- Todd Bates
- Joey Redner is the founder of Cigar City Brewing, a startup brewery based out of Tampa, Fla.
Florida craft brewers got nowhere with this year's Legislature in their quest to change the state's bizarre growler laws (a quart or a gallon: legal; a half-gallon: illegal).
And now, as the Tampa Tribune reported Saturday, the Big Beer lobby wants to redefine the issue in a way that would undermine craft brewers just as they are gaining a foothold (and creating jobs).
The state's most influential beer distributor lobby (allied with AB-InBev) is taking aim at the primary source of revenue fueling the state's craft beer renaissance: tasting rooms. Florida has allowed brewery tasting rooms ever since Busch Gardens wanted one to hand out free Budweiser. Nearly every craft brewery has one, selling directly to consumers (and boosting profit margins). Cigar City's tasting room helped fuel its growth and virtually every other subsequent startup brewery has following that model.
This article appears in Jun 20-26, 2013.