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New York Times
7 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
One Way to Sell Beer in Britain? Buy Into a Soccer Team.
With a portrait of Queen Victoria watching over him, a 75-year-old man frowned at a pint of something unfamiliar. 'This isn't beer,' Michael Walker said, teasing. He was sitting in a 178-year-old pub called the Victoria (Katz) near Birmingham, England. The drink reminded him of a goat's milk yogurt that he said helped cure his debilitating arthritis. Sitting across from him, his son, Steve Walker, 52, and a friend, Mark Sykes, 60, laughed. It was, in fact, a pint of beer, a citrusy I.P.A. called Cowboy's Payday, that they had placed in front of him. The pair had chosen this particular ale because they support Walsall Football Club. The beer came from an American craft brewery, NoFo Brew Co, which is among the English soccer club's sponsors. The pub, run by a Walsall fan, has a permanent tap of Cowboy's Payday. Michael Walker, a card-carrying member of the Campaign for Real Ale, an appreciation society for enthusiasts of traditionally brewed British beer, kept grumbling as he drank the more modern offering before him. But after a while, his companions noticed that he had downed his glass before either of them. In 2022, when Bryan and Shannon Miles became investors in Walsall F.C., they saw an opportunity to expand their Georgia brewery, which then distributed only in the Southeastern United States. Now, on the strength of its connection to the team, NoFo has 150 accounts in central England and is expanding into Ireland. 'They're doing something very savvy to build that local connection with a craft brewery,' said Ruvani de Silva, a British freelance beer journalist. 'I'm surprised more breweries aren't doing it.' For years, British soccer fans and beer drinkers, often one and the same, have watched American money and methods infiltrate their favorite pastimes. With some exceptions, they've enjoyed it. In soccer that meant big teams (Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester United) and small ones (Wrexham, most notably) have been funded by U.S. investors, some of them celebrities. The American influence on beer meant airy beer halls serving easy-drinking ales popped up amid traditional pubs with the warmer, yeasty brews. As the Mileses ventured into two very British realms, they arrived at a particularly friendly time. A Trojan Horse When Mr. Miles was a teenager in San Diego, the English Premier League team Aston Villa invited him to be part of its organization on what's called a schoolboy contract: He would attend school in England while training with a professional soccer organization in hopes of playing professionally. Mr. Miles's parents said no. So he played soccer in college, then got a job in corporate America. In 2010, he and his wife cashed out their retirement accounts to start a virtual staffing company, which eventually became worth more than $100 million. As their wealth grew, they wanted to diversify their assets. When a friend, Joe Garcia, approached them about opening a brewery, they went for it. Next, when another friend asked Mr. Miles if he'd be interested in joining a small investment firm, Trivela Group, to buy soccer clubs, the couple was in. Walsall Football Club, owned by Trivela Group, is in England's League 2, the fourth tier in English football, three below the Premier League. That made it more affordable than larger clubs. It also meant that with some improvements of the stadium grounds and other capital injections, Trivela was able to quickly build value. 'They will follow their heart and wallet with whoever's sponsoring their club,' Mr. Miles said of the team's fans. 'And so it just seemed to me that if we could embed the NoFo brand in that, it would be kind of like a Trojan horse.' In 2023, NoFo became the sponsor on the front of the team's warm-up jerseys. There was already a pub at the 11,000-seat stadium, which had been shut down for decades. Rehabilitating it had been a condition of the purchase of the team. In December 2023, NoFo reached an agreement with an English brewery to produce its beer, rather than shipping it from the United States. That has lately turned out to be a sound decision. It means the uncertainty of the global tariff system won't affect it. Nick Burton, the company's dedicated sales representative, said American beer was considered 'more exotic, more interesting' than other offerings. 'I don't want to get myself out of a job here, but it's not that hard selling it,' Mr. Burton said. In 2024, NoFo produced 2,235 barrels of beer in the United States and Britain. Having begun selling in Ireland as well this year, they expect that number to increase to 3,630. Most U.S. brewers produce fewer than 1,000 barrels per year, according to statistics compiled by the Treasury Department. But it is a top-heavy industry. The largest producers make millions of barrels of beer each year. Craft beer became popular in Britain two decades ago, boosted by a tax benefit given to small breweries in 2002. Aspiring brewers visited the United States to learn more about the process, according to Matthew Curtis, a co-founder of Pellicle, an online magazine about drinking culture. He said breweries were shipping hops from the States so they could have the same ingredients found across the Atlantic Ocean. And although the number of breweries in Britain peaked in 2019, then steadily declined, the country had developed a taste for that kind of beer. NoFo debuted at the Locker, the revitalized stadium pub, in April 2024, and in March of this year, NoFo began selling its beer in Ireland at the stadium for Drogheda United, the Irish team that the Trivela Group bought. The Trivela Group also owns an 80 percent stake in a Danish team, Silkeborg I.F., and founded a soccer team in Togo, Trivela F.C. The Mileses said getting distribution in Ireland had been more difficult than it had been in England. But the experience has them thinking even more internationally. Mrs. Miles said they were considering expanding into other countries in Europe. The Ryan Reynolds Model English soccer fans are accustomed to American investment in their teams. Fans of the Premier League team Manchester United, for example, were famously not delighted by their American owners, the Glazer family. One of the most successful examples of American investment in a small soccer team is Wrexham A.F.C., a team in Wales that the actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenny bought. (The basketball player LeBron James is part of an ownership group that controls the Liverpool Football Club.) Their involvement and the money they have spent on the team have made Wrexham a tourist destination, attracted a global fan base and, most important, led to the club's playing well enough to be promoted to a better league in three consecutive seasons. A fourth promotion would land it in the English Premier League. 'You go to Wrexham, and if you went there five years ago, the kids on the streets would be wearing a Manchester United or Chelsea or a Liverpool shirt,' Mr. Curtis said. 'Now you go and everyone is wearing a Wrexham shirt. It wouldn't surprise me if they managed to do the same with Walsall. People are pretty cool with their club having money.' (Mr. Curtis is a fan of Lincoln City, which has American investors. Landon Donovan, a former U.S. national team player, is a strategic adviser for the team.) And Walsall jerseys did become a lot more common around town this season as Walsall F.C. got off to a promising start. By January, it was in first place in League 2 by a wide margin and expected to be promoted to League 1. (The top three teams are automatically promoted while the fourth through seventh place teams enter a playoff for the fourth promotion.) Trivela opted not to sign flashy and expensive players, planning to expand the team's business first. And then the team's fortunes turned, and the standings got tighter. On April 5, Walsall faced Port Vale, a team that was threatening Walsall's standing atop the league. The winner would leave the day in first place. The Victoria (Katz) opened at 10 a.m. so fans could drink before going to the stadium about two miles away. In England, drinking alcohol on the grounds is illegal during a match, so attendees drink their fill in advance, at halftime and afterward. The Locker buzzed before the game, with every seat filled and a line to get drinks. Groups made up mostly of men gathered around high-top tables or picnic benches, their voices echoing in the cavernous space. 'It's a family affair for us,' said Dale Birkett, 51, who was there with his father and his 22-year-old son, Joe. 'My dad, he used to take me in the mid- to late '80s.' 'We just really want to get out of this league, don't we?' Joe said. 'We've been in this for far too long.' Joe and Dale Birkett were both drinking Cowboy's Payday, saying it was less boring than going for beer they could get just anywhere. But the eldest Birkett, Dale's father, refused. Walsall scored early, but lost. The Port Vale fans sang taunts. After the game, Walsall's supporters returned to the Locker, but they shuffled in this time, glumly. Matters didn't improve. By the end of the day, the team had fallen to fourth place; it would end the season without being promoted to the higher league. Still, after the loss to Port Vale, fans kept their post-match plans at the Victoria (Katz). Beer was the move after a win, and the move after a loss. 'There's a few Walsall fans in here,' the bar's owner, Jason Paddock, said. 'They've come to commiserate.'
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
5 homegrown businesses on Treasure Coast sell shrimp, chips, wine, beer, pineapples
Hometown Area Local Day on May 25 celebrates what it means to be a local from your current hometown or from the town where you grew up. Here are five homegrown businesses on the Treasure Coast. Innovative, state-of-the-art indoor aquaculture farm that raises about 275 tons of Pacific white shrimp a year Started in 2012 in the back of a Hobe Sound fruit stand to make uniquely flavored tortilla chips, seasonings and salsas 10 acres with 6 miles of vines with two muscadine grape varieties: Carlos for white wines and Noble for red wines Fort Pierce: 5 facts about 124-year-old city on Treasure Coast Port St. Lucie: 5 things to know about Florida's sixth-largest city Treasure Coast's first craft brewery opened in 2013 and started canning its own beer for sale in 2017 after moving into larger location Grandson of a former citrus grove owner harvests thousands of pineapples a year on his family's 25-acre farm Laurie K. Blandford is TCPalm's entertainment reporter dedicated to finding the best things to do on the Treasure Coast. Email her at Sign up for her What To Do in 772 weekly newsletter at This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: 5 homegrown businesses sell shrimp, chips, wine, beer, pineapples
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump's tariffs: ‘It feels like Covid 2.0. So many things are getting disrupted'
'In a lot of ways it feels like Covid 2.0. So many things are getting disrupted so quickly.' Like so many businesses across Donald Trump's America, Matt Katase's craft brewery, Brew Gentlemen, is having to contend with a bafflingly uncertain trading environment. The brewery's chief operating officer, Alaina Webber, says: 'For the first time, as a company in operation going on 15 years, we've started to get explicit emails that say: 'On this existing order, you are now going to see a 30%, then to a 130% increase.'' The brewery is based in Braddock, in the Allegheny valley, in the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh, where the Scots-born industrialist Andrew Carnegie opened his first steel mill about 150 years ago, founding an industry that underpinned the industrialisation of America. Today, the vast mill is still in operation, but the tariffs Trump claims will restore the glory of rust-belt towns such as this have inflicted chaos on thousands of firms across the region. Anything imported carries a 10% levy; steel and aluminium, 25%; Chinese products, 145%. And much higher 'reciprocal' tariffs on many other countries hang in the balance. For Brew Gentlemen, the tariffs even threaten a consignment of bespoke Chinese-made beer tap handles, which are waiting at the docks while it negotiates the price with their supplier. 'Those are now sitting in customs and they'll sit there for quite a while,' says Webber. The brewery had to transform rapidly during the Covid pandemic, switching from selling beer to locals in its taproom to focusing 100% on manufacturing. Now, just as it hoped for a 'normal' year, the cost of many of the inputs to the brewing process is in flux. 'You can't instantly start growing New Zealand hops in America,' says Katase, its co-founder. 'We use a lot of American hops, but then we have beers that use Australian or New Zealand hops and we have malt that comes from Canada. If you're trying to make a traditional German lager, yeah, you kind of need German malt.' At the other end of town, outside the vast Edgar Thomson steel mill, workers gathered in a union social hall are reluctant to chat. One man says he and his mates are divided about the merits of the long-running takeover battle for the plant's owner US Steel, by Japan's Nippon Steel. 'That's a tricky subject,' he says. But he holds out hope that Trump's tariffs will bring change to towns like this, where shops are shuttered and many of the clapboard houses have broken windows. 'I think they might work, because we have been taking a beating lately,' the steelworker says. 'America's been robbed and abused and I think it's time that we start taking care of our own, and they start taking care of theirs.' The international president of the Pittsburgh-based United Steelworkers union, David McCall, has praised Trump's tariffs, calling them 'a crucial means of reining in bad actors who view access to the US market as a right, not a privilege.' At the nearby headquarters of the Steel Valley Authority, which has been supporting businesses in this region for decades, its veteran executive director Tom Croft is more sceptical. 'What we're hearing is there's just a lot of uncertainty. The prices are the big thing, and the supply chain of products,' he says. 'Right now, it's too early to tell, but people are thinking it's very much like the Covid shutdown.' He doesn't object to the idea of targeted tariffs as part of a wider industrial policy, but he says: 'The way they're going about it has made a lot of the smaller manufacturers and managers wonder what the hell they're going to do.' Joe Biden maintained the tariffs on China that Trump imposed in his first term, and was preparing to intervene to block the Nippon deal. Trump backed the takeover during the campaign but recently suggested he didn't want US Steel to 'go to Japan'. Debate is raging in the once mighty industrial city of Pittsburgh, which has transformed itself in recent decades to specialise in 'eds and meds' – education and medicine. Outside La Prima Espresso Company in the city's Strip District, where warehouses are slowly being transformed into swanky flats, a row breaks out among the older men gathered to play cards when they are asked about Trump's policies. One gestures to his head, suggesting the president is 'not good on the second floor', while another storms off. Nick Kirk, who owns a local trucking firm and wears a red tie to show his support for Trump, says: 'Everybody thinks it has to be done like this,' clicking his fingers. 'In your own personal life, nothing gets done that fast.' Not far away, Joy Lu, the manager of an Asian supermarket, Lotus Food, is struggling to keep up with the price hikes on Chinese imports. 'For example, fresh noodles, they already increased in price,' she says. 'Before we sell for $6.99 and then they increased to $7.99 and now it's $8.49.' She says her suppliers have so far been able to forestall price rises on some products, by stocking up in advance. 'Dry goods, they have a lot of inventory, maybe they have like six months' inventory. Their price doesn't go up so fast.' Asked about the possibility of shortages as the tariffs continue to bite, she says one supplier has already started limiting orders. 'It's five cases per customer, not like before when we can order as many as we want.' Along the street at Pennsylvania Macaroni Company, a venerable Italian deli, the owner Bill Sunseri is more phlegmatic. He concedes he has had to put up the price of some biscuits, because of the 10% across-the-board tariff; and if the EU faces the 20% 'reciprocal' rate when Trump's 90-day 'pause' ends in July, there could be more to come. He says he had had emails from his Italian suppliers the day before the pause, saying they were already anticipating the increase. 'They were increasing their inventory cost price.' However, he insists he's not worried. 'I don't think it's gonna happen. I think it's all negotiating tactics,' he says. 'It's the art of the deal. I believe in Donald Trump.' Even for businesses that seem a world away from Pittsburgh's mom and pop stores and the craft brewers, aspects of Trump's policies are giving pause for thought. Astrobotic is the kind of hi-tech private-sector business that symbolises the Steel City's hopes for the future. It builds lunar landers, and is preparing for a planned mission by the end of the year. Its founder and chief executive, John Thornton, says the tariffs will barely affect it, as the cost of the tech on the complex vehicles far outweighs the price of materials. Yet he is still having to keep an eye on the Trump administration's pronouncements because Nasa is his biggest customer. 'We're watching very closely what the policy is around space. We saw in the confirmation hearing of Jared Isaacman, who's going to be the next Nasa boss, that they're talking about the moon and Mars still, which is good,' he says. But he adds that much of its funding comes out of the science budget – parts of which Elon Musk's 'department of government efficiency' appears determined to cut. 'Our primary programme, called Commercial Lunar Payload Services, comes out of the science programme. So if there is a significant cut there, that could be a problem for us.' On Carnegie Mellon University's leafy campus, Lee Branstetter, a professor of economics , says the jarring uncertainty facing every business owner is a powerful force pressing down on the economy, and wonders what impact Trump's deep cuts to research budgets will have on his students' future. 'I think it's hard to avoid the conclusion that at the apex of the federal government, we have a bunch of people who have no idea what they're doing,' he says. He points out steel employs about 31,000 people in Pennsylvania, while health and education account for 1.3m jobs. 'As a business, how do you decide how to invest? When you don't know if the tariffs facing the products that you're planning to import from a particular country are going to be 60% or 10% or 5%,' he says. 'I think the answer is you try not to make a decision for as long as you can. 'The consequence, of course, of deferring decisions as long as possible means that the pace of investment dramatically slows.' These firms will also pause hiring plans, he suggests – while anxious consumers tighten their belts. 'It seems like simply as a consequence of this spike in policy uncertainty, we're likely to see a significant macroeconomic slowdown in the US and perhaps beyond.' There is little sign as yet of that uncertainty being resolved. Trump's Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has repeatedly claimed a string of trade deals are close, but the president did not seem to be in negotiating mood last week when he described the US economy as a 'giant, beautiful store' in which 'I set the prices'. For the moment, real prices, outside Trump's head, are anything but set – and as firms across the US rethink their supply chains on the hoof, it is far from clear how long the shelves of the 'giant, beautiful store' can remain fully stocked.
