Samuel Adams: Jim Koch (2017)

We're hard at work planning our upcoming live shows, so we bring you this favorite from the last year: Samuel Adams. In 1984, Jim Koch felt suffocated by his cushy but boring corporate job. So he left, dusted off an old family beer recipe, started Sam Adams, and helped kickstart the craft beer movement in America. PLUS in our postscript "How You Built That," we check back with Kaitlin Mogental who is making packaged snacks out of the leftover fruit and veggie pulp from LA juice bars. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

  Hey, everyone. Just before we begin the show, I want to let you know about the live shows we're doing this summer. We recorded our first one just a few weeks ago in New York with Jonah Peretti of BuzzFeed. It was super fun. The crowd loved him. We loved it. It was great. Now, if you couldn't be there in person, don't worry. You'll be able to hear it this week, this Thursday, in fact. So be on the lookout for it. And since we have been doing some of these live shows, today's episode is a repeat, but it's one of our favorites. And just a quick heads up to let you know that there's a little bit of strong language in about the first minute and a half of the show. So if you've got any kids around, just cover their ears for about a minute and a half, and then you're good to go.

• 0:39Guy Raz?

  So you call up your dad and you're like, Dad, guess what? I'm joining the family business. I'm going to make beer.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  I was worse. I went home.

• 0:47Guy Raz?

  And was he excited?

• 0:49Speaker 01

  Oh, not really. When I told him, I was kind of hoping that he'd put his arm around me and-- because this 150-year-old family tradition was going to be carried on.

• 1:03Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  No. He looked at me, he said, Jim, you've done some really stupid things in your life. This is the stupidest.

• 1:15Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 1:29Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on today's show, how Jim Cook started brewing an old family beer recipe, called it Samuel Adams, bottled it up, and then helped kickstart the craft beer movement in America.

• 1:45Guy Raz?

  At some point last year, the number of breweries in America passed the 5,000 mark. And most of those breweries make craft beers, things like IPAs, porters, stouts, lagers, you name it. And this is beer that wins awards all over the world. And a lot of it even gets exported to places like Germany and Holland and Belgium, where beer brewing is practically a religion. But if somehow you went back in time to, like, 1980, and someone handed you a cold bottle of American beer, you might not recognize it. Because-- and Monty Python fans might remember this. American beer-- It used to be a joke.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  This is Frankly over here. We find your American beer is a little like making love in a canoe. It's fucking close to water.

• 2:36Guy Raz?

  So that was what it was like when Jim Cook was a young man. But he knew a lot about beer because he happened to come from a family of beer makers.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  My dad was a brewmaster, and it's like being the chef

• 2:48Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  in a kitchen. He was responsible for the recipe and the quality of the beer. He wasn't the owner. So he got out of brewmaster school in 1948, and there were 1,000 breweries all over the US. 36 years later, when I started Sam Adams, that 1,000 had dwindled down to 50. And my dad had to move from brewery to brewery as the breweries closed.

• 3:16Guy Raz?

  Did you have any intention, like as a kid or as a teen, of, like, doing this? Doing the same thing your dad did?

• 3:22Speaker 01

  No. My dad told me that it was a miserable way to make a living, and he eventually left the brewing industry entirely. The last thing that he wanted for me to do was to go back into brewing.

• 3:36Guy Raz?

  And this is a little bit crazy because they were like, it wasn't just your dad who was a brewer, like, his dad was a brewer, too?

• 3:41Speaker 01

  Yes. Every oldest son for six generations has been a brewer. I believe I'm the only sixth-generation brewer in the United States.

• 3:52Guy Raz?

  So what did you want to be?

• 3:55Speaker 01

  Honestly, I really didn't know. You know, I had this wonderful educational opportunity that nobody in my family had ever had. After I graduated from college, I started a JDMBA program, and I could just feel this pressure behind me, pushing me towards some career decision. So I dropped out.

• 4:19Guy Raz?

  So what'd you do then?

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Well, at the time, I was involved in a lot of outdoor activities: rock climbing, kayaking, backpacking, things like that. And my climbing partner, he got me involved in Outward Bound. I was able to do that during the summers. And then I had Learned that you don't need that much to live on if you're really enjoying what you're doing.

• 4:50Guy Raz?

  And so how many years did you do that for?

• 4:53Speaker 01

  I did it on and off for three and a half years. At the end of that three and a half years, I thought, OK, I think I'm ready to go back. And got my MBA and my JD. And I started working as a management consultant for a company called Boston Consulting Group. And, you know, we flew first class, you know, you consulted with CEOs, everybody treated you really well. It was a great job for a while.

• 5:23Guy Raz?

  Yeah, sounds pretty good. So why did you leave it?

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Well, I had this epiphany, I guess. After six years at BCG, I asked myself, do I want to do this the rest of my life? And the answer came back, no. And the next sort of corollary to that was, well, if I don't want to do it for the rest of my life, I probably don't want to do it tomorrow.

• 5:48Guy Raz?

  So how did that, like, that decision lead to you thinking about beer?

• 5:55Speaker 01

  That's a good question. And, you know, I knew I didn't want to work in the corporate world. So I thought, I'm going to start my own business. I don't know what it's going to be. But my dad had given me, actually, a copy of Ink Magazine. And there was an article in there about Anchor Steam, this small brewery in California.

• 6:18Guy Raz?

  San Francisco.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  It was owned by a great guy named Fritz Maytag. And Fritz had a viable, small brewery. It was an outlier. And when I was a consultant, what always fascinated me were the outliers. Because that's where the real learning was. Like, there was obviously the potential to find a market for a really high-quality beer. And I started to think about it, and I... Developed a different business model for what is now called craft brewing.

• 6:53Guy Raz?

  Yeah, so this is in the mid 80s, right?

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, 1984.

• 6:56Guy Raz?

  So you, you call up your dad and you're like, Dad, guess what? I'm joining the family business. I'm gonna make beer.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  I was worse. I went home.

• 7:04Guy Raz?

  And, and was he excited?

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Oh, not really. When I told him, I was kind of hoping that he'd put his arm around me and, because this 150 year old family tradition was gonna be carried on to yet another generation. No. He looked at me, he said, Jim, you've done some really stupid things in your life. This is the stupidest.

• 7:34Guy Raz?

  Okay, Jim, I just want to pause for a second and ask you, because I can kind of understand your dad's point, right? I mean, you had this great job, and then you just left it.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Yes, and I left it because staying there was very risky. Leaving it was not risky.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  And it's the difference in life between things that are scary and things that are dangerous. And there are plenty of things that are scary but aren't dangerous. And there are things that are dangerous but not scary.

• 8:07Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  And those are the things that get you. I can give you a climbing analogy from Outward Bound. Like, one of the things we taught people to do was rappel off a cliff. And they're really, it's a very scary thing to do. But you're also held by a belay rope, and that rope will hold a car. So walking off the cliff backwards is scary but not dangerous.

• 8:34Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  Okay. Walking across, you know, a 35 degree angle snowfield on a beautiful, you know, late May.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Afternoon with this bright blue sky. It's not scary at all, but it's very dangerous because the snow is melting. Eventually, it's going to find a layer of ice. The water will lubricate that and you have an avalanche. That is dangerous, but not scary. And in my situation, staying at BCG was dangerous, but not scary. And the danger there, the risk of it, was continuing to do something that didn't make me happy and getting to, you know, 65 and looking back and go, oh, my God, I wasted my life. That is risk. That is danger.

• 9:33Guy Raz?

  So was that what you said to your dad? I mean, did you convince him that this was worth trying?

• 9:39Speaker 01

  He eventually did come around. You know, I sat down with him and the thing that convinced him, I think, because all the American brewers were basically making the same kind of beer.

• 9:53Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  You know, very light, very easy to drink. And I said, Dad, I'm not going to compete with Bud and Miller and Coors. Everybody in the US who wants good beer is drinking the imports.

• 10:06Guy Raz?

  So at that time, it was like Heineken?

• 10:08Speaker 01

  Heineken, Beck's, St. Pauli Girl. Those were considered the great beers of the world. And what I did know from my brewing background is they were not the great beers of the world, that there was the possibility of making beer with a lot of flavor, but balanced. And there's a particular flavor structure of good beer. When you taste it, you will get that structure. And I could give it to people fresh because beer is perishable. Beer has about a four to five month shelf life. And the imported beers were almost always stale. They were typically in green and clear bottles and visible light isomerizes a compound in hops.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  That's why you get skunky beer.

• 10:55Guy Raz?

  So how did you come up with the recipe that, you know, you thought, OK, this is going to re-educate American beer drinkers. They're going to want to drink this beer instead of what they're used to.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  That was easy. After about an hour and a half, when my dad was beginning to get it, he was like, "Oh, you know, you're right. Nobody's making great beer. Yeah, maybe somebody should do that."

• 11:17Guy Raz?

  Huh.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  Then he took me up into the attic. There was a trunk, and there were family recipes. And he took out one of the recipes and said, "This is the recipe." It was from my great-great-grandfather's brewery. My dad had made a version of this beer at Wooden Shoe Brewery in Minster, Ohio, where he was brewmaster. Because the brewery was kind of going down the tubes. And he thought, "Maybe we can turn the brewery around by making big, American lager." And the owner tasted it and told my dad, he said, "Charlie, nobody is going to drink this. People want water with foam on it. So make water with foam on it."

• 12:02Guy Raz?

  So you just took this recipe and started to experiment with it?

• 12:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I took the recipe. I started making it in my kitchen.

• 12:09Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  It's an extremely difficult beer to make. You can't really do this as a home brewer.

• 12:15Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  It requires much more precise control. But I brewed it, and I could tell, this is going to be a good beer. If I can make this right, this would be a really good beer.

• 12:28Guy Raz?

  Okay, so you make a beer, but how did you, like, how did you even know how to begin to start a beer company?

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Well, the first thing I realized, I had to find the best brewmaster in America to help me. He was a man named Dr. Joseph Awadis. And he was the first American brewmaster to combine high-level scientific understanding, because he was a PhD in microbiology, with decades of practical experience.

• 13:00Guy Raz?

  How did you even convince him to get involved in your, like, fly-by-night startup?

• 13:04Speaker 01

  He turned me down at first. He thought, "This is really crazy, and you don't have enough money to pay me."

• 13:11Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  Which was true. And I said, "Well, Dr. Awadis, I'm not some idiot kid, just making beer in their kitchen. My dad was a brewmaster, my grandfather." And he remembered my dad a little bit. And I said, "Well, I'll tell you what. I'll give you 2% of the company." And that piqued his interest. He signed on and he helped me adapt a 19th century recipe to a 20th century brewery.

• 13:40Guy Raz?

  So, so did you have to go out and raise money to, to build a brewery?

• 13:44Speaker 01

  Well, I realized there are breweries out there. And my dad was the one who gave me this insight. What we did is we rented space. Dr. Awadis and I showed up, brewed the beer, and then they packaged it. And I didn't have to have my own brewery for several years.

• 14:06Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  When we started, we didn't have things that you think you need for a business. We didn't have an office. We didn't have a telephone. You know, I just asked myself, am I spending money on things that are going to make the beer better? Or am I spending money on things just because that's what you're supposed to spend it on?

• 14:24Guy Raz?

  By, by the way, how did you come up with a name, Sam Adams, for the beer?

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Well, it came from my history teacher when I was a junior in high school. And she taught the revolution. She highlighted the role of Samuel Adams. Depending on what books you read, he was a brewer, you know? I wanted a name that was assertively American, that reflected America's history and brewing tradition, et cetera, et cetera. So on the label, there it is, Brewer Patria. And I wanted to do what Sam Adams had done, only in my little way. I wanted to create a beer revolution and declare beer independence for the United States.

• 15:14Guy Raz?

  In just a minute, we'll be back with Jim Cook, and he'll explain how he actually convinced people to like his beer. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 15:39Guy Raz?

  It's How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So after experimenting for a few months with a family recipe, Jim Cook finally got it down to exactly the way he wanted it. And at this point, he had to figure out how to sell it.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  So my dad had told me, you know, you're going to start a business, Jim. It's lonely. It's going to have its ups and downs. See if you can find a partner. So I looked around BCG. It was full of like the best and the brightest from the top business schools. But somehow, I couldn't see them being my partner because they had all the same skills I had.

• 16:15Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  But then I realized, wait a minute, there is a person here who is energetic, talented, resourceful, great people person, has all the skills that I don't really have. She was my secretary. So it was just me and Rhonda. She was 23 years old, no college degree. Bartended at night. We were the perfect complement.

• 16:45Guy Raz?

  So how did you, you guys convince bars and shops to take your beer?

• 16:50Speaker 01

  Well, I was hoping that I would get a distributor. Well, there were five beer distributors in Boston. I went to each one of them. They all turned me down.

• 17:00Guy Raz?

  Because?

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Because to them, it looked like a stupid idea.

• 17:04Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  This was a beer that had a lot of color, had a lot of flavor, had a lot of taste. This was in the heyday of light beer. And, you know, they'd ask me, OK, so what's your marketing plan? Well, I don't really have a marketing plan.

• 17:16Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  What's your advertising budget? I don't have any money for advertising. Well, tell me about the company. It's me and my 23-year-old ex-secretary. So it wasn't very confidence inspiring as a business. And the only way that I could get my beer out there was I would put cold beer in my briefcase every morning. I could fit seven beers. And I had these two blue cool packs.

• 17:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  And a sleeve of cups. And I went from bar to bar, cold calling.

• 17:48Guy Raz?

  Just going and talking to managers and...

• 17:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, trying to get to them. And I'd never sold anything in my life.

• 17:56Guy Raz?

  Was that hard for you?

• 17:58Speaker 01

  Um, yes, I was, I remember to this day doing my first sales call. And hit the streets in Boston. I remember I was like, okay, I'm just gonna call on the first bar that I come to. Yeah. And I came to a bar and I didn't know what I was doing and I had my consultant's suit on. So I started talking to the guy behind the bar and he was nodding and I thought, that's a good sign, but he wasn't saying anything. And luckily, in the back was the manager. Cause the guy I was talking to was what's called the bar back. Uh huh. The bar back is the guy who like stocks the glasses and this guy didn't speak English. So he was just nodding away, managing in the back thinking, oh my gosh, there's a

• 18:41Speaker 01

  guy in a suit here. He's talking to my bar back. He's either IRS or he's Immigration and Naturalization Service and neither one of those is good. Uh huh, yeah. So he rushed up and you know, I kinda had my 30 second drill. Hi, I'm Jim Cook. I'm starting a small brewery here in Boston to make a new beer. I'm gonna call it, it's called Sam Adams. And my real end point was to get them to try the beer. So, you know, I build up to this and said, and would you like to try it? Yeah. He said, sure, leave me a bottle. I said, oh, it's cold. And I have some cups here. Let me pour you one. Yeah. Before he could say no. And of course, in the bar business, if you pour a beer, you can't just throw it out. You've gotta drink it.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, so we tried it together and he said, kid, you know, I didn't think the beer was gonna be this good. I'll take it. Wow. And I was so excited. And of course, I went back and actually Rhonda was taking some time off before we started. I called her, I was so excited. Rhonda, you know, we got our first customer. And Rhonda was very practical. She said, how many cases did he order? I said, oh, I forgot to ask him. So I had to go back the next day and apologize. And I was scared again that he would have like changed his mind or anything, but he gave me a 10 case order.

• 20:10Guy Raz?

  So this is like 1985 and you launch and you start to get some attention and-

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Six weeks after Sam Adams came out-

• 20:21Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  It got picked as the best beer in America.

• 20:24Guy Raz?

  How did that happen?

• 20:27Speaker 01

  It happened out in Denver, Colorado. It was at the Great American Beer Festival, which had pretty much beers from every brewer. And they went around over two nights, tasted the beers, everybody got to vote for the best beer, and they did this countdown, you know, 10, 9, 8.

• 20:45Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  And I thought we'd finish in the top 10, but they, you know, they kept getting lower and lower.

• 20:50Guy Raz?

  And you're like, oh, man.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  Oh, and then they announced, you know, and there's number two, the second best beer in America is this. And I was like, well, you know, maybe next year.

• 21:01Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  And then, and the best beer in America is Samuel Adams Boston Lager. And the whole company was two people.

• 21:09Guy Raz?

  You and Rhonda.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:10Guy Raz?

  So did that mean you were profitable from the start?

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Yes, we were profitable from the first full month because, going back to what I was talking about earlier, you know, it was the ultimate lean startup. Like I said, we had no office, we didn't even have a telephone. We did all our business from payphones. You know, I knew where all the good payphones in Boston were, the ones that were warm in the winter, the ones where you actually had a little shelf where you could put stuff on. So I was very clear when I started. It was just very clear to me, there were only two things that we needed to do really well. We needed to make great beer consistently,

• 21:58Speaker 01

  and we needed to work our butts off to sell it.

• 22:01Guy Raz?

  And at the beginning, this was like a regional thing, like just in Boston and New England?

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:06Guy Raz?

  So how did you get it to spread across the country?

• 22:09Speaker 01

  It happened very slowly. You know, it's basically, I started in Boston. I sort of grew a little bit out of Boston and went to Worcester. I was doing a lot of the selling myself. So, one bar at a time. And a lot of work, a lot of shoe leather, a lot of Motel 6s. So, I think the first city out of New England was Washington. So, I would go down to Washington.

• 22:37Guy Raz?

  Here in DC.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  Mondays and Tuesdays, yep. Down here, I mean, I still know a lot of the bar owners here. I was at a bar before I came over here, The Irish Times.

• 22:47Guy Raz?

  Yeah, famous bar near Union Station, yeah.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, one of my first accounts. And I was talking to Brendan, the current owner. But his dad put Sam Adams in there almost 30 years ago. So, you know, it was very hard in the beginning getting places to carry it. It probably got, you know, 95% rejection. So, I'd make 20 calls to get one account. And then we got picked as the best beer in America.

• 23:11Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  We got a bunch of publicity around that. People Magazine did a story, which was good and bad. Because all that publicity boosted the sales and we ran out of beer.

• 23:21Guy Raz?

  You could not make it fast enough.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Well, it takes six weeks to make Sam Adams and we weren't expecting it. So, we were out of beer for three weeks. We lost a bunch of accounts, pissed people off. But it was clear there was, that this idea was a bigger idea than I had realized. That this wasn't gonna, you know, take five years to get to a million dollars and then level off.

• 23:41Guy Raz?

  That was your plan. You thought, five years, we'll get to a million bucks.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  That'll be great. I'll be happy.

• 23:45Guy Raz?

  Have a nice life.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. And I remember.

• 23:48Guy Raz?

  How long did it take to hit a million, by the way?

• 23:50Speaker 01

  Uh, five months. I remember sitting down at a bar with Rhonda. And Rhonda, we had a business plan. But something's telling me this is bigger than we thought it was gonna be. That we are climbing a mountain here. And nobody climbs a mountain to get to the middle. We're gonna climb this mountain to get to the top. And it may take 30 years, it may take 50 years. And our mountain is, I want Sam Adams to be the largest and most respected of the high-end beers in the United States. That's our mountain.

• 24:38Guy Raz?

  So I remember, like, part of your strategy, it seems, was like attacking those imported beers. Like, I remember hearing radio ads that you would do in the 90s where you would say, you know, "Declare your independence from foreign beer."

• 24:53Speaker 01

  The radio spots came about because there was a radio station in Boston that wanted beer for a party. And so we traded them beer for airtime. Now, they gave us airtime at 2:00 in the morning, thinking, "Who would want that?" To me, I thought that was great because that's when the servers and the bartenders get off their ship.

• 25:13Guy Raz?

  Yeah, right.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  That's when they're listening to the radio. So they gave me all this airtime. And I, at first, was gonna like get radio talent to record it. And then I found out, well, you can hire that, but there's all these union rules, and you have to pay residuals, you gotta track it. And I was like, "I can't do that. I'll do the spots myself." So my spot was, "When America asks for Europe's tired and poor, we didn't mean their beer. But the beer they send us is hardly their best. They send us Heineken that's outlawed in Germany because of Germany's strict beer purity law. And the Bex they send us isn't

• 25:56Speaker 01

  the same Bex they have in Germany. They add forbidden adjuncts to it." That was a "bet the company" thing.

• 26:04Guy Raz?

  Were you threatened with litigation?

• 26:06Speaker 01

  Oh, yes. But I knew I was right. You know, having a brewing background, I knew it. And you could also tell it on analysis. So my feeling has always been, if you're right about something important, push it.

• 26:23Guy Raz?

  So after, I guess, like about a decade after you launched, you decided to go public. Tell me what happened. Why'd you decide to do that?

• 26:31Speaker 01

  Well... I thought it was time to do something to reward my investors because at that time, I think a dollar invested was probably worth $400. So I went to a couple of investment banks. They describe the IPO process, but when they describe it to you, you realize that there's nothing public at all about it.

• 26:52Guy Raz?

  It's all for their buddies.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  It is all for their buddies at the big institutions to buy the shares and make a bunch of money. And that bothered me and I thought, I've got to find a way around that. So I started thinking about it and I came up with this idea. So we put coupons on the six packs that allowed you to buy 33 shares of Boston Beer Company at $15 a share. So it was $495. You just had to send in a check. And the investment banks freaked out about it. They told me you can't do it. It'll never work. They gave me all these reasons not to. But I stood my ground. I was insistent. And I knew that the investment banks are going

• 27:37Speaker 01

  to make money on this. So they will let me do it if I refuse to compromise. So I refused to compromise. Eventually, they all came around and we got 130-some-thousand people who sent in their checks.

• 27:51Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  We got $65 million. And that was the first time something like that had been done. And other people have continued to do it, followed up on it.

• 28:02Guy Raz?

  So earlier, you said that you want Sam Adams to be the largest and most respected of the quote-unquote "high-end beers" in the US. Do you think you've achieved that?

• 28:13Speaker 01

  This may sound surprising, but I still don't feel like we're there.

• 28:17Guy Raz?

  Really?

• 28:18Speaker 01

  But I got to give you some perspective. What do you think our market share in the United States is?

• 28:22Guy Raz?

  I don't know, 10%, 15%?

• 28:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what everybody thinks. A little over 1%.

• 28:29Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  So, the big brewers spill more beer than I make all year long.

• 28:34Guy Raz?

  Right, yeah.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  90% of the US beer market is in the hands of two big, global brewing conglomerates.

• 28:42Guy Raz?

  But I mean, you're not like a small company. I mean, how many employees do you guys have now?

• 28:46Speaker 01

  We've got a little over 1,400 people. And that's, to me, also really gratifying because the average W2 compensation is $70,000. So, they're, you know, they're good jobs at our breweries. Those are manufacturing jobs.

• 29:04Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Good-paying manufacturing jobs in communities all across the United States.

• 29:11Guy Raz?

  So, Jim, when you think about how you built the company and Sam Adams and like, how much of it do you think was like your skills and your intelligence and talent? And how much of it was just luck?

• 29:25Speaker 01

  Guy, I'll take the luck. So, in all humility, a lot of it was luck. I look back and things could have gone wrong, you know? Brew kettle could have exploded, or, you know, that first guy could have told me, "This is a really stupid idea. Go back to your job." You know, a lot of things didn't go wrong that could have.

• 29:48Guy Raz?

  Did you, or could you have ever imagined that craft beer in America would become what it has become?

• 29:57Speaker 01

  I never imagined the success that we've been able to have. And I never imagined that there would be 4,500 other craft brewers, you know, many of them enjoying their own success. Today, American beer has gone from the laughing stock that it was when I started to the best place in the world to be a beer drinker. And when the rest of the world, they're looking at the US going, "I wish we could do in our country what Americans have done with beer. I wish we had the beer culture that America has." You know, it makes me feel good every time I have a beer.

• 30:44Guy Raz?

  That's Jim Cook. He published a memoir last year called Quench Your Own Thirst: Business Lessons Learned Over a Beer or Two. Cheers. Jim, by the way, says he personally tastes every batch of Sam Adams that they brew. He estimates that's 24,000 beers of the past 30 years that he was required to drink as part of his job, which sounds like not such a bad job.

• 31:26Guy Raz?

  And please don't turn us off just yet. In a moment, we're going to hear from you about the things you guys are building. But first, a quick thanks to one of our sponsors, American Express Open. If you listen to How I Built This, you're probably curious about ideas, and you probably have some ideas of your own. American Express Open can help you with money and know-how, so you can turn those ideas into action. Visit open.com to get business done.

• 31:57Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks for sticking around, because it's time now for How You Built That. And we're going to update a story we did back in November.

• 32:05Speaker 03

  My name is Caitlin Magentel. I'm in Los Angeles, California.

• 32:08Guy Raz?

  Actually, Caitlin grew up in Chicago, but when she went to college in LA, she noticed that there were all these juice bars everywhere. And one of her friends had a juicer at home.

• 32:17Speaker 03

  So I see her put this carrot in the juicer, and out comes like a tiny, tiny amount of liquid. And I see these mounds of vibrant carrot pulp, you know? And it smells so good, it's so fresh. And she just looks at me and she goes, I usually throw away the pulp. I have no idea what to do with it.

• 32:35Guy Raz?

  And that is how Caitlin came up with an idea for a business.

• 32:39Speaker 03

  The next day, I was like, wow, like, what if this juice pulp could be used to create healthy snacks at a more affordable price point? And so I called up a bunch of juiceries right then and there, and I asked them, what are you doing with your juice pulp?

• 32:53Guy Raz?

  So she found some juice bars that agreed to give her their fruit and veggie pulp. And then she found a small commercial kitchen where she could turn that pulp into snacks, snacks like granola.

• 33:04Speaker 04

  Have five different flavors, so apple pie, peanut butter and carrot, red velvet, beet red velvet.

• 33:09Guy Raz?

  Kaitlyn's business is called Pulp Pantry, and it's still a small batch operation, just a few hundred bags of snacks a week, mainly selling in health food stores in LA and online.

• 33:20Speaker 04

  I mean, it just becomes an obsession, you know, and it's like, it's kind of pathetic, honestly, to be, you know, seeing these bins of pulp and being so happy just to see it processed into like a better product and then to be seeing it sold on the shelves. I just think that's the craziest thing. So I love it, yeah.

• 33:35Guy Raz?

  Back when we first talked with Kaitlyn in the fall, she was applying to an incubator program run by Chobani Yogurt. She made the first cut, and in about a week, she'll find out whether she's in for real. And if she is, she'll travel to New York and then Idaho to learn how Chobani does business. And maybe she'll get the answer to a question she's still trying to figure out.

• 33:59Speaker 04

  How do we get these products that are usually premium priced, you know, vegetable-infused, healthy, grain-free snacks and make it actually really accessible for people through the use of neglected resources like juice pulp? So just that opportunity to be able to kind of work with a company that's in that same mindset is, it would be amazing.

• 34:19Guy Raz?

  Kaitlyn's business has also grown from just one person to five part-time volunteers, including a pastry chef and a strategy expert from Google.

• 34:28Speaker 04

  All of a sudden, all these people came into my life and were super passionate about it and excited and are just my go-to people for everything from the strategy to food safety plans. And it makes me so excited because I'm like, OK, we're ready to go. You know, it's keeping me going right now.

• 34:44Guy Raz?

  Kaitlyn isn't making a profit just yet. Her company's doing around $2,000 a month in sales. She's also working on a new product that's a little like a vegan Cheez-It, and it's going to come in three flavors: barbecue, sour cream, and ranch. And you can read more about Paul Pantry on our Facebook page. Just search How I Built This on Facebook. And of course, if you want to tell us your story, go to build.npr.org. We love hearing what you're up to. And thanks for listening to the show this week. If you want to find out more or listen to previous episodes, you can go to howibuiltthis.npr.org. You can also write us. It's h i b t at npr.org. And if you want to send us a tweet, it's at howibuiltthis.

• 35:29Guy Raz?

  Please also subscribe to the show. If you get a chance, you can do that through Apple Podcasts or however you get your podcasts. Our show was produced this week by Casey Herman with original music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. Thanks also to Neva Grant, Sanaz Meshkhanpour, Claire Breen, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Lawrence Wu. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 36:04Speaker 05

  Your next great read is out there waiting for you, and NPR can help you find it. Visit npr.org/bookswelove to browse hundreds of books we loved, published this year, plus thousands in our archive. And, you know, books make great gifts for everyone on your holiday shopping list.