Tampa has surpassed us...maybe Jacksonville too...and South FL ain’t far behind

Had a nice talk with somebody tonight about this thread. I’ll take back what I said about Florida Micro/Brown.

Don’t think they aren’t trying.


However, he also mentioned that there are a ton of new breweries opening up all over the state, but only one in Orlando. This pretty much sucks. Who knows why we can’t get anyone to invest in our town. I think we have the demand.

I think you’re looking at this backwards. All of the current production breweries in Florida are were they are, not because of any other reason, than that’s were the people who started them lived. Nobody scoured the state and said "Hey, you know what? Jacksonville or Tampa, Gainesville, Dunedin or Tarpon Springs would be a great place for a brewery." So far, no one has stepped up in Orlando, that’s all. With that said, the Orlando market on the retail side, beats the crap out of the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale market.

Originally posted by flabeer
I think you’re looking at this backwards. All of the current production breweries in Florida are were they are, not because of any other reason, than that’s were the people who started them lived. Nobody scoured the state and said "Hey, you know what? Jacksonville or Tampa, Gainesville, Dunedin or Tarpon Springs would be a great place for a brewery." So far, no one has stepped up in Orlando, that’s all. With that said, the Orlando market on the retail side, beats the crap out of the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale market.

Bob’s right. And sexy. It’s an unbeatable combination.

Originally posted by Degarth

Originally posted by flabeer
I think you’re looking at this backwards. All of the current production breweries in Florida are were they are, not because of any other reason, than that’s were the people who started them lived. Nobody scoured the state and said "Hey, you know what? Jacksonville or Tampa, Gainesville, Dunedin or Tarpon Springs would be a great place for a brewery." So far, no one has stepped up in Orlando, that’s all. With that said, the Orlando market on the retail side, beats the crap out of the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale market.

Bob’s right. And sexy. It’s an unbeatable combination.

Just met Bob after talking to you at CCB, and man, you’re right.

I want so bad to contribute to this thread, but... I can’t think of anything to say. Living in Tallahassee, any time I go to Tampa or Orlando it’s like freakin’ beer heaven. You guys can have the Sweetwater, we’ll take the CCB! We’re trying, though.

I notice that a lot of you are concerned with distributors and such, and man they piss me off... but they’re trying to make money, right? Did anything happen in Orlando in the past couple of years that made their profits decline in Orlando and spring up in Tampa (and elsewhere) or something of that sort? Or is this sort of already covered in what people have already been mentioning via the plethora of driven businesses in Tampa versus Orlando?

Bob, I understand what you are saying, but considering the size of Orlando and its location, why no one there would not want to start a brewery seems hard to believe. I would imagine between the distributors there, the proximity to CCB, maybe a lack of serious homebrewers, or something else is causing this slowdown in the craft beer market. The people and money are there, maybe no one has the balls to go out and get them.

We’ve got a few things on the horizon in Orlando, but we’re still playing catch up! Its weird to me we have the retail business but just no production business. Cask & Larder will be up this summer. Hourglass is opening up in Longwood (met them have not sampled any beer yet) and if all goes well we’ll finally have a small system hopefully by next year in our new location. We’ve had Big River at Disney but the beers are very dumbed down, with all the British tourism at Disney I always wondered why they didn’t do some kick ass English Ales? Hey Degarth, instead of sending that system to the Tampa airport open up a small brewpub and send Josh Brengel back to Orlando to brew!

Originally posted by redlight
We’ve got a few things on the horizon in Orlando, but we’re still playing catch up! Its weird to me we have the retail business but just no production business. Cask & Larder will be up this summer. Hourglass is opening up in Longwood (met them have not sampled any beer yet) and if all goes well we’ll finally have a small system hopefully by next year in our new location. We’ve had Big River at Disney but the beers are very dumbed down, with all the British tourism at Disney I always wondered why they didn’t do some kick ass English Ales? Hey Degarth, instead of sending that system to the Tampa airport open up a small brewpub and send Josh Brengel back to Orlando to brew!

Yea this is an exciting list of stuff happening in the area. When will you guys be in the new location?

target is middle of may but i’m not holding my breath

Originally posted by drowland

Originally posted by Degarth

Originally posted by flabeer
I think you’re looking at this backwards. All of the current production breweries in Florida are were they are, not because of any other reason, than that’s were the people who started them lived. Nobody scoured the state and said "Hey, you know what? Jacksonville or Tampa, Gainesville, Dunedin or Tarpon Springs would be a great place for a brewery." So far, no one has stepped up in Orlando, that’s all. With that said, the Orlando market on the retail side, beats the crap out of the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale market.

Bob’s right. And sexy. It’s an unbeatable combination.

I notice that a lot of you are concerned with distributors and such, and man they piss me off... but they’re trying to make money, right? Did anything happen in Orlando in the past couple of years that made their profits decline in Orlando and spring up in Tampa (and elsewhere) or something of that sort?

No, the distributor mess we have is just a weird mix of circumstances, in my opinion. Going way back, we had Tom Moench’s Unique Beers, which is in large part what put us on the map. He was single handedly responsible for laying the groundwork for bringing some kickass brands into the market where they previously didn’t exist, inclusing the Shelton Brothers portfolio. Unique ran the show up until around ~2006 I would say, and that was the time when Orlando ruled the Florida market. Boboski, SoLan, and mgumby were running Knightly, and Brent had just taken over Redlight and begun to turn it into the best beer bar in the state (which it still is, IMO).

When Tom decided to get out of the distribution game, he sold the Unique portfolio to Schenck, which had some sort of loose brother-sister relationship with Tampa’s JJ Taylor. At the time, they had some beer geeks within their ranks who would continue to push for new labels and keep the Shelton orders flowing. Things were still good then.

Fast forward a bit and the pressure from Miller and the higher-ups within Schenck started making life more difficult for our beer geek advocates. People started getting fed up, and eventually left for more promising opportunities (a la Mike Wallace leaving Schenck to work for Terrapin). Around this time, all craft beer knowledge and notion seemed to disappear within Schenck’s ranks, the Shelton orders stopped, and things headed south quickly.

Fast forward again and Schenck sold out to Reyes Group, forming one of, if not the largest beer distributor conglomerate in the country. Things have not improved since then, and clearly they do not get it. I’m afraid we’ll be stuck with them for a while.

On top of this, add in some defections at FL Micro (Justin to CCB, Mike Smith to do his own thing)...as well as continued pressure from the Budweiser-controlled City Beverage...and a complete lack of beer knowledge on the part of the new entrants into the market (World of Beer, House of Beer, Milk District group, Total Wine, etc) and what are we left with? A mess...that’s what. It could be worse...but it could also be a whole lot better.

I honestly don’t know where we go from here. I want to personally get involved and make a positive change, but I’m busy running a small business of my own, I’m not a brewer myself, and I lack the capital to make a significant investment into a brewery. I’ll support anyone who makes a serious effort to improve things in any way that I can.

Great thread guys. I have often thought while having a beer at RLRL, why does Orlando not have a great brewery? The last time I was there beerlando told me the same thing GoT did about Orlando brewing but I went anyway . I do find that I now spend more time in Jacksonville than Orlando, but I am always "destination Tampa". I love O town, and the ratebeer crew is second to none. I would imagine with all the tourism the city gets that a quality brewery would have to work if funded and managed correctly. I have started, run and sold several businesses over the last 20 years. However, my beer knowledge is limited to drinking, homebrewing and drinking more . What are we talking about $ wise on a 15 bbl startup? The key is making great beer, reinvestment and slow growth.