A move to return Pabst to its hoppy home
Some Milwaukee residents are hip to recapture a classic beer that's become trendy.
One of the brews that made Milwaukee famous for beer is on the market - and the city wants it back.
Pabst Blue Ribbon, which originated in the city as the Empire Brewery in 1844, is currently owned by the Pabst Brewing Co. The private equity firm Metropoulos & Co., headed by Dean Metropoulos, purchased the company in 2010 for $250 million and moved the brewing facility from Chicago to L.A., a year later.
The Pabst brewery shut down in 1996, but a mission of city residents is to buy the brewer and bring it back.
Metropoulos' name might be familiar because his firm teamed with Apollo Global Management last year to save the Twinkie brand from extinction. The two private equity groups paid $410 million to buy the Hostess and Dolly Madison snack cake lines as well as five plants as part of Hostess' liquidation process.
When reports emerged that Metropoulos & Co., might want to sell the company, a group of Milwaukeeans banded together to start a campaign to bring Pabst back to Milwaukee. 'We see this as a tremendous opportunity to build community wealth through collective ownership of a brand whose image stems from its Milwaukee roots. It belongs here, plain and simple,' says Susie Seidelman, one of the organizers of the 'Bring Pabst Blue Ribbon Home' effort.
The company could go for between $700 million and $1 billion, according to reports.
In this March 24, 2014 photo Susie Seidelman stands outside the Pabst brewery complex in Milwaukee. She is part of a group wanting to raise money to try to bring the brewery's headquarters back to Milwaukee, after hearing reports the company may be up for sale.(Photo: Carrie Antlfinger, AP)
Seidelman and the organizers envision the city of Milwaukee sponsoring the purchase by supporting a model similar to that of its ownership of the Green Bay Packers, in which the hundreds of thousands of local investors by small shares in Pabst. After the corporate offices are once again in the city, eventually all of its production could return, too.
'Pabst currently contracts its brewing to MillerCoors and much of it is brewed in Milwaukee, but not all,' the group says on its BringPBRHome.com website. 'We'd like to see all production concentrated in Milwaukee, potentially creating new union jobs.'
The group has the ear of local officials and next week plans a social media campaign via Facebook and Twitter aimed at swaying Pabst, Seidelman says. And later in the month, on April 23, they begin a series of five community meetings at the former tasting room of the original Pabst Brewery. We're doing this for the community of Milwaukee, and the strength of the project lies in those community roots and voices,' Seidelman says.
Neither Perella Weinberg Partners, the firm reportedly handling the sale, nor representatives at Pabst would comment on any potential sale or the efforts to bring the brand back to Milwaukee. Pabst would say only that they 'are considering financial alternatives' that will help Pabst 'aggressively pursue its next phase of growth through strategic acquisitions.'
Pabst Brewing has an extensive line of beer and malt liquor labels that includes Lone Star, Old Style, Schlitz and Old Milwaukee.
Contributing: newsandtalking.blogspot.com
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