Brewing the American Dream
Microbrewers setting out today face high startup costs and a dearth of banks willing to lend small sums. Remembering his own difficulty obtaining initial financing for Sam Adams, Koch created a program called Brewing the American Dream to provide loans and mentorship to small food and beverage entrepreneurs. The program has partnered with microfinance nonprofit Accion to loan out $99 million since its founding in 2008, and Koch says the repayment rate has been 96%.
The origin story of Sam Adams has become legendary—Koch and his partner Rhonda Kallman selling brews by hand in Boston back in the mid-1980s, using payphones to minimize overhead costs and winning the “best beer in America” award for its flagship lager in its first year, 1985. American beer had a terrible reputation at the time. The brews considered to be of high quality all originated abroad, from Heineken to Becks.
Now the U.S. is arguably the craft beer capital of the world, with the number of craft breweries in the country reaching an all-time high of 9,552 last year, per the Brewers Association. But not all is rosy: The overall production of American craft beer plateaued last year. Some analysts speculate that the market is near saturation.
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