Sarah MacDonnellSHARE
With a unique business plan and commitment to a healthy environment and lifestyle, one of Colorado’s leading microbreweries, New Belgium Brewery, provides an excellent example of the adage of businesses doing well by doing good.
Based in Fort Collins, Colo., New Belgium founders Kim Jordan and Jeff Lebesch made a commitment to follow a set of principles that would set them apart from the six-pack.
Among those principles:
Environmental stewardship: In 1998, New Belgium Brewery is said to have become the first wind-powered brewery in the United States.
Community involvement: For every barrel of beer produced, the company donates $1 to nonprofits in the communities where its beer is served. They also give employees one hour of paid time off for every two hours they volunteer with nonprofits.
New Belgium employees outside the brewery in Fort Collins, Colo.
And finally, the way they treat their employees: Employees receive a cruiser bike on their one-year anniversary, an all-expenses paid trip to Belgium (the homeland) on their five-year anniversary, and a four-week sabbatical after 10 years with the company. It’s no wonder there’s a 97 percent employee retention rate.
Employees are also offered a stock-ownership plan. In fact, 44 percent of the company is employee owned. The company also has an open-book management policy. Employees are educated at monthly meetings on how to read financials, which are published internally and are available to all.
So since nothing seems to go together as well as skiing and beer, Skiing Business caught up with New Belgium’s media relations director, Bryan Simpson, to see how else the microbrew’s principles govern its business.
Beer advertisements seem to infiltrate everything, but you guys have a different take on advertising. Tell us about it.
Our national print campaign is in its third year and we’ve only run one television ad campaign since 2004. We’ve done various regional campaigns, with a combination of print and online advertising, in trade magazines, and we have campaigns surrounding our seasonal releases. We also do a lot of work with social media and have almost 150,000 fans on Facebook.
Something that differentiates us is our connection with our consumers. We get along with folks because we understand them. And then, at some point, it becomes a two-way dialogue.
And we spend a significant amount of our advertising dollars on advocacy. Most of it is geared toward sensible transportation (bike advocacy) and the preservation of healthy watersheds. We’ve teamed up with a couple other companies such as Clif Bar and Patagonia and have collectively decided to donate $300,000 to water conservation efforts over the next two years.
New Belgium tries to strengthen its presence in one state before going on to the next location. How does that work?
We first go in with a limited portfolio; team up with distributive partners. We always put one or two people on the ground in the state to help make sure everyone is on the same page.
We then work to get immersed in the communities we’re distributing in. We have staff that starts working on events, we team up with nonprofits in the community and then consumers start figuring out who we are.
Participants at a New Belgium Scavenger Hunt at Loveland Ski Area in Colorado
You also sponsor quite a few events at ski resorts. What are some examples of those and why market to snow goers in the first place?
For mountainside events we have a scavenger hunt at various resorts in which the profits go to benefit local avalanche awareness groups.
Teaming up with the ski industry and the whole ski community is a natural fit because, being in Colorado, we want to enjoy the places where we work and play. We also have a lot of shared interests including the idea of a healthy lifestyle and a healthy environment.
What lessons has New Belgium learned in the beer industry that could apply to a start-up company in the ski industry?
Having a vision early on and thinking about what it means to be a part of the industry. For us, it was the beer industry - what makes good beer and the culture that surrounds beer drinking.
Another one of the biggest things we’ve learned is the idea of having a dialogue with your audience. For us, much of it comes down to social communications, because that’s a great way to communicate with folks.
But more than anything it’s about remaining true to who you are as a company. New Belgium has had a list of core values and beliefs from the point of inception, and we’ve remained true to it. Having that will help you in any industry.
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