Crafting a stout vision
Cleveland brothers’ Great Lakes Brewing has developed a cultlike following by being based on principles they learned as children
By Janet H. Cho THE PLAIN DEALER
SCOTT SHAW THE PLAIN DEALER
Patrick Conway and his brother Dan have turned Great Lakes Brewing Co. into the nation’s 22nd-largest craft brewery, as well as an engine of environmental and civic change for their hometown of Cleveland.
Great Lakes Brewing Co. founder Patrick Conway loves to tell the story of a tipsy patron who wanted to buy some beer at the gift shop. “I want Christmas Ale,” he slurred, “and I want a lot of it.” The bartender refused, saying the patron had already had quite enough to drink. After squabbling, the man finally left — only to come back first thing in the morning, slap $3,000 cash on the bar, and buy out all the Christmas Ale in the shop — 60 cases.
Conway still laughs at the punch line and flashes his impish grin, shaking his head at the lengths to which people will go to get their hands on his family’s Christmas Ale. Not that he’s complaining. The cultlike devotion (and occasional hoarding) that the brews have inspired has made Great Lakes Brewing the nation’s 22nd-largest craft brewery in terms of output (91,189 barrels in 2010).
Behind the success is Conway, a 63-year-old Irishman known as a trailblazer and environmentalist, one who learned frugality from Depression-era parents and a taste for better beer from the best brew-pubs in Europe. Conway came up with the idea of starting his own brewery and brew-pub in the early 1970s, while attending Loyola University’s campus in Rome and soaking up the pub scene in Germany, Belgium and England, and while bartending in Chicago during graduate school.
Today, his nearly 23-yearold company, while facing increasing competition, has just capped off a $7 million expansion in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood that doubled its beer-making capacity to 240 bottles a minute. The company also is hiring for a third shift to keep its bottling line jangling 24/7.
Both the brewery and restaurant, which he co-owns with his brother Dan, anticipate another year of record sales (up to $30 million this year) and a third straight year of 20 percent growth.
Patrick Francis Conway is the second of nine children and the eldest son of Jack and Marge Conway. His father was a tax lawyer, while his mother was a former stenographer for Eliot Ness, the Cleveland safety director and head of the crime-fighting Untouchables. Daniel John Conway, 50, co-owner of the brewery and brew-pub, is the youngest of the five brothers. Being reared by Irish immigrant parents who grew up during the Depression fueled a lifelong habit of saving, scrimping and reusing whatever they had. Pat remembers spending childhood vacations visiting national parks, watching his father pick up other people’s litter, and supplementing their meals with vegetables grown in the backyard of their Rocky River home. “We didn’t call it ‘sustainability’ back then,” Dan said. “We called it ‘common sense’ and working with nature.”
Wandering through some of the world’s poorest countries after graduate school, Pat was struck by the way people made the most of every scrap, from not wasting food to flattening tin cans to shingle their roofs. When he returned home to open his own bar, one of the first people he called was Dan, who was then working as a commercial loan officer at Huntington Bank. Dan not only invested in the company, he also started pitching in at the restaurant and refining the business plan. After a month of juggling both jobs, he joined the enterprise full time.
“We named it ‘Great Lakes Brewing Co.’ because we ultimately wanted it to grow into something that could serve the region,” Dan said. While Pat and Dan are equal owners of the brewery and beer-pub, Pat is the frontman of the company. He’s the one making presentations, shaking hands, working the room and leading tours of the brewery, while Dan is more often backstage, crunching numbers, paying bills and making sure the beer gets where it needs to go.
“Pat is probably better at being the spokesman for the company, and that’s fine by me,” Dan said. “I see what other work needs to be done and focus my work accordingly. I’m the one that deals with the lawyers, bankers and accountants.”
Their parents also instilled in them a deep sense of family and civic pride, which survives in the names of their Conway’s Irish Ale (named after their traffic policeman grandfather, Pat Conway, whose photo adorns the labels), Eliot Ness lager, Burning River pale ale, Edmund Fitzgerald porter, Lake Erie Monster pale ale and Wright Pilsner (named after Wilbur and Orville Wright).
While Great Lakes beer is sold in 13 states, from Minnesota to North Carolina, 90 percent of the Christmas Ale never leaves Ohio. Christmas Ale, available for only eight weeks starting Nov. 1, is the company’s No. 2 seller after Dortmunder Gold.
As much as people love his beer, Conway craves the status of brands like Harley-Davidson, Nordstrom or Southwest Airlines. “People will do anything they can to support those companies,” he said. “They have almost a cult following, but it’s not just the products, it’s their values and principles that surround the product.” Sharon Barson, president of Educational Advantage in Chicago, an operations consultant for the company, said: “The absolute passion, energy and dedication with which Pat operates is just as strong if not stronger than it was 16 years ago.” She said that in the notoriously high-turnover restaurant business, they have an unheard-of level of employee loyalty. “He’s got one server who I think just turned 70,” she said. “They really respect the people who work for them, and it shows.”
jcho@plaind.com
A quick look
GREAT LAKES BREWING CO. Business: creates beer, which is also served in the adjacent brewpub Headquarters, restaurant and brewery: 2516 Market Ave., Cleveland Founded: 1988 Co-owners: Brothers Patrick and Daniel Conway Employees: 160 2011 revenue: Approaching $30 million (up 20 percent from 2010) Other locations: The Great Lakes Brewing restaurants at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport and Akron-Canton Airport are run under licensing agreements that require them to serve only Great Lakes beers and other menu items.
Source: company information
