Jason And Travis Kelce Now Own Garage Beer.
By: The Gnarly Gnome
It’s always fun when big news hits my inbox mid-week. I had to literally drop everything I was doing to share this one with you, too… because it’s a ton of fun. Jason and Travis Kelce have just inked a deal to become what they are calling “significant owners and operators” of Garage Beer. While I’m taking that to mean that they aren’t the only owners of the company… I’m also taking it to mean that this is about to get really, really interesting.
Let’s start at the beginning, though.
The Birth Of Garage Beer
Braxton Brewing Company is one of the places locally that had their ear to the ground when they released Garage Beer for the first time in 2018. The move to create a light lager that both satisfied craft beer drinkers and macro drinkers alike was fairly novel at the time (though, don’t send me hate mail, I know they weren’t the first to do it). The bet paid off big, too.
The brand continued to grow at an incredible pace; as the demand for seltzers started to wane, the demand for light, easy-drinking lagers continued to swell.
Things got so wild, in fact, that to keep growing the brand in the way they knew it deserved, Braxton formed a “partnership” with brand investment marketer Andrew Sauer to start plans to take the brand nationwide. This new ‘Garage Beer Co.’ has been blowing people away with its trajectory, too. You can find Garage Beer in a lot of states… hold on for this list:
- Ohio
- Kentucky
- Tennesee
- Indiana
- Pennsylvania
- Wisconsin
- Michigan
- Illinois
- Missouri
- West Virginia
- Idaho
- Montana
- New Jersey
They also aren’t slowing down any time soon, with plans to get the beer into dozens of new states this year. It all sets things up for today’s news.
Enter The Kelce Brothers
Jason and Travis Kelce are Cincinnati guys. They played football right here at UC, and even if the Bengals loyalty runs deep in my veins. I have to admit a soft spot when I have one. They have been talking for years about partnering together in the beer business – they’re what the press release called “passionate about the industry”. They were waiting, though, for the perfect opportunity to come along.
Garage Beer was it. They aren’t just signing on to lend their names to a brand that can market the crap out of it… they’re joining as significant investors, partners, investors, and operators of the brand. They want to literally blow Garage Beer up into something that people will be familiar with nationwide… and I think they’re poised to make that happen. That doesn’t mean that they’re on their own with it, though. They aren’t sole owners of the company, and previous ownership still maintains the majority of the company. They have however, been working on this relationship for a very long time.
Garage Beer Right Now
People are a little hard on the brand sometimes, locally. “Beer that tastes like beer” can elicit some snickers from craft beer fans. As the company was forced to start contracting some of its production when things started to blow up, it got a few eye-rolls from folks who may not be the biggest fans of that big place in Columbus that is their contract partner… and I get it.
The recipe change to make the beer a little more approachable, a little more affordable, and a little more… macro-like certainly upset people who loved the previous recipe. I don’t want to gloss over that either. If you’re one of the folks that holds this opinion… you’re not wrong.
That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t all be proud of watching how this brand is growing today. They are doing what they set out to do, and they’re doing it incredibly well.
Me? I’m going to snag another case of garage beer to knock back this weekend.