Missing the Innovation Train

Innovation - doing something in a new way to make life better for the people who matter - is a wonderful thing - unless you happen to be the one who missed the train when it pulled out from the station.

That's what happened to a once great family business, Koerber's Beer.

Hey - you may be thinking - that name sounds familiar.  Yes, Koerber's was once our family business run by my grandfather William G. (Bill) Koerber and his brothers.

Koerber's Beer and the other brands, including Friar's Ale and later a new innovation, Malt Liquor led the brand portfolio.

Grandpa's brother, Clarence "Click" Koerber, invented malt liquor and began production at the Grand Valley Brewing Company in Ionia, Michigan some time around 1937. Great  Uncle Click named his magic brew Clix Malt Liquor.

The family business managed to survive through two World Wars, Prohibition, and the Great Depression.  Instead, it was an innovation in the brew master's art that led to it's demise.

That change was the practice of increasing the preservative content in beer and ale.  By adding additional preservatives, competing breweries were able to ship their beers for greater distances, store the product for longer periods of time, and increase shelf life for distributors and retailers taking advantage of major economies of scale. 

There was only one problem, it affected the taste of the beer.  Koerber's brand was associated with Age, Strength, and Purity.  Grandpa, as brew master was sure that no one would buy let alone want to drink the lesser product.   And Grandpa was wrong!

By 1949, the last bottle of Koerber's beer was crated and shipped from the plant in  Toledo, Ohio.  The factory was closed.  What today we would call a series of micro breweries, Koerber's, and it's sister company Grand Valley Brewing could not compete with the mega brewers who had emerged.

By the time I came along, in 1960, the only Koerber's beer that was still in production came from the mini brewery that was hidden behind the secret wall in the Dutch Room off the boat well in Grandpa's home at Grayhaven on the Detroit River. But that's a story for another day.

So when you hear the whistle blow and see the innovation train pull into the  station, be sure to have your ticket ready so you can board.  You don't want to be left behind!

Thanks for stopping by.  Stay Tuned...

Joan Koerber-Walker

Technorati Tags: Joan Koerber-Walker,CorePurpose,Innovation,beer,brewing,history of brewing,Koerber's Beer,Friar's Ale,Clix Malt Liquor

Comments

[Wally Bock]

Even the innovation train might not have helped in this situation. In addition to the preservative issue, the late forties was when the major breweries made standardization their core production value. Twenty years later, all the "different" breweries had been swallowed up or crushed flat. By the early 80s, the big breweries had over 90 percent of the market. The total number of brewing companies in the US was about fifty, down from 1400 before Prohibition, and about 800 three years after prohibition was repealed. Craft and micro-brewing started to push things in the other direction, favored by a change in US law. In 1983, Jim Koch started Sam Adams using the recipe his great-great-grandfather had used to brew Koch's Lager in the 19th Century. Maybe you should have just saved the recipe.