One of the world's biggest nonalcoholic brewing companies is headquartered in Connecticut. Why is CT the place for them to be?
WSHU’s Molly Ingram caught up with CT Mirror's state policy editor Erica Phillips about her series, “This Could Work,” which will feature the Athletic Brewing team on March 19.
WSHU: Can you give us a little background on the Athletic Brewing Company? When did they start? And what does their journey look like?
EP: Well, it's been an interesting journey. So they I think maybe around 2017, but I don't know that they were brewing until maybe 2019, it could be a little off on those numbers. But basically, they're very recent, and Bill Shufelt, who is one of the founders, was actually working for a hedge fund. He sort of noticed that there was this niche in the market that he felt like wasn't being served, which was nonalcoholic beer drinkers. And he thought maybe it was just because they didn't have anything very good to drink. And so he went out, kind of started exploring this idea. He did some research and started trying to find a brewer who could help him out. You know, one thing led to another. He stepped down from the hedge fund where he was working. He went fully into this nonalcoholic brewing adventure and eventually found John Walker, who's the brewer there, and the two of them started tinkering, and, you know, it took a while, but they came up with some recipes. Lo and behold, Athletic Brewing, Connecticut's top nonalcoholic brewing company, is just making absolute waves in the industry and on Wall Street.
WSHU: I think a lot of people don't actually realize how big they are. They have a partnership with my favorite English football team, Arsenal. Is that why you chose them?
EP: Because they're big? Well, we chose them because they just grew, like, phenomenally fast, like, as I mentioned, this wasn't that many years ago that they were it didn't even have, like, a recipe, you know, they didn't even know what they were doing with this. They were tinkering, I think, in a garage with some Gatorade jugs. And so quickly, that brand became almost ubiquitous. You know, you see it everywhere. They have a brewery in San Diego now, and they're everywhere. And grocery stores like, I think, Whole Foods, it's like their top-selling beer. And so just that phenomenal growth really was the kind of story, and the fact that it all happened in Connecticut, we wanted to feature them and to hear more.
WSHU: And so, what can people expect from your conversation with the Athletic team? I hear there will be samples there.
EP: Yeah, so free beer at the library. What's not to love? And, yeah, we'll try to get into a little bit more of the details. You know, I gave you a taste, so to speak, of their story. But we will just try to dig deeper in here a little bit more. You know, when you're tinkering with beer, what does that look like? When you're trying to recruit a brewer to make nonalcoholic beer, how does that work? And the kind of funding they needed to scale the business, which grew so rapidly, all those things that it takes to handle a phenomenal business story like this.
WSHU: Can you share how people can register or watch if they're interested?
EP: Yeah, so we're going to be doing the Q&A at the Ferguson Library in Stamford. It won't be live-streamed, but we will have a recording after the fact on our website. If you're interested in registering for the event, you can go to CTmirror.org and look at our events page, or you can go to the Ferguson Library, and they should have information about how to get tickets as well. The tickets are free.
