Sam Adams Helps Small Businesses

Samuel Adams Brewing the American Dream, a non-profit effort by the craft brewer to supply funds and mentoring to prospective small-business owners, is entering its fifth year and …

Samuel Adams Brewing the American Dream, a non-profit effort by the craft brewer to supply funds and mentoring to prospective small-business owners, is entering its fifth year and the company is expanding the platform. Sam Adams will be adding $1 million to the organizational fund, which will help it to make more microloans to businesses as well as support training programs. Repayment and interest on microloans gets recycled into the fund. Additionally, the company has agreed to donate five cents from every draft beer sale made at participating locations to further help fuel the fund, For more on this continue reading the following article from TheStreet.

Boston Beer Co. (SAM), the maker of Sam Adams beer, is expanding its five-year-old initiative to help small businesses in the food and beverage industry with funding, coaching and other resources available from the $2 billion market cap brewery.

Known as Samuel Adams Brewing The American Dream, the program is adding $1 million in funding for microloans targeting about 100 new small businesses through its partnership with non-profit lender Accion. Companies, including other craft brewers, can apply for microloans ranging from $500 to $25,000. All loan payments are recycled back into the fund.

The brewery is also using the campaign to appeal to customers, asking them to support the financing of small businesses through its program "Raise a Pint, Brew a Dream." Starting today through May 31, for every Samuel Adams Boston Lager draft sold at participating locations nationwide, Boston Beer will donate five cents to the Brewing the American Dream microloan fund.

Boston Beer founder Jim Koch (second from right) along with Brewing the American Dream beneficiaries Chris Spinelli (far left) and Jon Mervine (far right) of Roc Brewery and Jim Woods (second from left) from MateVeza visit the Sam Adams brewery.

The program is also expanding its coaching and mentoring activities for small businesses. This year, Brewing the American Dream will introduce an event called the "Pitch Room" that will focus on helping small-business owners appeal to potential investors. Customers and small-business owners will have the opportunity to pitch their products to national retailers and restaurants.

A select few will then present at a national competition, where they’ll have the chance to win a $10,000 business grant and a series of personalized coaching and mentoring sessions with the staff at Boston Beer, including the company’s founder, Jim Koch.

Claim up to $26,000 per W2 Employee

  • Billions of dollars in funding available
  • Funds are available to U.S. Businesses NOW
  • This is not a loan. These tax credits do not need to be repaid
The ERC Program is currently open, but has been amended in the past. We recommend you claim yours before anything changes.

The initiative "is a way of leveraging a couple million dollars’ worth of loans and a lot of coaching and mentoring and counseling and transferring our business expertise to the people who are going to create jobs in the U.S.," says Koch, who adds that the initiative is a pet project for him.

"When I started Sam Adams what would have been really helpful to me that I couldn’t get [was] loan money … even to get nuts and bolts business advice. Even for me with a Harvard MBA, I didn’t know how to make a sales call or design a label or how to set up a payroll [system.] Those are things that 20 min with somebody who does that will prevent a lot of expensive mistakes," he says.

The program will also extend its popular speed coaching activities in cities throughout the country. This year the program is hosting events in 10 locations: Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, DC – and, for the first time, Miami and San Francisco.

At the speed-coaching events, business owners are paired with Sam Adams employees, as well as local business experts who provide advice in their areas of expertise. Each attendee has the opportunity to participate in a series of high-impact, one-on-one 20-minute coaching sessions intended to address their specific problems and concerns.

For example, a business owner with a packaging question might meet with one of Boston Beer’s packaging or graphic design experts who can provide specific ideas on color, style and size to help capture the attention of potential consumers.

Brewing The American Dream was launched in 2008 and strongly supported by Boston Beer Co. founder Jim Koch. It was originally formed to help local New England small businesses (and yes, even small craft breweries) get the financing and resources they need.

The program has since expanded nationally. Accion has doled out $1.9 million in microloans through the program to 225 small businesses across the U.S., with the average loan at about $8,000. The initiative has also provided coaching to more than 3,000 business owners and created or saved nearly 1,400 jobs, Boston Beer says.

While there is no annual revenue minimum for applicants, established companies are preferable. "What we want them to do with the loan is use it to grow their business and create jobs, profit so they can pay the loan back and then we can recycle that loan to another small business that can do the same thing," Koch says. "We have had business where we’ve made two or even three loans."

At a corporate level, Koch says connecting with food and beverage entrepreneurs keeps Sam Adams connected to its entrepreneurial roots – an advantage when competing with the likes of beer conglomerates like Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD) and Molson Coors (TAP).

"For Boston Beer, it keeps our people in contact with our own entrepreneurial roots. In our business, [Sam Adams] makes up 1% of the U.S. beer market so we have to stay entrepreneurial and maintain our small business mentality and culture and this is a way of doing that," he says.

That said, Koch notes that the fund has more money available to lend than applicants right now.

"[We have] some significant resources that we could share we could help other business do what I didn’t have," Koch says. "Sam Adams has helped create a revolution in in brewing. Maybe there’s another Sam Adams out there. It would be cool if we could help them make their way down the path that I’ve been down."

Shares of Boston Beer were gaining 0.7% in New York to $158.61 to extend its advance this year to 18%.

This article was republished with permission from TheStreet.

advertisement

Does Your Small Business Qualify?

Claim Up to $26K Per Employee

Don't Wait. Program Expires Soon.

Click Here

Share This:

In this article