Chris Maier was not a big beer drinker when he moved to Camas about five years ago. But a business he co-founded is helping to change that. And as enthusiasm for his fledgling company far exceeds his expectations, Maier says that he has plenty of reasons to raise a foamy glass in celebration.
The company, Portland-based GrowlerWerks, was created by four engineers who saw a problem and wanted to develop a solution. Many small-time breweries don’t bottle their beverages, and people who want to take those beers home need to fill a glass growler — a half-gallon glass jar — and then drink up within a few days, before it goes flat.
“We wanted to make a growler that would keep beer fresh, keep it carbonated and that was easy to use,” says Maier, CEO of GrowlerWerks. “So we developed something that could keep beer fresh for up to four weeks.”
The uKeg is a pressurized metal growler that will come in two sizes when sales start next year. After developing several plastic prototypes, GrowlerWerks now has an working aluminum model: It’s a shiny silver-colored jug a bit smaller than a gallon of milk, with a brass spigot to quickly fill a glass. After it’s filled from a tap, a carbon dioxide cartridge uses CO2 gas to keep out oxygen, which is what makes the beer go bad.
With a working model in hand, the company’s founders — all based out of a Portland basement — did something many small businesses are trying: They turned to the public for help, launching an online Kickstarter campaign on Oct. 15 aimed at raising the $75,000 it would take to start manufacturing. Within two days, they had met their goal. And the pledges keep coming.
As of midday Monday, close to 3,000 backers had promised more than $390,000 toward the GrowlerWerks Kickstarter campaign. More than a month still remains to contribute.
Although a handful of supporters have put forward small amounts of cash in exchange for coasters or T-shirts, the vast majority opted for a discount on a uKeg once full-scale manufacturing gets underway. The company will have two models, half-gallon and gallon-size. The smaller, standard-size growler will sell for $89, and the larger one will be $139. Kickstarter supporters can get them for $10 less.
Craft beer boom
Demand for craft beer — including brews available in growlers — has been spiking in recent years. Craft sales climbed 20 percent in 2013, according to the Brewers Association, a Colorado-based trade group, and growth in the sector has been in double digits annually for a decade now.
“Beer drinkers are excited about what small and independent brewers are offering,” says Bart Watson, staff economist with the Brewers Association.
And according to ProBrewer.com, a website that serves the beer industry, many of these small brewers only offer beer on tap or through a growler. Growler sales are not tracked by any industry group, but breweries have reported that as much as 25 percent of sales may be through growlers, according to ProBrewer.
The growing enthusiasm for this form of beer distribution shows up in online comments accompanying the uKeg kickstarter campaign.
“My dad and his beer club go out on brewery tours all the time, and he always laments that the last glass from his growler is never as good as the first,” one funder wrote. “Problem solved! This is amazing.”
“As an avid homebrewer and meadmaker, I’m thoroughly excited about this game-changing innovation,” another Kickstarter funder commented.
Websites Coolhunting.com, which covers innovative designs, and CrowdfundInsider, which covers startup funding, have both featured the uKeg online.
“The response has been beyond my wildest dreams,” Maier says.
Staying in control
Now Maier, a mechanical engineer, and the rest of his team have to decide what’s next for GrowlerWerks. They already have raised enough funds to start manufacturing in China, and expect to begin delivering products in May 2015. But with hundreds of thousands of dollars more than they expected to raise, they have options they did not anticipate so soon.
“Maybe it’s time to get a real office and move out of the basement,” jokes Shawn Huff, another co-founder and head of GrowlerWerks sales and marketing. The company’s four founders are working for free and putting up their own cash to fund growth, and they could start seeing paychecks soon.
But GrowlerWorks also still has to figure out how it will distribute its uKegs to potential buyers — it sees online sales through retailers such as Amazon.com as a promising option, as well as brick-and-mortar store sales at such retailers as Portland-based Kitchen Kaboodle, Huff says. He says he’s also been contacted by distributors interested in marketing the uKeg around the globe.
In the long run, Huff and Maier both say, they want to keep control of the business they have built. Because they financed it out-of-pocket to start, and now through Kickstarter, they hope they can avoid the pressure that many fast-growing companies face to sell to larger corporations, Maier says.
But first things first. With orders lined up, it’s time to get manufacturing, he says. “We did it. We bootstrapped it. We funded it. Now we have to deliver the product.”
