A story in this morning’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch revealed that three breweries have signed deals with Brew Hub LLC, the brewing outfit being built in Lakeland.
The breweries are Cigar City Brewing, the newly rebranded Orange Blossom Brewing Company, and BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse.
A group including former Anheuser-Busch InBev executive Tim Schoen started Missouri-based Brew Hub in 2011 as a way to help small brewers expand their capacity while offering help with distributing and marketing.
Cigar City owner and founder Joey Redner told the Post-Dispatch: “For the first time, with Brew Hub, we’ll have the capacity we need and we can open up new states. It gives us access to more capacity, something we’ve struggled with from the get-go. I’m debt-averse, and I don’t want to borrow $10 million to $15 million to build a new brewery.”
OBBC founder Tom Moench recently announced plans to open a brewery and tasting room in Orlando, among other initiatives. BJ’s Brewhouse is a California-based chain of casual-dining restaurants that, despite its name, does not brew anything other than root beer at its dozen or so Florida restaurants. Its house brews are made in six out-of-state breweries of which three are owned by BJ’s. The others brew the beer under contract, and currently the closest one of those to Florida is Saint Arnold Brewing Company in Houston.
You can read the entire story here.
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