As demand grew and Yuengling sensed that he might have something big on his hands, he began to think about the future. In 1993, while on vacation in Florida, he sat his four daughters down and asked them point-blank whether they might one day be interested in taking the reins. Above all, he wanted to know whether the money he was investing in the company was going to benefit his kin. Three daughters agreed (and the fourth hasn't ruled it out), and they began working at the brewery soon after. Jennifer is a plant coordinator, Debbie works in finance and accounting, and Sheryl helps manage distribution. Though the brewery has always been part of their lives, they are the first women to help manage it. "It is a source of pride," says Sheryl, "that we're women and we're going to be taking this over."
"There are plenty of guys that have put breweries out of business," Dick jokes. "I don't know of a woman who has."
Still, the 61-year-old, chain-smoking Yuengling acknowledges that his daughters would not be ready to take over any time soon. There is no clear leader in the group thus far, although Jennifer, the eldest, comes closest. For starters, she's gone to brewing school and can explain precisely how Yuengling Porter makes its way into your bottle. She also has a graduate degree in psychology, which can't hurt in a family business. Perhaps most importantly, she takes the same hands-on approach that has become her father's signature. At the brewery before dawn, she says the boss is still her best resource. "He's certainly not a scholar and he doesn't have a college degree," she says. "He's just dedicated his life to the brewing industry, and he's magical with it. And the best way to learn is through our interaction with him."
Assuming they do take over, they will purchase the company from their father, just as he did from his father, and his father before him. Such a succession path has become tradition because, as Yuengling puts it, the next generation is bound to feel a stronger connection to the brewery with its own money invested. "It's like a kid's first car," Yuengling says. "If they buy a $700 wreck, they take care of it, wash it, polish it. You give them a $20,000 new car, it's just not the same." Exactly how he will appraise a brewery that barely resembles the one he purchased just a generation ago, Yuengling says, remains to be decided.
While he jokes that retirement is "indefinitely on hold," he also admits that his management style has a limited shelf life. "I'm good at running a small business," he says, "but we're not a small business anymore."
America's oldest brewery may no longer be a small business, but its transition is far from complete. "There are times you can call the brewery and ask for Dick Yuengling," says Chris Caffey, who is president and CEO of I.H. Caffey Distributing Co., a North Carolina distributor that handles Yuengling, "and the voice on the phone says, 'Speaking."
The company now has excess capacity, two modern plants, and a 160-employee, multistate operation. What it lacks is the additional layer of management needed to run such an operation. Dick Jr. boasts that his relatively flat, informal management structure prevents the company from getting too bureaucratic or corporate. But the result, as with many family businesses, is a top-heavy company that is often too reliant on one person, Dick Yuengling. "It's a fine line trying to maintain the laid-back, flexible attitude and yet still not become corporate America," concedes Jennifer. "It's hard. We don't have a board of directors. We don't have managerial meetings every week. There's basically one guy here that controls the whole operation. And that's something that, as we do expand, we're going to have to sit down and discuss."
That lesson was driven home with the 1999 move into Florida. Because the brand had always relied heavily on barroom buzz -- and very little on actual marketing -- it had always grown through baby steps, expanding into contiguous states and cultivating word of mouth. But Yuengling suddenly had a brewery in the Sunshine State, and it suddenly had to sell beer to people who -- far from clamoring for Yuengling -- had never even heard of it. "Florida put a kink in the whole thing," Casinelli says. "It was counterculture to what we were used to doing."
Although Florida is the nation's third-biggest beer state, Yuengling kept staff levels low and didn't throw a lot of money into marketing. The brand flailed initially. "We became a small fish in a big pond," Casinelli says. "We had to figure out where our place was." More recently, with the building frenzy behind them, Yuengling and Casinelli have been able to devote more time and resources to Florida, going region to region. Sales are up more than 40% in the past year, and Yuengling is now selling 5% of its beer there.
North Carolina proved easier. Rather than expand north from Florida, the brewery kept moving south from its core markets in the Northeast and entered North Carolina in 2002, with brand awareness already building. "Prior to the launch, I would have people ask me, 'Do you know where we can get Yuengling? When is it coming?" says Caffey, the Greensboro distributor. "The old clichZ, 'It took off like a rocket,' is true." The brewery has captured a 3% market share in the Tar Heel State, selling as much beer there -- some 65,000 barrels -- as it does in Florida.
And for the first time in its history, Yuengling is looking to add middle management. The primary mover has been Casinelli, the outsider who came onboard in 1990. Eight months ago, he started looking at where the brewery could add new departments and the bodies to fill them. In March, consultants first set foot in the house that David Yuengling built, helping to draft a set of recommendations for his great-great-grandson. Among the ideas on the table: splitting the operation into two, with one focusing on Pennsylvania and Yuengling's other core markets, the other on expansion. Moving deliberately, as always, Dick Jr. has agreed to start searching for operations managers. "I don't think you can grow to the point we've grown and still be totally hands on," he says. "You can't call Microsoft and talk to Bill Gates. You've got to get people in the proper place. And sometimes as an owner, it's hard to do it. I at least recognize it."
