Announcer (00:00):
Hey BK with Ofer Cohen.
Steve Hindy (00:01):
A lot of people questioned naming it Brooklyn, including like lifelong Brooklyn people. They said, really? You're going to call it Brooklyn.
Ofer Cohen (00:11):
Today I talked to Steve Hindy, cofounder and co-chairman of Brooklyn Brewery, one of the largest craft beer makers and United States and an international success story. Steve and his neighbor Tom Potter, founded the company in 1988 pulling a dream to bring brewing back to Brooklyn. Steve had just returned to New York from the Middle East where he had worked as a war correspondent and had learned about about homebrewing, always a pioneer and a risk taker. Steve and his family moved to Gowanus an industrial neighborhood in Brooklyn. As you'll hear, Steve and Tom add faith into Brooklyn brand from the very beginning they built a brewery in Williamsburg, which would later become one of Brooklyn sports established neighborhoods. Steve Hindy, welcome to Hey BK.
Steve Hindy (00:49):
Thank you.
Ofer Cohen (00:50):
How did you get here today? I mean, you're not, you don't live too far from here, right?
Steve Hindy (00:54):
Right. I'm about a couple of miles away in Gowanus. So I rode my bike and they're like 30 mile an hour winds out there. So going down wind was fantastic, but against the wind was difficult. And the other way.
Ofer Cohen (01:10):
How long have you been in the Gowanus?
Steve Hindy (01:12):
We bought a house in Gowanus 26 years ago. It's a wood frame house built in 1840. It was one of the first houses in that part of Brooklyn. Uh, originally a two story farmhouse.
Ofer Cohen (01:28):
That was very pioneering of you.
Steve Hindy (01:30):
Well, we've always kind of been on the pioneering side. When we moved to New York in the, like 1974 we lived on the upper West side. And, our friends on the East side were afraid to come and see us, because of the crime on the West side. And then we just fell in love with this house and, in Gowanus. I mean, it was irresistible. It just such a cool old house. And, um, a lot of our friends thought we were crazy.
Ofer Cohen (02:02):
So this is just around the time you started brewing beer, right?
Steve Hindy (02:07):
I mean, yeah, I started, brewing beer like around 1984, when I came back to New York and then, together with my downstairs neighbor Tom Potter. Eventually I persuaded him to quit his job and start a brewery with me and, that we sold our first beer in March of 1988.
Ofer Cohen (02:31):
Wait we're cutting the, the whole famous story of you being a journalist in the middle East?
Steve Hindy (02:37):
Yeah, that was my first, life. I majored in English in college. and then I tried, teaching high school English. I almost had a nervous breakdown. It's the hardest thing I ever did in my life. I couldn't wait to get out of there. And I went to work for a newspaper in upstate New York and I enjoyed, reporting and, and playing that role. And then, I got my big chance a job with associated press in Newark, New Jersey. My wife and I split up and I got up my head. I wanted to cover a war. So I studied Arabic and said I wanted to go to Beirut. Where the civil war was going on. And I learned there aren't too many people who want to run off to cover Wars. So a year after volunteering I landed did in Beirut as the middle East correspondent for AP.
Ofer Cohen (03:30):
Beirut in the 80s was, was a kind of a very dangerous place.
Steve Hindy (03:34):
Yeah. I got there in February 79 and actually I was sent to Iran shortly after that to cover the end of the revolution and the hostage, a story. Then I got expelled from Iran. I went back in the next year when the Iraqi army invaded Iran. I was with the Iraqi army and covered the Iran Iraq war. My ex wife came to visit me, and we ended up getting remarried in Beirut during the war and we had our first child, having a baby and Beirut was kind of crazy. Uh, so AP transferred me to Cairo, and I got to Cairo just in time to be sitting behind president Sadat of Egypt when he was assassinated. I was in the grandstand, behind him, close enough.
Ofer Cohen (04:32):
Uh, that's kind of intense. And before we get into your first brewing experience, do you ever miss it?
Steve Hindy (04:37):
Well, people who do that their whole lives, tend to have not very functional, relationships with other people. Uh, so, actually AP wanted me to go to the Philippines next, but we had had our second child in Cairo, and Ellen, my second wife, who's also my first wife, said, no way. I'm going to the Philippines. I'm not taking these children to Manila. I'm going home. I hope you come with me. Uh, if not, you know, good bye. Right. So I gave it up and came back to New York. Uh, but in Cairo I met Americans who worked at the embassy, in Cairo, who had been posted in Saudi Arabia, Islamic law, no alcoholic beverages in Saudi Arabia. And they were avid homebrewers. And it was the first time I ever learned you can make beer in your, in your kitchen. So when I came back to New York, I went to work for Newsday, but I was kind of bored being an editor. So that the idea of starting a brewery, I'd always kind of dreamed of, starting a business, even though I had no background in business, whatever. And I started reading about these small breweries that were starting up, mostly on the West coast and also about the history of brewing in Brooklyn. You know, Brooklyn was a major brewing center really up through like the 70s, when Brooklyn became part of New York city in 1898. There were 48 breweries in Brooklyn. Mostly German lager breweries. It was 1986 when the Mets were on their way to the world series. So my neighbor Tom Potter and I would watch the kids and we had this beat up black and white TV and we watch the Mets. And then I started trying to convince Tom, we should, start a brewery. He worked at a bank and had an MBA and it always kind of dreamed of starting a business. So Tom, we got to start a brewery. You know, Brooklyn, it's part of the history here. Well, we'll create a beer that ties into that history. And he thought I was crazy. He had done, he had studied the beer industry and business school and he knew that the big guys were getting bigger and bigger and a little regional breweries were falling to the wayside pretty much every year. But I told him, we're not going to compete with a Budweiser Coors or Miller. We're going to compete with the imports, we're going to create import quality beer, we're going to price it with the imports. And that's the niche we're going after. At that time, imports were 2% of the U S market, so not a big thing. Uh, but it was pretty big in New York city. So I thought that was the way to go.
Ofer Cohen (07:40):
But on that first napkin where you guys drew, your business plan, you could not have anticipated Brooklyn brewery beer being so big and so widely distributed.
Steve Hindy (07:52):
Well, no, not, I mean, our original plan stated our goal was to get 3% of the Brooklyn market, which at that time would have been like a $6 million company or something like that. And our public goal was to bring brewing back to Brooklyn. Uh, so that was the mission. Yeah.
Ofer Cohen (08:18):
Now everywhere you go in the world, you see, you know, I was just in Asia and like in Japan and in Bangkok you see Brooklyn t-shirts and, and the Brooklyn brand is so wildly successful and established. But when in 1986 when you decided to name it Brooklyn Brewery, and when you came up with the logo and the name, you had no idea you're going to be the first guy to make Brooklyn famous in the world. Right.
Steve Hindy (08:43):
I mean, a lot of people questioned naming it Brooklyn, including like lifelong Brooklyn people. They said, really? You're going to call it Brooklyn? You know, I believed that is like this mythical place. I'm, I'm not from Brooklyn. I'm, I'm, I was born in West Virginia, grew up in Ohio. Um, actually the first time I came to New York city was 1957. I was eight years old. I came with my mother and grandmother for the Billy Graham crusades and mom and grandma got saved seven nights in a row at Madison square garden. I fell asleep every night and we went to the last Brooklyn Dodger game at Ebbets field, which was, and I was just completely captivated by New York. It's like, I gotta be, I gotta be in this place. I want to be part of this.
Ofer Cohen (09:37):
You know, a lot of people in the 80s were getting out of Brooklyn.
Steve Hindy (09:41):
Yeah. Know Brooklyn. I mean, it's always fascinated me. Uh, you know, my grandfather on my father's side immigrated from Syria in the 1890s and he lived in Brooklyn, for a time. He ended up in West Virginia. Somehow I think it had to do with some, you know, village connection from Lebanon. But, um, you know, New York is so big. Brooklyn has a kind of character, which is very unique I think. And New York is kind of like a lot of other big international cities. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love New York, but, Brooklyn, is, has more character. It's Brooklyn is like the heart of New York. I think so. Uh, I mean, yeah, it had to be Brooklyn. I wasn't going to make New York Lager, people who've done that since then, and it's just kind of nebulous compared to Brooklyn. Right.
Ofer Cohen (10:52):
So it was, it was not, there was, like you were fully committed. You had a visceral connection to a place and to a name and to, you know, there was not an a question, Oh, what should we name this? This is, you knew I'm starting a brewery. He convinced with a lot of charisma and probably some beer, your partner through joining you and actually kind of formalize it a little bit and then you just went for it.
Steve Hindy (11:18):
Well, I should say I got a lot of encouragement from Milton Glaser. Uh, our designer, um, Milton is the guy who did the, I love New York logo. He's a founder of New York magazine. And, I, I interviewed about 30 different design firms. I wanted to call the company Brooklyn Eagle beer after the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper because of my background as a journalist. Uh, and, I got very frustrated talking to small design firms because nobody was giving me guidance. Uh, so actually my wife said to me, why don't you call the best designers in New York? The only designer I knew anything about was Milton Glaser. But when I called his office, the woman who answered the phone said, do you know who Milton is? And I said, well, yeah, I hear he's pretty good. I want to talk to him. She said, he doesn't just talk to anyone who calls here. And I said, well, I'm president of Brooklyn Brewery. And she said, exactly who, who the hell ever heard of Brooklyn Brewery? So she totally blew me off. And I called her every day for like a week from the newspaper. I was determined to meet him. And finally she said, you're not going to give up, are you? I said, no, I want to talk to Milton Glaser. And she said, okay, here he is. Put Milton on the phone kind of blurted out the idea and he said, Oh boy, that sounds like fun, you know, come and see me. So amazing. Melton agreed to be our designer and we could never afford him. I mean, he's like six figures to get started on something. And , he agreed to take stock, in the company and then we would pay him hourly for his work. It wasn't cheap. He just, he loved the idea of, bringing brewing back to Brooklyn. And he said, first of all, look, we got Brooklyn here. Nobody's claiming Brooklyn. There are no consumer goods named after Brooklyn. Let's claim Brooklyn. So forget the Eagle. Ditch the bird, you know, let's, let's just focus on Brooklyn, Brooklyn beer, Brooklyn lager, Brooklyn brewery. Yeah. Brilliant. Um, and actually in very early on on an idea that then became, you know, very successful. So we met with him a few days later and he unveiled the logo and I looked at it and I said, that's it. And he said, don't say a word. Take it home. Put it on your kitchen table, show it to your wife. Don't show it to a lot of people, just live with it a little. And so I did. And, you know, it began to sink in the simple beauty of that, that be, and how it can kind of evoke the Brooklyn Dodgers. But it didn't really, there was never a B like that on the Dodger uniform. It said Dodgers in script, and that B is kind of the same script, but I run into old timers all, all the time who say that's the old Dodgers B and I don't argue with him. It's like, Oh yeah, that's it. But actually there was no be like that.
Ofer Cohen (14:30):
That's fascinating. So the known, you know, Brooklyn brewery location in Williamsburg was not your first, or was it?
Steve Hindy (14:39):
So in the beginning we did not build a brewery. We contracted to produce the beer in Utica, New York. And our original plan was to build a brewery on day one. But, we met a woman, an entrepreneur who lived on our block called Sophia Collier. And Sophia, started a company called Soho natural soda. And it was really like the first, you know, what became the new age beverage category. Uh, she was selling her company to Seagram's for $30 million when we started out. So we were pretty impressed by Sophia. And we ask her for advice and she said, Oh, this is a great logo. The beers really cool. It's very different than mainstream beer and that's good. But she said, you know, the key to this is distribution and it's not going to succeed unless you distribute your own beer. And I remember saying, you know, distribute beer in New York city, you know, I can hardly afford my car insurance, so I'm going to have trucks, you know. What about parking tickets? What about the mafia? You know, I mean, all of our investors were concerned about the mafia. And she said, yeah, there are a lot of problems out there, but, I'm telling you, nobody's gonna pay any attention to you when you're small and this is the only way you're going to get gone. So then we decided to contract a produce the beer upstate and truck it to Brooklyn. We had a warehouse in Bushwick, which was, you know, pretty scary. And then we built a brewery in 1995 we opened in, in 96, um, mayor Giuliani came and cut the ribbon for the opening. So why not just continue with the Utica? No, we wanted to have a brewery in Brooklyn. Uh, you know, the name of the company is Brooklyn Brewery. That was our, I mean, a lot of people thought we were, you know, it was just, some kind of scam, to, to claim the name Brooklyn without having a brewery. So we were committed to build beer. Yeah. Yeah. But we did build a brewery that was an adventure too. By that time, we were big enough that, it may, you cannot build a brewery of the size we needed in New York city. I mean, you could, but you could also take all your money over to the East river and throw it in the river, you know. And so we continued to brew, in Utica and now we own a piece of, of that brewery in Utica. We still brew there. Uh, the brewery in Brooklyn makes about 80, 000 barrels, which is really good size. I mean it's far bigger. It's probably bigger than all the small breweries that operate in Brooklyn today. Um, you know, a microbrewery is like fewer than 15,000 barrels. So 80,000 barrels is a pretty good size, brewery.
Ofer Cohen (17:47):
And the one in Utica is making everything else, all other or do you have more?
Steve Hindy (17:52):
No, it's the one in Utica is, is mainly making Brooklyn Lager because that's a big brand. That's a big, a big volume. But now we also brew Brooklyn Lager in Stockholm and Tokyo and Melbourne. Australia. Carlsberg, Sweden, in Japan. It's Kiran. Actually the question you asked in the beginning about becoming an international brand, a global craft beer, that was not part of our plan at all. But what I've learned about business is you create a brand, a consumer brand, and it almost has a life where it does have a life of its own. You know, it becomes part of life. And we've followed that brand, all over the world. We didn't take it all over the world. The brand took us all over the world.
Ofer Cohen (18:58):
I'm in a, it's almost like, I feel like I'm asking you a question about your children. How much of your, how much do you think of the success overseas, is because of the beer itself versus the, the Brooklyn Brewery or the Brooklyn Beer? The Brooklyn lagger name?
Steve Hindy (19:12):
Yeah, I'll put it this way. Are all our competitors, Sam Adams, Sierra Nevada anchor, they all export beer. Brooklyn is the biggest craft beer export. So the name is huge. Uh, you know, the beer is good beer. It's quality beer. We've won a lot of awards for it, but the name is the magic. Uh, the name is the reason, you know, you can find our beer all over the world.
Ofer Cohen (19:48):
Uh, you mentioned microbreweries. And over the last, I would say probably a decade, as a lot of those industrial neighborhoods become, you know, more of a hub of creativity and sort of new, kind of artisinal old products. And as I think, you know, Brooklyn is becoming more of a foodie kind of destination. There's a bunch of microbreweries in Brooklyn or that came from Brooklyn or was starting in Brooklyn. And how much, how much of that do you take credit for and how, how involved are you, are people coming to you for advice? Are you mentoring them or like how, how do you look at them as competitors?
Steve Hindy (20:30):
Well there are 11 breweries within a mile of my house in Gowanus and I know them all. Uh, actually I got them all to, to donate beer for the Gowanus canal Conservancy fundraiser, for the last two years. I know a lot of the guys, a lot of, some of the guys who used to work for us, so you know, I know them well. Tom and I wrote a book called beer school that tells a whole story of a Brooklyn Brewery. All the adventures we had. And I can't tell you how many craft brewers here and around the world have read that book, and learned from it. Uh, it's really, it's, it's kind of a business, more a business book than a beer book. It tells about the, you know, the ordeal of starting starting a business. There were 20 startups in the first say, 15 years of Brooklyn Brewery that failed in New York city. Most of them failed because of the inability to get their beer distributed. Um, so distribution was a really hard thing to do, but I think it, it's the reason I'm sitting here talking about our success,today and I think now there are, there may be 20 breweries in Brooklyn now, and, like you said, Brooklyn is a very different place today than it was 30 years ago. And there's a market for all those new breweries.
Ofer Cohen (22:08):
There's a lot of serendipity here. Like the neighbor, the neighbor with a Soho soda. I mean, you know, between Milton and her, right? These are the two best things.
Steve Hindy (22:18):
Yep. Right. You're right. When I tell this story, I talk about how early on there were a couple of things we did that turned out to be gold. It turned out to be critically important to our success. We had no idea that these were the reasons.
Ofer Cohen (22:37):
Yeah. I mean, you obviously live in Brooklyn and your entire business was a big part of your business. Started here, your company, Brooklyn. And when, when you see of how much change has happened in Brooklyn over the last, um, let's say 15 years, so how does it make you feel visa VI the transformation that your personal transformation and the transformation of your company?
Steve Hindy (23:02):
Well, you know, that book, beer school, mayor Bloomberg wrote a forward to the book for me and in it he said that Brooklyn Brewery helped make Williamsburg hip and that Brooklyn Brewery deserves some credit for the Renaissance in, in Brooklyn. And, I'm, I'm proud of that. I know that, you know, I know that gentrification is kind of the flip side of that and, maybe it hasn't been, the transformation is not been great for everybody, but I think Brooklyn is a lot healthier today than it was 30 years ago. There are more opportunities, there are more people investing in Brooklyn. And, you know, I think that's, that's a good thing. One of the interesting things that happened to us very early is that, you know, Spike Lee's movie, do the right thing, came out and Spike put Brooklyn Lager in in the movie and there's a scene where Ozzie Davis goes into a deli in Bed-Stuy and he's looking for Miller high life and , he looks in the cooler and the only thing in the cooler is Miller Light and Brooklyn lager. And he says to the Korean deli owner, you know, where the Miller high life and the deli owner says beer in cooler, you know, they just insist on that. Anyway, Spike did that, you know, normally filmmakers, charge breweries a lot of money to, to put there. Well, we donate beer to Spikes opening parties and , it was so cool to you go to those with public enemy and, and , you know, Eddie Murphy was there and it was super cool. And then we got to know him over the years. And you know, he, he did a lot of really good things here in Brooklyn, I think. And for Brooklyn.
Ofer Cohen (25:22):
You know, I don't know if you've listened to some of the other episodes, but I typically ask at the end of the show, if you can tell us something, something new that nobody else knows about you.
Steve Hindy (25:36):
Well, not too many people know that, I came here when I was eight years old for the Billy Graham crusades. But, let's see, what can I say? Actually, I have one a war story I'd like to tell you about. So you lived in Israel?
Ofer Cohen (25:53):
I grew up in Israel. I was born and grew up in Israel.
Steve Hindy (25:55):
Okay. So you'll know a little bit about this story. So in 1980, I was in South Lebanon with the Irish battalion of the United nations peacekeeping for us, and we were abducted by a militia group. Actually you remember the South Lebanon army sodhadad died and the, the, quisling Israeli supported border zone there where Israel supported this militia, those militia men abducted us and they, it turned out to be a revenge thing. There had been a battle between the Irish battalion and this militia. They killed a militia man. So the guy who abducted us was brother of the kid who was killed and he wanted to revenge on the Irish. So he shot one of the Irishman who was with us three times and then they took away two of the other Irishmen who were found hours later, they'd been tortured and killed. Uh, it was just a horrible, horrible story. I reported the thing and of course the Israelis went crazy because saying, you know, we didn't have anything to do with this. Well, you trained and paid these guys, so you know, you've kind of got to take some responsibility. But, I wrote it and it, you know, it, it, the story carried on for a few days and that was the end of it. 35 years later, I'm sitting at my office in, Williamsburg. And the woman who answers the phone comes in and says, Steve, there's, Homeland security agents, who want to come and see you. And I said, well, okay, then I'll put them on. So I get on the phone and a guy says, we'd like to come and see you. And I said, well, of course when he said, well, how about now? And I said, okay. So they show up like about half hour later, two guys sit down in my office and they said, you were involved in an incident in Lebanon 35 years ago in which Irish were Irish militia, soldiers were killed. And I said, yeah. They said, well, we think the guy who abducted you is living in Detroit, running an ice cream truck, selling ice cream to children. And he applied for American citizenship. We investigated him and we found he entered the U S illegally with false papers. And we found your stories about the killings. So we're wondering if you could identify him. And they showed me headshots of like 50 Arab men. And I said, I think that's him. And he said, yep, that's him. Would you testify against him? And I said, yes. So I gave a deposition a few days later in Manhattan at their office on camera describing what happened that day. Then they went to Ireland and they interviewed the Irishman who was shot by this guy and he too identified him. So they arrested the guy and deported him to Lebanon. And he's now at this very moment in jail, in Beirut on trial, accused of double murder of the two Irishmen, attempted murder. The third guy. And I was subpoenaed to testify, in Beirut. And my journalist friends in Beirut told me, do not come here because, this family is a big family and they know that you are involved in getting him arrested.
Ofer Cohen (29:34):
And you're here in the studio without out security, right?
Steve Hindy (29:37):
Here in Brooklyn without security. Isn't that incredible? I, as a journalist, you know, you're right. A lot of stories and nothing ever happens, right? You write a story and you think, wow, this town's gonna explode when they read this story.
Ofer Cohen (29:53):
Thank you so much.
Steve Hindy (29:54):
You're welcome.