The Story (and Family) Behind Yuengling, America's Oldest Brewery

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It's Dramos. You may know me from the recap on LATV. Now I've got my own podcast, Life as a Gringo, coming to you every Tuesday and Thursday.

We'll be talking real and unapologetic about all things life, Latin culture, and everything in between from someone who's never quite fit in. Listen to Life as a Gringo on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by State Farm. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. And we continue here with our American Stories. And we love bringing you stories of family businesses. Today, we bring you the story of a company who recently celebrated their 190th anniversary with four members of the sixth generation in leadership roles. And it just happens to be America's oldest brewery, Yingling. Here's Jennifer Yingling. Jennifer Yingling, I'm a sixth generation family member of America's oldest brewery. I have three sisters and the four of us comprise the sixth generation of Yingling's. So our dad, Richard Yingling, fifth generation current owner and president, has essentially been at the helm now for over 30 years, since 1985.

We were founded in 1829 by my great-great-great-grandfather. He emigrated from Germany, came over here, and we've learned that he was the youngest of his siblings. And his father was a brewer in Germany.

David G. Yingling realized that he would not have an opportunity to own and run the family business over there. So he decided to come to America and settled here in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. At the time, anthracite coal was becoming quite popular, so there were lots of thirsty coal miners coming home from work every day. So he built his brewery in downtown Pottsville. It was actually down on Center Street, where our city hall now stands. So that built that in 1829. It was destroyed by a fire.

So in 1831, he relocated over to the present site where we are now at 5th and McIntong streets. We refer to that as our historic brewery built into the side of a mountain. So there was no electricity, no refrigeration by those means in those days. So he dug tunnels into the side of that mountain to use the natural refrigeration of the earth to age and lager the beers.

Also, there was a spring, a well not far from that location, so he used all of the spring water for his brewing needs. So you had David Yingling, and then he had a couple sons. His one son, D.G. Jr., he branched off on his own and started a brewery in Richmond, Virginia, called the James River Steam Brewery.

I don't know that David was all that successful because it only lasted a few years. So a transition then set to second generation, third generation, was Frank Yingling, who was my great-grandfather. And he probably was at the helm longer, I'm going to say 60-some years, longer than any other owner. He went through a lot of different trials and tribulations, and probably the biggest one being prohibition.

And that was enacted in 1918. He really was a true entrepreneur, learned how to diversify, did a few real estate-type ventures, made near beer. And that was one half of one percent alcohol, and that was legal in those days. So produced near beer to keep many of his workers still employed, 13 years of not being able to make real beer. Then the biggest, I think, innovation, diversification that he did overall was he built a dairy, which is across the street from the brewery, where he made ice cream and milk products. As prohibition came to an end, he had a batch of what he called winter beer, as though the breweries had won their fight against prohibition. Had that ready the day prohibition was repealed and had it delivered to FDR's doorstep the next day.

Before you get into my grandfather and his brother, they were some really lean years. You're getting into kind of the 60s and the 70s there, and it was the rise of the mega-brewers, if you will. You had your Budweiser, your Miller, your Coors. Interstate transportation became much more widely used in St. Louis, Missouri. Anheuser-Busch could make their beer, and they could get it across the country much more quickly than they had in the past. Advertising and merchandising budgets, marketing budgets became much more popular too.

So a lot of the local brewers, regional brewers, started to either go out of business, families didn't want to run them anymore, or they simply got bought out by these bigger brewers. You give that fourth generation of my grandfather and his brother Dorman a lot of credit for just hanging in there through those lean years, because there wasn't a lot of extra resources and capital to invest, but they were able to get by. We had a lot of local support from our community. They supported our brands, and we just, like my dad likes to say, we hung in there. My grandfather became ill in the mid-80s, at which time my dad had broken off from the brewery and he had his own distributor ship, so he had a local wholesaler here in town.

So he still maintained ties locally, he had just distanced himself from the plant. So when his father became ill, he came back into the business, took it over, and that's when we really started to see our huge growth trajectory take aim. A couple initiatives that he did were, he invested, once he had the ability to invest, he invested in machinery, increased our production efficiencies, and he came out with some good brands, like our traditional lager brand, which is our flagship today, black and tan, and then he came out with a light beer. So some great innovation there too in my dad's early years that put us on the map and enabled us to broaden our reach and expand our footprint. I'd like to talk about the founder being an entrepreneur because obviously he founded his own business, and I almost think Frank, the third generation, was very entrepreneurial in being able to diversify the way he did, and I think my dad has a lot of those same characteristics. So he had a vision of, number one, this lager brand that he wanted to get into consumers' hands, a beer that had more taste, more character than what most consumers were used to seeing at that time. And I think my dad, along with Jim Cook, the owner of Samuel Adams Boston Brewery, essentially pioneers in the craft brewery movement. They were the first ones to come out with this beer that looked a little different. It wasn't yellow, it didn't have that fizz to it.

It was an amber colored beer with a little more flavor to it. So he had a vision, number one, he was an entrepreneur, and I think he had a lot of confidence in knowing what he wanted to do and very independently thinking too, but able to surround himself with people, whether it was in the marketing department, the sales department, to get where he wanted to go. I think he saw that the standard yellow pilsners, they weren't gaining volume, and realized that you can educate consumers to different styles and different beers that are out there that have a different flavor profile to them. And he really, he hit it on the mark with our lager brand.

It's about between 70 and 80 percent of our sales today. So he grew the business. We had our original historic Pottsville Brewery, which he got it to the point where it was maxed out on capacity. So by the late 90s, we were maxed out over there. We were making more beer than the brewery was able to sustain.

That's when my sisters and I started to play a role because his thinking was, I need to invest here, I need to invest in this company if I want to continue to grow, but I don't want to do that unless I know the next generation is interested. But once he recognized that we had that commitment and we were interested in coming into the business, then he made the decision to build this brewery that we're sitting in right now. So we call this our new brewery, even though it is almost 20 years old, and this has been here since 2000. At the same time though, you don't build a brewery in a day.

It takes a couple years. So we still had to get beer into our wholesalers' warehouses because we just could not make enough over in Pottsville. So the timing was appropriate. He happened to be in Tampa, Florida, and the last Stro Brewery in the country was up for sale.

So lots of different things, you know, all coming together really well there. The timing, the size of the brewery was good for us. So we bought that Stro plant, did some trial brews, got a flavor match, and then all that initial beer came up into our northern markets to satisfy our wholesalers' needs until we were able to start pumping beer out of here.

So at that point in time, once we had beer coming out of here, we could start opening markets, New York, Maryland, Virginia, and then the beer from Tampa, we started opening up our southern markets, North, South Carolina, Florida, and then we've expanded as far west as like Mississippi, Tennessee, and we're currently in 22 states. It's amazing having his, I would say it's close to 60 years of industry experience. So I think every day it's picking his brain, understanding why he thinks the way he does, because he was around and he remembers those lean days. So he's not quick to make changes or decisions because we're in this for the long term. We've been here for 190 years. We say we want to be here for the next 190 years, and I don't think our ancestors would have allowed us to be here this long if they made too many knee-jerk decisions.

So he's very meticulous about his thinking, and I think that's one of the things that we've all learned from him. Don't jump into something or jump on a trend or a fad just because everybody else is, because some of those guys some of those guys might not be here tomorrow. Our goal is to be here for the next several generations. And you've been listening to Jennifer Yingling and the voice of the sixth generation of Yingling survived some really lean years in the 60s and 70s when companies like Coors and Budweiser, the mass retailers, were at it.

But in the end, really, they were the pioneers in this area along with the Samuel Adams folks, and my goodness, exploding now today. When we return, we're going to continue with the story of this sixth generation family business and with Jennifer Yingling, here on Our American Story. Cartier, Rolex, Gucci, Prada, Jordan, Adidas, Bottega Veneta. At eBay, it's real or it's getting the fake out. eBay's team of luxury authenticators are making sure you never get faked over again. Watches inspected by watch aficionados, sneakers checked by legit sneaker heads, handbags examined by handbag connoisseurs, and jewelry in the scopes of expert gemologists. These authenticators are leaders in their field with meticulous eyes making sure your piece arrives as authentic as your style and worthy of your collection. As experts, they know the true difference between a real and a fake. Real carries that rare, distinguished feel, the weight of pure platinum, exquisite scent of Togo leather, the tight stitching on a pair of dunks, the brilliance of real diamonds.

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Listen to new episodes of your favorite Michael Duda shows available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And we continue here with our American stories and the story of Yingling, America's oldest brewery, which just celebrated its 190th anniversary. The company's success has come in part from their patience.

Let's get back to Jennifer. The 70s is when light beers started to develop. And I think we didn't come out with a light beer till the late 80s. So, you know, we gave it time to make sure it's something that's going to stick before we just jump on the bandwagon and say we're going to change our model. Because our whole business model is kind of about scale and volume. So we run very few products, we make them well, and we set up our production lines, and we don't do a lot of changeovers. And we're extremely efficient in that.

And we need to be because a small, I say that relatively small brewery today, playing in the same swimming pool with the global brewers, we have to be very meticulous with maintaining those efficiencies and saving monies. Grew up in Pottsville, went to college, not too far from here, kind of did a year after college, not knowing what I wanted to do, a little bit of coaching, went on to graduate school, got my graduate degree. And it was during that time, I was just finishing that up when we had that kind of like, come to Jesus meeting with our dad, like, what do you guys want to do with your lives? And I didn't have a job lined up, didn't know where I was heading, I mean, had some thoughts. But the timing was right for me then, I was like, okay, I'll come home, you know, bought a home here.

And you know, that was 20 plus years ago. The map to where I am now in operations, I found that on my own, you know, just decided sales and marketing wasn't really my thing, accounting wasn't my thing. But I immersed myself in the operations end of it, went through a training program, it was pretty rigorous, everything from incoming raw materials, through the brewing process, you know, hot side fermentation storage, filtration, packaging, warehousing, logistics, so, you know, soup to nuts.

Went to school then, which is like a 10 week brewing course. And, you know, I've found my own way. And along the years, I've tried to take some of the responsibilities off my dad's hands, like scheduling, ordering materials, and, you know, tried to make life easier for him, at the same time, learning from him how he does things. So that guided me, and, you know, I'm in the role of VP of operations right now. So I was actually, I was the first one to come on board, and then Debbie and then Wendy and Cheryl slowly, we each took our own paths to get where we are. We each have very different personalities in one respect, but interests, I think more so. So, like I mentioned, I gravitated into operations, Wendy runs our sales and marketing, Debbie does a lot with our employees and our cultural engagement, and Cheryl works in order services. So we don't overlap a lot, and I think that's a big part of our success, because I think if we were overlapping too much and tripping over each other, we would probably struggle to make decisions, whereas because we have our own kind of areas of responsibilities, it works out well for us. We each have different areas of expertise. So it's a matter of respecting the other's expertise and their area. You know, and still the ultimate decision-maker is our dad, like because he's, you know, he's here every single day, and he's earned that right. But I think there's that comfort factor in that we have different ways of thinking sometimes, but in the end, what's best for the business is important to all of us.

So that's, I think that's generally how we resolve, you know, anything that comes up that needs to be, that needs to be decided. I think there's been some things, I don't want to say it was a mistake, but things that we've done that maybe we've taken our eye off of our, and I'm going to refer to our core brands. An example would be seasonals. We started making seasonals a few years ago, and I think we, so what we would do is we'd transition. We'd have Oktoberfest in the fall, and then we would roll into an IPL.

Our version of an IPA, it's an India pale lager, and then we would roll into summer wheat, and then that would be cyclical. And they were great brands. Consumers loved them. Our brewers enjoyed making them.

We had great packaging. But I think we learned that they became a bit of a distraction. So our operations people were, you know, spending a lot of time and being inefficient because we were making these brands.

Our salespeople were trying, were pushing these brands and gaining shelf space with wholesalers and retailers. But in the meantime, we took our focus off of our lager brand, and I think we took a step back, and we realized, like, this is our bread and butter. This is what we have to, this is our bread and butter.

This is what we have to put first and foremost. So we decided to step back from seasonals a bit. We still make our Oktoberfest.

We've kind of mothballed the other recipes for the time being. We keep things very simple. We don't overcomplicate things. We work hard. We expect everybody in the company to work hard. There's no sense of entitlement for anybody. We expect our people to think for themselves, figure problems out.

We don't have a lot of layers. We're not corporate. If an hourly employee needs something, that individual has accessibility not just to my sisters and me and obviously his or her manager, but to our dad. So we're, we have a strong presence as a family across our, you know, across our employees and even our wholesalers. We look at ourselves too as a multi-generational family-owned company. But we're also very proud of the generations of employees that we have in our company too. So another kind of fun fact is that we've determined that 10 percent of our employees, and we have probably around 350 employees, 10 percent of those either have or have had a family member work here. So that's, that's kind of, that's very important to us. And it shows that we're dedicated to our employees. They're passionate about us and we, they're enabled to have opportunities as well.

So between our two breweries here in Pennsylvania, we're separated by our Tampa brewery by roughly a thousand miles. But there's, there's been folks who have transitioned from one brewery to another. So it's, you know, we have folks who started here as a, one individual in particular, as a forklift operator. He worked his way up to a lead and he's now our packaging manager in Tampa.

So it's that opportunity and that training and growth and development that, that I had as a family member to grow through the company, but that we're able to support our employees with as well. I can think of another example of, he's our plant coordinator over in Pottsville and he started here in his early twenties. Cleaning tanks is what he did.

It's kind of like the lowest job in the brewery is to clean tanks, clean tanks, worked in the racking room, worked his way up to a brewer, brewed, cleaned brewing equipment. When we, when we brought this plant online, he was instrumental in getting this started up again, working from the bottom up. And he was our brewing manager for several years and now he has ownership of our Pottsville plant.

So, so everybody and everything over there is falls under his jurisdiction. And it's, you know, he works here, his wife works here in the accounting department. His two daughters, when they were going through college, they worked for us part-time.

His son is a brewer over in Pottsville. So you kind of get that, that same theme, that family theme that we have with quite a few of our employees. We have folks who start here maybe when they're 18 years old and they retire when they're 65. Every generation leaves its mark.

My dad's is obviously the tremendous growth that we've experienced during his tenure. And we're not a company that does things too, too quickly. And we joke it's taken us 190 years to get to where we are. And we want the success of generations, you know, coming after us to have those same opportunities. And we want to leave this brewery in good hands, viable, sustainable, sustainability.

We want to be conscious of our environment as well. So I think just leaving it a good company for the next generation is important to us. And you've been listening to Jennifer Yingling and the voice of the sixth generation of Yinglings. And that is 190 years they've been together. And there's no doubt they'll be together another 190 listening to the care with which they run things. By the way, it was so interesting that they didn't see this merely as a family business. But it was a family business as it relates to the workers. These small businesses propel the nation. They're the ones that turn into bigger business. 350 employees, that's 350 families this small business is taking care of. The Yingling story and what a voice Jennifer's is, VP of operations there. The Yingling story here on Our American Story. Imagine a future where every pet is part of a loving family, a time when dogs and cats are no longer killed in shelters simply because they don't have a safe place to call home.

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