E-Malt.com News article: USA, NY: Lake Placid Pub and Brewery moves ahead

Chris Ericson was only 24 years old when he started the Lake Placid Pub and Brewery with a college friend of his, but he said he didn't doubt that it would end up doing well, Lake Placid News reported on March, 3.

"The pub being successful was something I planned on, not nearly the volume that we do now," he said. "The level of sales that we do now is very surprising to me, but I always knew that we were going to build a good place for people to come."

The Lake Placid Pub and Brewery, which opened officially in September 1996, started to attract its own patrons with its quality beer.

"Ubu has been our flagship since Day One," Ericson said.

He said he came up with the recipe for Ubu during his days at Kennebunkport Brewing Company and Shed Restaurant.

Ubu, which gets its name from a large chocolate lab who belonged to patron in the 1990s, has won numerous awards over the years.

"Ubu is a very, very unique beer," Ericson said. "There aren't a lot of beers like it out on the market ... It's just this crazy style that has success."

Ubu isn't the Pub and Brewery's only award-winning beer. Lake Placid India Pale Ale, Twice Bitten Barleywine and Scotch Ale have also won awards.

Over its 16-year existence the Lake Placid Pub and Brewery has served about 70 various beers.

"We don't necessarily want everyone to think every single one of our beers is off the charts great because if we're doing that, we've clustered them all to kind of a lowest common dominator," Ericson said. "I'd rather have someone in and say, 'Hey, listen, the Moose Island is way too light for me.' Well, that's fine because there are people who like light beers. We really try to have a wide range of beers, so that everyone can find their taste."

Also essential is that the beers are brewed well and meet internal standards, said Ericson, whether they are brewed on the premise of the Lake Placid Pub and Brewery or in Utica.

Beers that are brewed for distribution, which consist of Ubu, India Pale Ale and Barkeater Amber with Winter Lager and Hefeweizen being seasonal - are done so in a Utica brewing facility and are sold under the name of the Lake Placid Craft Brewing Company.

"We try very hard to make sure that the beer that's coming out of Utica tastes exactly like the beer that's coming out of the pub," Ericson.

But having operations outside of the Lake Placid Pub and Brewery wasn't an initial business plan.

"Our original plans of when we designed the brewery was just to sell our beer at the pub," Ericson said. "We knew we would probably sell the growlers, to sell beer to go. Not only did we not plan to sell off premise, we kind of made the decision that we were not going to sell off premise and sized our brewery accordingly."

But life had other plans.

Upon selling their beer to a few other local establishments, other local establishments wanted to carry the Pub and Brewery's beer, and then others after that.

"It progressed very organically," Ericson said.

In order to keep up with demand he re-opened an already existing brewery in Plattsburgh in 2001-02 to produce beer for distribution.

"All of a sudden we went from not having enough capacity to a lot of capacity, so then we extended our circle out one more notch, so to speak," Ericson said.

Within a few years, the Plattsburgh facility could no longer keep up with the distribution demand, and so the business moved its distribution production site to Utica in 2007-08 where it remains to this day.

Distribution now extends to 13 states, mostly within the Northeast, with the most recent state being Iowa.

It is Ericson's passion for beer and brewing that will be taking him and his business further in the coming years.

"Our goal is to fill in a lot of blank places where we are now (state-wise) than it is to continue to go farther and farther out," Ericson said. "We want to make sure that we've gotten as much distribution in our current territories as we can."

He said of all the states his beers are available in, he has the most "penetration" in New York, especially in Lake Placid and Saranac Lake.

However, the farther away from Lake Placid and Saranac Lake one gets, the less likely Lake Placid Craft beers are available.

"Distribution and getting shelf space and getting taps is the hardest part of off premise distribution paradigm," Ericson said. "Making beer isn't necessarily the biggest challenge, selling the beer, getting it into chains or getting it into retail accounts, that's the hard thing to do."

Helping the Pub and Brewery's beer acquire shelf space in other establishments are paid representatives in various territories.


07 March, 2012