Pottsville Republican and Herald June 18, 2006
Tradition Spans 177 Years
By Shawn A. Hessinger (shessinger@republicanherald.com)
However, it will
be four young women who decide how D.G. Yuengling & Son Inc., the
brewery that carries their family name, will move into the
future.
“We kind of all have ideas about how to
run the business, but it’s not yet our business to run,”
said Wendy Yuengling Baker, who returned to the company in
2004.
With her three siblings, Jennifer and Sheryl Yuengling
and Deborah Yuengling Ferhat, Yuengling Baker represents the fifth
generation in an unbroken line dating back to 1829.
That
legacy has been both blessing and curse to at least two generations
seeking to transform what started as the Eagle Brewery on Centre
Street in Pottsville into a national institution with a nationally
recognizable brand as famous as Hershey’s or
Harley-Davidson.
For Yuengling Baker, who spent years in
market research and advertising, the company’s traditionalism
lacks the progressive dynamic of the corporate world from which she
came.
“We kind of do things the way they have always
been done,” she said.
The sentiment echoes feelings
expressed by her father, current company President Richard L.
Yuengling Jr., when discussing his departure from the family business
over disagreements about expansion in 1973.
“This was an
old, inefficient brewery that was just barely hanging on,” said
Richard Yuengling of the company then run by his father, Richard L.
Yuengling Sr., and, uncle F. Dohrman Yuengling.
Still, the
adherence to tradition and the family legacy remain a sense of pride
to the two most recent generations who carry on in the enterprise
started by patriarch David G. Yuengling, holding the distinction as
“America’s oldest brewery”.
“I think
the more I’m here, the more I realize we have something
special. That’s what keeps me coming back,” said Jennifer
Yuengling, who, after graduate work in psychology, returned to head
the company’s production and operations.
Richard
Yuengling Jr. himself would eventually return in the 1980s to aid his
ailing father during his battle with Alzheimer’s disease.
When
he bought the family business in 1985, he would make the expansions
he wanted a re ality, eventually purchasing a new brewery in Tampa,
building a new facility in Saint Clair and upping production
capacity.
Since that time, the company has seen a dramatic
rise in output, growing from a mere 130,000 or 140,000 barrels to an
estimated 1.6 million barrels distributed annually in 10 states from
New York to Florida.
In retrospect, Yuengling Baker suspects
it may have been for the best that her father was unable to make the
changes he wanted immediately, just as she believes the next
generation’s youthful enthusiasm must sometimes be
bridled.
While brewery historian Rich Wagner, Hatboro,
believes the company’s mystique may have sustained it through
the lean years, he says its adherence to tradition has served as a
bridge between past and present.
“It’s America’s
oldest brewery. They have an eagle on the logo. There are probably
guys who have it tattooed on their backs,” said Wagner, who
maintains a Web site at pabreweryhistorians.tripod.com.
Wagner,
who since 1980 has visited many of the state’s most famous
breweries and written books and articles on the subject, says
Yuengling’s occupies a unique place as a symbol of
Pennsylvania’s distinct ethnic and economic heritage.
Since
the 1800s, while rivals like New York and Wisconsin may have equaled
or exceeded the state’s overall beer production, Pennsylvania
maintains the distinction of having the greatest number of regional
breweries, Wagner said.
The distinction was the result of the
state’s unique ethnic makeup of German and eastern European
immigrants to whom beer was a staple beverage, and also to booming
coal and steel industries producing a ready clientele for the
product.
Following the repeal of prohibition in 1933, Wagner
estimates the state hosted more than 300 regional breweries. In the
late 1800s, he estimates the city of Philadelphia alone may have had
close to 100.
Meanwhile, he said, communities continued to
maintain a fierce parochial loyalty to their local brand with
operations like Pittsburgh Brewing Co. consistently selling out the
national brands in their local market.
In the 1960s, when
major brewers had switched to increasingly lighter beers in an effort
to maximize profits by creating a homogenous product free of local
distinctions, Wagner said, Yuengling continued its line of darker
porters and bitter ales.
Because of its position as the oldest
brewery in America, Wagner believes Yuengling was able to survive
long enough to become a bridge to a new generation of micro and craft
breweries rebelling against corporate homogenization.
Today,
he estimates, it may be one of the few family-owned regional
breweries remaining in the state, with Straub Brewery in Elk County,
and perhaps in the nation.
“Yuengling stands out and
it’s an example of a family -wned brewery that defied the odds
and bucked a trend,” said Wagner.
“It’s
probably very unusual,” said Richard Yuengling, who agrees that
his company may be one of the few family-owned companies of its kind
in the nation.
Today, all four members of the next generation
work in the company in their own unique capacity.
Jennifer
Yuengling is in charge of operations and production supervising work
schedules at the company’s various facilities, overseeing what
products will be bottled and kegged and handling the ordering of
packaging materials.
Sheryl Yuengling handles orders from
wholesalers, inventory in the company’s warehouse department
and sales and inventory reports for warehouse operations.
“I
like the area where I am,” said Sheryl Yuengling. All three
daughters remember working at the family business during the summer
months while growing up, just as their father did from the age of
15.
Deborah Yuengling Ferhat oversees the operations of the
Pottsville brewery’s museum and gift shop, which Richard
Yuengling estimates sees between 70,000 and 80,000 visitors a
year.
She also is taking an increasing role in the company’s
financial operations, including the handling of payments for the
heavily taxed product the brewery produces.
“More in the
numbers and accounting end of it. That’s what I enjoy,”
said Yuengling Ferhat.
Yuengling Baker, the last of the
daughters to return to the company, currently works with the
brewery’s Maryland and Washington, D.C., sales representative
and lives in Baltimore.
She will become more involved in
marketing as time goes on, her father said.
With an estimated
200 employees, Richard Yuengling says the company remains too small
to give his daughters official titles.
That small business
feel has given the brewery the instinct to survive and defy a trend
that has seen other local breweries swallowed by corporate giants,
teetering on the brink of bankruptcy or disappearing all together,
Wagner said.
It was a feel never lost on members of the latest
generation of Yuenglings to take the reigns of their family’s
famous enterprise.
“In fact, it wasn’t much
different than a lot of other small businesses in town,” said
Yuengling Baker, who, like her sisters, grew up in ignorance of the
icon her family company was to become, and she is today often
astounded by its status.
“It still blows me away that
people in California know about this little town in Pennsylvania
because of the brewery,” she said.
During the early
’80s, Wagner said, perhaps five or six bars in Philadelphia
served Pottsville’s hometown brand that occupied a middle
ground between more exotic imports and more common national
brands.
In the interim, the company’s product has
virtually inundated the city, replacing disappearing local brands
like Schmidt’s and being adopted as the city’s hometown
beer.
Richard Yuengling said the expansion of Philadelphia and
other markets caused the brewery to abandon more far-flung customers
in New England, but Wagner says the move is indicative of the
company’s inherent local focus, refusing to give up its local
base of support.
The instinct, he says, is historic dating
back to the tradition of regional breweries that seldom sold beer
further in distance than a day’s travel by wagon.
At the
same time, the company’s sales continue to grow, and Richard
Yuengling contends the family brand today rivals such recognizable
names as Hershey’s with increasing demand outside its existing
market while Wagner compares its status to Harley-Davidson.
“The
real story with Yuengling is that they’ve done something very
unusual,” Wagner said.
Yuengling, he said, has made its
community spirit part of the product itself and made all its
customers feel that same sense of community.
“There is
this sense of local pride. This sense of we do still make something
in America,” he said.
Related Articles
Wagner, Rich. “Brewing in Shamokin, PA.” American Breweriana Journal. July/August 2015.
Wagner, Rich. “From the Coal Fields of Pennsylvania.” American Breweriana Journal May/June 2018.
Wagner, Rich. “The Ortlieb Dynasty.” the KEG Spring 2019. Eastern Coast Breweriana Association.
Wagner, Rich. “Breweries on the Schuylkill.” American Breweriana Journal. Nov./Dec. 2018.