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Five Questions with New Belgium's Jordan |
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Written by Jeff Cioletti
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Wednesday, 17 October 2007 |
 As a companion piece to our October 15, 2007 cover story, we sat down with Kim Jordan, co-founder and CEO of New Belgium Brewing and chatted about everything from the brewery's early days to the secrets of Fat Tire Amber Ale's success.
Beverage World: Could you explain what's behind the New Belgium tagline, "Follow Your Folly?"
Kim Jordan: For New Belgium, we have always been tinkerers and we have always been interested in more than just the physical act of making beer. Even in that process, however, we've made sure we've done things like heat recovery and other sorts of sustainable business practices. I would say that as a company we try to embody "Follow Your Folly" through the intellectually interesting choices we make.
BW: Right now you've got a solid presence in the Western US. Are there plans to expand your brands' presence in new markets?
KJ: The craft segment is having a good run now and this is a good time to be growing our distribution landscape. I anticipate we'll continue to do that over the next year or two. And I also think there will be a point where we will say what is the right spot for us, that world dominion is not really our aspiration as a company. I anticipate that we will begin to look at the size of company we want to be so that we can maintain our culture, our community with one another.
What are New Belgium's greatest day-to-day challenges as a company?
KJ: The biggest challenges are in making sure your relationship with your customers is solid and that your brand feels fresh. As brewers, we have our distributor customers, retail customers and beer drinker customers and [the challenge is] making sure all three of those relationships are solid—and being interesting for our beer drinker customers, all at the same time.
BW: What's the secret of the Fat Tire brand's success?
KJ: Fat Tire is really a well-balanced, well-made beer. Sometimes I think people feel that if a beer's not extreme then it's not a reflection of the brewer's art. I would suggest that it's the opposite of that. For an extreme beer, to throw in a lot of hops at some point in the process or to make a very high-alcohol beer—brewers know how to do that it's a pretty straight-forward process….But I think that blending and balancing the subtleties of flavor is certainly a more difficult brewer's art. I think our customers enjoy that we have a breadth of portfolio that includes some very big and esoteric beers and then we have beers like Fat Tire that are very drinkable and enjoyable for their complexity and their simplicity.
As you continue grow, is it challenging to stay connected to your roots?
KJ: Who we are, how we behave and how we talk about who we are are very much the same thing. We have had a set of core values and beliefs since the beginning of the company. We've tweaked them with our co-workers two or three times since 1991. We live by those and we expect our co-workers to live by them and that's really set the expectation and deepened our roots significantly. We have roots and it's so easy for us to be true to them. |
