Indeed, the Abbot of Westlevteren on opening of their new brewery is reported to have put it this way, "We are not brewers. We are monks. We brew beer to be able to afford being monks."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westvleteren_Brewery

 

I agree with your point for the most part, and it's certainly true that there are a lot of considerations that go into the question. The simplicity of my response was based on my assumption that 99.999% of the people on this site probably do not have the kinds of extenuating circumstances in their lives (i.e. boatloads of cash and an already hugely successful business) that might make them turn down a $500 million check if offered. To think that 20% of BAs would refuse such an offer seems to me that many are being less than honest. It's far easier to throw stones at Wicked Weed when we've never been remotely close to having that kind of opportunity.

Edit: My $500m estimate came from rumors I've seen circulate elsewhere as to the price in the WW deal. I have no idea if that number is correct, and there are certainly numbers lower than that where I probably would not "sell out." My assumption underlying the entire conversation is that we are talking about life-changing, generational wealth, not just a good chunk of change.

 

Well sure, then we probably don't really disagree too much and perhaps it's a matter of how you interpret the question. I took the question as implicitly suggesting that the "you" in this situation would be a hypothetical version of "you" that might realistically be given such an offer. If we're really just talking about whether joe schmo on the couch (I resemble that remark) would accept a boatload of money then I agree with you, but I also don't think that's a particularly interesting question to be asking.

And I can't speak for anyone else but I'm not chastising WW or Lagunitas or anyone else for taking a deal. Lagunitas in particular seems to have a very clear eyed and perhaps laudable vision to become the first truly global "craft" beer.

I'm just taking issue with the implication that they would be morons for not taking the deal.

 

OK - I forgot a key point. The guy is an idiot because he has stayed with his spouse who is spending about $29 MILLION a year, including a new Ferrari each year for all 5 kids. And some are in braces. I have no idea if there are privately owned breweries making $30M a year because this was an off the cuff example.

 

That is perfect.