16 Jun Sun King owners reflect on fast five years
In summer 2009, Clay Robinson was hustling kegs of beer to bars and restaurants on Mass Ave. and in Fountain Square in a half-dead station wagon. His business partner, Dave Colt, brewed beer in a nearly empty warehouse on the edge of Downtown.
The other Sun King Brewing co-owners, Andy Fagg and Omar Robinson, manned the office. A handful of ambulance techs hung out on broken-down couches on the loading dock, the only remnants of the building’s previous occupant. I remember this because I was there.
Earlier that year, I was an entertainment reporter for Metromix and The Indianapolis Star, and I started keeping tabs on Sun King, which was Indy’s first full-scale production brewery since 1948. I wrote a Metromix cover story in August 2009, my last byline before I left to work for Fight! magazine. As part of the story, I helped Colt brew a Belgian ale, and it was served at an event at a Broad Ripple sports bar. (A bar that declined to become one of Sun King’s first draft accounts. Oops.)
Later, Sun King hired me as its marketing director; I was the company’s 12th official employee. In 2012, I returned to The Star. But having told Sun King’s story as an outsider and insider has given me a unique perspective on the operation — and for that reason The Star agreed to have me catch up with them to discuss their fifth anniversary. I have no business ties or financial investment in the company.
Q: Clay used to joke that Sun King hit its five-year goals at the end of year one. Do you even try to make long-term plans right any more or do you take it a quarter at a time?
Andy: The plans change all the time. We’re still a small speck in the world of brewing. There’s a lot of room above us. We’re just trying to figure out where to go.
Omar: I’d say we hit our five-year goals in the first year. In the second year, we hit what I dreamed we might do in 10 years. And every year the bar keeps moving, and now our expectations are 10 times beyond our wildest imagination (in 2009), and we’re staying in Indiana to do it.
Clay: The whole goal was to be Indianapolis’ beer, and I think we’ve done a pretty good job of that. Last year we branched out and started using distributors in outlying areas – the next five-year goal is really to become Indiana’s beer. There are a number of breweries that are 3-, 4-, 5-, 6-year-old breweries, a lot them are canning breweries, focused on local or regional pockets, and all of the sudden they’re doing 40, 50, 60 (thousand barrels) and making plans for 150 (thousand barrels) without changing their geographic area. That’s what we’re looking at right now and trying to accomplish that within the legal and regulatory statutes of the state, some of which are gonna have to bend.
Q: So much of Sun King’s story has been about being “Indianapolis’ beer.” Is it possible to have the same connection with customers in Fort Wayne or Evansville?
Dave: Our model is New Glarus, in Wisconsin. When I think of Wisconsin, I only think of New Glarus. I just think, here is the giant stamp of New Glarus (smacks fist into palm) – boom – all over the state. That’s kind of what we’d like to do here. If you go to the northern third of the state, the hometown beer is probably Bell’s. They make awesome beer, but hey, they’re in Michigan! And they’re in a ton of other states. So why shouldn’t we have a good market share?
Andy: When the Colts came in, Indiana was pretty well-established (as far as) which team you rooted for. Is it hard to go out there and compete? Sure, but the Colts have won people over all over the state after starting in the middle. It’s something we have to work harder at.
Clay: Last year (New Glarus) did 150,000 barrels in Wisconsin alone. They didn’t sell a drop outside of the state except for a couple of festivals, which (we) do. When Sun King opened in 2009, New Glarus executed a $20 million new brewery that took (their capacity) to 150,000 (barrels). This year they are doing a $10 million expansion of their $20 million brewery that will take (their capacity) to over 200,000 (barrels), and they still have no plans to leave their own state. Sunlight is New Glarus’ Spotted Cow, which is a cream ale.
You might catch a glipse of Bigfoot before you see Sun King co-founders Clay Robinson, foreground, and Dave Colt, left, filling growlers in the tasting room like they did in 2009.(Photo: Star file)
Q: But demand is so high right now that you’ve had to pull back from the rest of the state to satisfy orders in Central Indiana.
Clay: Temporarily, at least through the end of July and maybe the end of summer, if things keep going the way they are. Maybe if things taper off in the fall, we’ll have some beer to send to other areas. We’re getting close to 30,000 barrels … we’re going to have to go back again (the legislature, or) we can’t do more than we’re doing this year and our growth is capped, our hiring is capped, everything we do is capped. Our hands are tied without giving up our self-distribution and tasting room (under the law).
Q: Five years in, do you feel more pressure because you set such high expectations or less because you’ve proved your point?
Dave: For me, the expectation of excellence will always be there and will never go away no matter what happens. Where the pressure’s off is we’re not worried, like we were in the first year, like, “Oh my God, we have to sell X amount of beer every day of the week, including Sunday, or this whole thing goes away!” So that part isn’t scary anymore.
Andy: Starting out, the pressure was whether we could stay in business. We didn’t know if it was going to work or not. Now that it’s clearly going to work, the pressure is, “How many customers to add? How do we get them beer? How big do we need to get?” That’s the pressure now, managing the thing we’ve created.”
Q: Very few people know how many offers of investment and regional and national distribution you’ve declined. It takes a lot of restraint to leave money on the table when you’re putting everything you have into building an asset and not making a big salary. Were those hard decisions?
Omar: I don’t think anybody in our group ever was tempted to do anything but keep driving the bus. We had the opportunity to go national, we had calls from 40 states wanting our beer, people were wanting to throw money at us when we could have used it. We just made do with what we could and improved our position with the bank and kept digging. Did not want to give up any equity, not that we’re selfish, it’s just that the more people you get involved, the harder it is to run a company. That’s not to say we won’t bring somebody in, probably will, someone to learn my (job), probably a little older than these guys, a little more beat up.
Clay: The investment opportunities are always very flattering, but I think it helps a lot that we really bootstrapped the money to get started. We were running out of money when we were getting open, and we were tight. Money doesn’t solve all of the problems, and by taking it it would have created more. We’re incredibly fortunate that we work really well together. I’m not saying that we always all get along, that’s one of my favorite things about all of us – this is a business, we’re all dedicated to it, we all see the long-term vision of it. It’s our thing. This is the last job Dave and I want to have. We’ve gotten hot with one another, there’s been yelling, there’s been screaming, there’s been obscenities, but at the end of it we can recognize where that passion comes from and say, I’m sorry I told you to go ‘F’ yourself, but this is how I felt about it and now we’re going to move on. We made that decision, we fought that fight, and we can move on.
Dave: To me, it was flattering that people want to invest (in Sun King). We get calls from distributors around the country, weekly, and that’s awesome, but that’s not what we intended to be in the first place. I don’t think of it as being real because it’s not what we set out to do.
Andy: The model that we have in Indiana is good, being able to self-distribute as a small brewery allows you to grow pretty fast.
Q: Given that you’ve gone so far beyond your expectations, do you even bother thinking about five years from now?
Dave: Strategically, we have to look at acquiring grain and hops and making sure that we have contracts in place so that we can continue to grow as we see fit to grow. If we want to be responsible, we need to let our suppliers know our intentions so that they can let their people know that this is a ready market. Our tanks are getting bigger. You don’t just buy them off the shelf. There are more and more breweries, there’s more and more demand for tanks, so our lead time (for orders) is six months. We really have to be cognizant of how we want to grow so we can have all the things we need.
Q: Is there anything you thought would be huge a success that didn’t pan or diversions that kept you from accomplishing things?
Clay: (Omar) led the charge to get the distilling law changed, and we’re now two years past it, and we move a little bit on it but then this business gets really hectic and it’s like, we make beer really well, and we have this one thing that we don’t want to drop the ball on, so …
Omar: We’ll get there.
Clay: We’ll get there …The demand and the growth keeps our focus on what’s right and what’s best for Sun King.
Sun King’s 5th Anniversary Party with The Wild Feathers and a Grapefruit Jungle IPA tapping
4-10 p.m. June 28, Sun King Brewery, 135 N. College Ave., $10 in advance, $15 at the door, www.sunkingbrewing.com
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