What does it mean for a brewery if its most recent successes are seen as exceptions to, rather than extensions of, its identity? Twenty-three-year-old Brewery Ommegang is considering this question in real time.
Faced with declining popularity for its core, Belgian-inspired styles, the Cooperstown, New York-based brewery has made two non-Belgian styles its priorities: Neon Rainbows, a New England IPA, and Idyll Days, a Pilsner, which will relaunch nationally next year.
The brewery vows to double-down on its newer, more popular beers next year. But will that be enough to get the company back to growth? And, longer-term, what does it mean for one of the nation’s most respected Belgian-style breweries? Ommegang, wholly owned by Duvel USA since 2003, was famously founded two decades ago as a Belgian-style farmhouse brewery—a legacy it’s touted since. If it sloughs off that focus to stay afloat, what’s left?
New darling Neon Rainbows has been one of the few bright spots in the brewery’s portfolio; it’s now the brewery’s top-seller—a dramatic departure from the company’s Belgian-inspired roots. In fact, all of the Ommegang brands that grew sales in 2019 in grocery, convenience, liquor, and other chain stores (as tracked by market research company IRI) were IPAs: Neon Rainbows, Hopstate IPA, and Brut IPA. And all are relatively new: Brut IPA launched nationally in November 2018; Neon Rainbows debuted in late 2018 as a limited release before going year-round this year; and Hopstate saw regional distribution across the eastern U.S. for the first time in 2019.
They’ve helped staunch losses from Ommegang’s core group of Belgian beers, which are no longer in fashion in a market dominated by IPA, but overall sales of Ommegang beers in grocery, convenience, liquor and other chains have still been declining for years. By Oct. 4, with 75% of 2020 already over, Ommegang has sold just 45% of its 2019 volume in those stores. Granted, Ommegang has historically also relied heavily on sales in independent bottle shops not tracked by IRI, but even measured against previous sales in chain stores, sales overall have declined each year since 2015.
The recent departures of high-level employees at Ommegang make the next six months an appropriate time for a shift in both branding and brewing, as new perspectives can potentially take hold. Former president and general manager Doug Campbell left the company in April after two-and-a half years; Campbell declined to discuss the circumstances of this move but called them “totally cordial and friendly.” Then, in September, brewmaster Phil Leinhart left Ommegang after 14 years. Leinhart declined to speak to GBH for this story.
Campbell told GBH in 2018 that the brewery needed to consider new marketing strategies to bring fans to the brand who aren’t gravitating to its lineup of high-end, culinary-paired beers. That’s been a challenge even for brewers of Belgian-inspired Wild Ales, which are arguably still more interesting to beer geeks than abbey ales.
“As craft matures, one thing we’ve all had to remember is that we ultimately serve an audience, and you have to know what they want,” he said in 2018.
Now that he’s left Ommegang, Campbell says the brewery’s next chapter is not for him to write, but acknowledges its focus will likely have to expand beyond the Belgian parameters that have set its course for over two decades.
“No one who listens to or reads Good Beer Hunting needs to be told that Belgian brewing is not the hot thing these days,” he says. “So there’s an element of—what the brewery brand stands for, to what extent should that be tied to a specific style of beer?”
The answer to Campbell’s question is one Ommegang and its parent company, Duvel USA, believe can be more flexible than it has been. This summer, Duvel USA—which also owns Boulevard Brewing Company in Kansas City, Missouri—consolidated marketing operations for Ommegang, Boulevard, and Duvel USA in Kansas City. A portion of Ommegang’s beers are also brewed in Kansas City. (Ommegang sales representatives, taproom managers and staff, events staff, and other brewing staff remain in Cooperstown.) Duvel USA also hired a new Kansas City-based brand manager for Ommegang, Jimmy Sevcik, who began in that role Oct. 26. Belgian-based Duvel Moortgat Brewery owns Firestone Walker Brewing Company in Paso Robles, California, but Firestone Walker maintains its own marketing department on-site.
Headquartering the marketing team in Kansas City will allow them to share best practices with Duvel USA’s other two breweries, the company says. But integration—especially salesforce integration following Duvel USA’s purchase of Boulevard and Firestone Walker—might have its challenges. Even prior to the acquisition, Ommegang struggled for “feet on the street.”
“I’d never seen an Ommegang sales person out in the marketplace,” said Rick Laxague, formerly a division manager at Crescent Crown Distributing in Phoenix, who handled Belgian beer for the wholesaler from 2002-2013. He is now managing partner at Craft Beverage Consultants (CBC), which provides strategic consulting to breweries, wineries, and distilleries. “I never talked to or heard my distributor counterparts talking about an Ommegang sales rep.”
A specialized brand like Ommegang, which was once presented in the context of Belgian imports like Saison Dupont as part of the Vanberg & DeWulf portfolio, now sits in a company portfolio alongside brands selling Hazy IPAs and hard seltzers. Further integration is evidence the Kansas City-based team intends to shift Ommegang away from its strictly Belgian roots.
“Should it have happened sooner? We’re all sitting here saying ‘probably.’ But there’s no time like the present to change your future,” says Natalie Gershon, vice president of marketing at Boulevard Brewing and Duvel USA. “Neon Rainbows has found its footing, and it forced us to think about the box we put Ommegang in and whether or not those are self-imposed barriers. The reality is, they were.”
That self-imposed box must have existed because leadership thought, for decades, it would work. Duvel USA bought Ommegang precisely because of that Belgian focus, then kept its portfolio within that focus for almost 20 years. Now the brewery says it’s breaking out.
The brewery’s new task is to support development of new recipes and—most crucially—spread the word that Ommegang wants to brew more than Saisons and Dubbels. After basing its entire brand on traditional and complex styles since its birth, it now wants drinkers to think of Ommegang when they’re shopping for Lagers. Ommegang’s past specialty bottled releases were too niche, Gershon says, adding they “fit who we believed the brand was.”
Duvel is, after years of declining sales, seeing the disconnect between what the brand is and what drinkers want. European-inspired, traditional styles aren’t high on most beer drinkers’ lists. Easy, familiar flavors are.
Next year will see the brand focus on “aggressively marketing” a portfolio led by Neon Rainbows, Idyll Days, and even a non-Ommegang-branded Blonde Ale called Deer Slayer. Deer Slayer is brewed under a sub-brand called Contra, marketed to hunters and outdoor enthusiasts, and sold exclusively in upstate New York in 19.2oz cans. This marketing play in Ommegang’s home territory couldn’t be farther from the types of beers Ommegang’s been known for—and that’s the point.
“The vision for Contra is not tied to the tenets of Ommegang,” Gershon says, noting that she doesn’t rule out further beers under the Contra sub-brand in the future.
It doesn’t get more diametrically opposed to Ommegang’s traditional image than stovetop cans advertised as “crisp, clean, and easy drinking” beer, sold in convenience stores and sports bars, and supported by hunting-camo marketing materials. Ommegang didn’t can any of its beers until April 2018, and relied heavily on 750ml, cork-and-cage bottles for its specialty releases. Those large-format bottles have long frustrated retailers who can’t shelve them alongside other canned beers or six-packs; drinkers, too, have turned toward other formats. Canned beer now makes up 60-70% of total American beer sales.
Ommegang needs to play in this more approachable space—both in terms of styles and packaging—if it’s going to survive, CBC’s Laxague says.
“Ommegang’s packaging and the names of the beers were always intimidating to the novice,” Laxague says. “By breaking into these styles [like IPA and Blonde Ales], people who’ve never tried a Three Philosophers might say, ‘Okay, I like Neon Rainbows, let’s see what else this brewery makes.’”
But there’s a good chance those drinkers will stick with the beer styles they like, and not necessarily make the leap to Quadrupels or Witbiers. Ommegang’s popular Game Of Thrones series, part of a licensing deal with HBO, was a sales success and brought in an annual average of $1.1 million in sales through IRI-tracked chain stores between 2015 and 2019—and yet, Gershon says, there’s not evidence that it turned Game Of Thrones fans into lifelong Ommegang drinkers.
“That was our ideal. There was an opportunity to sell a lot of beer and hopefully convert consumers,” she says. “But I don’t think it worked as well as we wanted to.”
It’s an acknowledgment of the fickleness of today’s drinker: A lucrative marketing partnership with one of the most talked-about TV shows of the decade still failed to pay off in customer loyalty.
The question that will make or break Ommegang in the coming years is not just what it brews, but where it plants its flag. The brewery currently distributes to 49 states, has a newly renovated destination brewery in Cooperstown (price tag: $2 million), based its marketing department in Missouri, and is heavily associated with its Belgian ownership. So, do drinkers consider it a New York brewery? A national brewery? An international brewery?
Other Belgian-insipred breweries in Ommegang’s cohort—Allagash Brewing was founded in 1994, New Belgium in 1991—may provide a map. Both have expanded beyond strictly Belgian styles with series like Allagash’s Little Grove fruited Session Ales and New Belgium’s Voodoo Ranger IPAs, but both retain strong ties to their geographic homes. Allagash’s Instagram page could double as a Maine tourism promotion, and New Belgium ties environmental stewardship efforts to its bases in the outdoor-recreation meccas of Fort Collins, Colorado and Asheville, North Carolina.
“I don’t think [Ommegang] was as provenance-driven … as some of the other craft brands that started and put other roots down, but hindsight’s 2020,” Gershon says. “But that’s a big part of our strategy moving forward.”
Given that Ommegang is located on an idyllic, 140-acre farm in Cooperstown, there’s plenty of literal land to welcome visitors and deepen a place-based identity—if tourists will come. The Hudson Valley is much closer to New York City, and is a full-fledged brewery destination, while the Finger Lakes region draws fall tourists in search of wineries and leaf-peeping. In 2018, just 13% of tourism dollars in upstate New York State were spent in the Central New York region to which Cooperstown belongs. And canceled events at Cooperstown’s Baseball Hall of Fame can’t be helping. Big draws to the town have, in previous years, been Ommegang’s concert series and the annual Belgium Comes to Cooperstown festival (BCTC). Ommegang canceled BCTC in 2019 (to make upgrades to the taproom) and 2020 (due to the COVID-19 pandemic), but hopes to bring it back in 2022.
Deepening that association with its home in New York offers Ommegang the flexibility its Belgian-inspired identity didn’t. A rural brewery in New York can credibly produce New England IPAs alongside Farmhouse Ales or fruited Sours or barrel-aged Stouts without any of those styles feeling off-brand.
In terms of beer styles and packaging and marketing, Ommegang itself seems to realize a strategic change is necessary. The question is how and when drinkers will notice the change— and whether they’re willing to give a 23-year-old brewery a fresh look.
Words by Kate Bernot