We recently connected with Jeremiah Zimmer and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Jeremiah, thanks for joining us today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

Many breweries, at their onset, focus on establishing a tap room first, as it is the highest margin that can be realized in the lifecycle of making, selling and consumption of beer. We diverted from that standard in that we focused first our footprint of self-distribution (Illinois allows us to deliver our own beer up to a certain volume), which allowed us not only to establish a foundation of business we could grow upon, but unintentionally and ultimately helped us during the negative effects of COVID shut-downs and closures. We had no taproom and thus no taproom staff or public-facing spaces to drink. We were 100% off-premise, so we dropped our packaged beer at retail stores and people bought to take home and drink – something that really took off during that time. It wasn’t until 2021-2022 that we started shifting more towards on-premise accounts and consumption and got the chance to get a customer-facing place to drink like a taproom open.

Also, as an extension of being able to self-distribute our beer, we were able to shorten the window of time between packing and delivery, which we turned into a bit of a competitive advantage by being the freshest available anywhere that sold our beer. Happy to elaborate further, but those two pillars have played enormous roles in Hop Butcher For The World being what it is today.

Jeremiah, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Growing up in a smaller town in Wisconsin, I would make periodic trips with friends or family to larger cities with much more going on and would always leave wanting more and to return soon. Milwaukee and Chicago were two examples of places that excited me, so when it came time to figure out what I wanted to do after graduating college, I started there and ultimately ended up in Chicago. My dream then was to establish a career in sports business, which I found my footing in and experienced quick happiness in. I recall even then always having an interest in starting my own business, but at the time, had no idea what that business might be.

Ultimately and eventually, my love of beer (who doesn’t love drinking a fresh cold beer?!) intersected with the explosion of opportunity in craft beer of the early 2010s and not only did our early concept show promise, we (as a company) made some strategic decisions and moves that allowed us to experience early success. For starters, we avoided sinking money and investment dollars into our own infrastructure and instead focused on piggy-backing other breweries’ facilities and their excess room and/or capacity to prove concept, establish sales and grow without the typicaly degree of overhead impact.

From the starting line, we focused on hoppy beers (i.e. IPAs) because that’s what we liked to drink. We were early adopters, within the Chicago market at least, of the “haze craze.” We focused a large percentage of our output on that style and dialed in quality. As demand grew, we were able to scale up the sizes of our batches brewed because of how we were situated operationally speaking (i.e. not at our own facilities). But, and it’s worth noting, the fact that we were focused on freshness (both days old in cans as well as pumping out a constant rotation of new and returning favorite beers), also set us apart from all of the other breweries both local and not, who had at least one or two flagship beers that were always available.

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

When I moved to Chicago in 2005, I thought that the WGN Morning News was by far the most entertaining and humorous way to consume news I had ever experienced, so that became my go-to. A few years in to watching almost-daily and I had seen enough of their annual St. Patrick’s Day broadcasts to decide that having a beer with one or all of them deserved making my personal bucket list. So, as we started seeing some success on the brewery front, I dropped off some beer at the WGN studio in hopes that they would enjoy and maybe it might open a door to meet them. Much to my surprise, I got an email from Larry Potash, one of the morning anchors. He was super appreciative and communicated, but I made sure to not overdo it or bug him too much. My goal, again, was to have a beer with him/them in person after all. So fast forward a couple years of cultivating that casual, back and forth via email kind of friendship and we finally had a public-facing taproom he could swing by and visit on his way home from a morning broadcast. It was a super fun visit and he loved the beers. On his way out, I brought up Tom Skilling’s upcoming retirement and suggested we do a beer called “Tom Freaking Skilling” (a reference to a decade-old skit the WGN Morning crew did) and he excitedly agreed and made it happen on the WGN front.

Long story short, it was one of our quickest selling beers in the history of our brewery and it was because of a friendship that happened and grew over many years – and of course, Chicago’s undying love for one of its favorite weather people.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Our commitment to being the freshest beer on the shelf, as well as becoming the best hoppy beer producer we could and committing all of our creative resources towards it. And then, finally, hammering that home by showing up consistently – week and week out for a decade and counting.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.hopbutcher.com
• Instagram: hopbutcher
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hopbutcher
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremiah-zimmer-2a39454/
• Twitter: hopbutcher
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/hop-butcher-for-the-world-chicago

Image Credits

Big Foot Media