As a CPA, Becky Ryman wanted to try something new, something different. Living near one of Northeastern Pennsylvania’s most beautiful areas—the stunning reservoir at Lake Wallenpaupack—she was always looking for ways to contribute and capitalize on what could best serve the area.
Looking to try something fun and different for work every day, combined with offering something new and fun to the area, she landed on the idea of bringing craft premium beverages into the fold.
Drawing inspiration from Lake Wallenpaupack and all that it offers, Wallenpaupack Brewing Company offers a bevy of handcrafted beers and in-house prepared foods incorporating locally sourced ingredients whenever possible for an authentic taste of northeastern Pennsylvania.
We sat down with Brad Beneski, Director of Business Administration & Development, to get a feel for where the Wallenpaupack Brewing Company brand is heading—and how it continues to reflect the spirit of the community it serves.
Give us a snapshot of today’s craft brew market from your perspective. What’s likely to happen next?
The craft beer space is still reeling from a one-two punch of COVID’s effects on buying habits and incoming beverage-alcohol entrants like hard seltzers, spirit-based ready-to-drink canned cocktails, and more. Craft beer is combating this in a few different ways, including entering those spaces themselves or placating to these new drinkers by developing better-for-you, fruit-forward offerings within their beer program.
What trends are defining the space?
Craft has been slowly but surely entering the large format single serve segment over the past five years or so. It’s sort of interesting because in addition to lower intensity representations finding favor among craft beer drinkers, so are double IPAs as we’re seeing that style become a prerequisite to entering the 19.2 ounce single serve space. We’ve recently released three beers in 19.2 ounce cans, including our flagship Largemouth Hazy IPA, American Blonde Ale and Big DIPA Double IPA.
Even more amusingly, breweries our size have lived almost entirely in the four packs of 16 ounce can space, and now—in addition to larger single serve packages— we are seeing a return in preference to 12 ounce cans in both six packs and 12 packs.
What’s your story from a brand perspective? Walk us through your branding strategy.
Our brewery enjoys brewing a diverse portfolio of beer styles to both challenge ourselves and provide diverse craft beer experiences to our customers. We brew three flagships—in our Largemouth Hazy IPA, Paupack Cream Ale and Hawley Hefeweizen—and keep a variety of seasonal and series in rotation including two lines of lager-only releases.
We feel like having a heavy-lifting flagship IPA brand is still the cost of entry in today’s craft beer landscape. You can build your brand’s DNA around how you flesh out the rest of your offerings. We definitely lean into a balance of quality-driven and easy-drinking, and you get to enjoy it through our beer.
What’s the biggest issue today related to the marketing/sales side of the craft beer business today?
The biggest challenge in today’s craft beer landscape with regard to marketing and sales would be finding a way to stay true to your DNA while also being nimble enough to achieve both consumer retention and cast a wide enough net to grow your market share within the incoming demographics and the trends they are creating.
What’s the secret to creating a branding story that consumers can buy into?
Being a local brewery with roughly a dozen counties worth of distribution, we are also regionally well known for the quality of beer thanks to some national press and international beer competitions with which we’ve enjoyed exposure.
So, we think about our story as being one that we are still in control of writing with regard to how we will change our approach as we become a more widely available product. So, we try to maintain a healthy level of fluidity in how we tell our story to both people who know and love the area in which we brew our beer as well as people who have never experienced the beauty of the Pocono Mountains—but, through our beer, get to enjoy it in through our beer.
What’s the one thing that every craft beer brand should be doing in the way of marketing?
We’ve been enjoying giving our brewery a face with our marketing approach. Introducing our drinkers to the people who make our brewery special goes a long way to avoid becoming a faceless manufacturer to our customer base.
Whether it’s showcasing the personality behind our bartenders, servers and kitchen staff or having one of our brewers explain some of the technical operations they conduct to create quality beer experiences has been an extremely impactful approach for us.
What do you see as some of your biggest opportunities moving ahead?
We’ve spent the first five plus years of our existence growing deep roots in the small territory that you can find our beer. So, when we start to expand our distribution footprint, we will have an already robust collection of awards, accolades and established brands with which we can go to market.
For example, if you look up the highest-rated Hefeweizen on Craft Beer & Brewing, our Hawley Hefeweizen stands alone at the top of the list. We’ve also been given the nod of World Best Cream Ale for our Paupack Cream Ale. So, we have two flagship brands that are already piquing the interest of craft beer drinkers all over the world and we look forward to bringing those beers to everybody’s favorite retailers in the near future.
What’s the biggest item on your to-do list right now?
We are having a lot of internal conversations regarding our distribution approach and the wholesaler network that we would like to set up for ourselves. This also comes with some strategic discussions regarding which packages we need to have in our arsenal for an impactful launch in various, diverse markets.
How does your taproom space integrate into your branding/marketing strategies?
We have a traditional brewpub, as well as a golf simulator taproom a few miles away, so we’re always using our physical space to help provide unique and positive experiences that drum up word-of-mouth excitement.
We also take pride in having a handful of side-pull Lukr taps to give our visitors a unique opportunity to enjoy our lagers and other European styles that those taps help to accentuate. This goes hand in hand with our love of brewing lager styles and being an educator in that space.
What are some of the adjustments you made with/to your business model surrounding the recent state of events?
We were intensely flexible over the past few years and found ourselves pivoting every which direction to support our employees and continue providing our product to our customers. Whether that meant boosting to-go sales while in-person restrictions were at their highest or focusing our sales toward off-premises opportunities while draft beer and tavern business was hurting.
Sitting down with Wallenpaupack Brewing’s Brad Beneski
What’s the most rewarding part of your job?
The most rewarding part of my job is being able to collaborate with professionals from every department of our operations—from sales and marketing to brewing and administrative duties, I get to have my hand in all of it while lending my strengths to those tasks and absorbing such invaluable information and talent from my colleagues.
What was the best advice you ever received?
“Control your controllables” is the mantra that I need to repeat to myself on a daily basis. Whether it’s supply chain issues, brewing difficulties, logistics or event organization, you can often only control how you react to a situation.
What’s the best thing a customer ever said to you?
Fielding positive responses for our product and service is incredible, but it is especially poignant hearing about how a fan makes our brand part of their special occasions and traditions. In such a crowded industry with craft breweries in operation increasing 240% over the past decade, brand loyalty has become rarer than ever being replaced by the FOMO-driven desire to try every new beer on the shelf. So, when you hear anecdotes regarding our brand’s permanent place in the lives of our customers, it means the world to us.
What is your favorite brand story?
We always talk about a phenomenon called the 570 Effect where—no matter where you are—you’re going to experience something from Northeastern Pennsylvania, whether it’s meeting somebody or seeing a local business’ merchandise being worn. Ever since we’ve opened our doors in 2017, it’s almost unbelievable how many times we see our stickers or shirts on display everywhere that we visit—from Cleveland to California and even internationally.
Interview by Michael J. Pallerino
Michael J. Pallerino is an award-winning writer and editor. Along with producing a number of business, news and sports stories for a number of local and national publications, he has executed a number of content strategy initiatives across myriad communication channels. Over the past 30-plus years, he has won numerous awards, including the Jesse H. Neal Editorial Achievement Award, recognized as the Pulitzer Prize for business-to-business magazines. As an editor in the sports product industry, his monthly columns generated national attention from USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, ESPN Magazine, Sports Business Journal and BusinessWeek, among others. One of the magazines he co-founded, SportingKid, serves as the official publication of the National Alliance for Youth Sports (NAYS). He also served as a communications specialist for the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, working closely with the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG) during the 1996 Olympic Games.