December 5, 2022
2022 Innovators Issue
2022 Innovator: Athletic Brewing emerges as industry leader in nonalcoholic beer space
PHOTOS | STEVE LASCHEVER
John Walker and Bill Shufelt are the co-founders of Athletic Brewing, which recently opened a new production facility in Milford.
By Harriet Jones
Bill Shufelt never expected to be an entrepreneur. Just a few years ago he was a successful trader, working at Stamford’s Point72 Asset Management.
“It was extremely intellectually challenging, it was a great career — I thought I would do it the rest of my life,” he says, “untiI I had this idea that I just couldn’t turn off. It was all I would think about.”
His career required many occasions — sometimes six nights a week, he recalls — where alcohol was just part of the expectation. “And I wanted to be in all those places, but I didn't want to be drinking because I wanted to be performing highly either after the work dinner or the next day.”
It’s not that Shufelt didn’t like beer. He had gone to college in Vermont, close to several pioneering craft breweries.
“I had just totally fallen in love with how great beer could be,” he says.
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What he didn’t like, increasingly, was the morning after. And the nonalcoholic drink selection didn’t appeal to him, particularly nonalcoholic beers that didn’t taste great and had the image of a “penalty-box beverage.”
The idea that just wouldn’t let him go: a nonalcoholic beer that could compete in the world of high-end craft brews.
“When I started talking about that experience, I realized a lot of people wanted to drink less and moderation really just wasn't that accessible because there were no options.”
Shufelt could feel that he had stumbled on a huge economic opportunity. But also a chance to do good.
“There are 15 million Americans with documented alcohol-use disorders,” he said. “I realized there's a chance to have a huge, positive impact here.”
The first hurdle in reinventing nonalcoholic beer — Shufelt knew nothing about brewing. He went looking for a partner with expertise.
“I found out that I apparently was the only person in the adult beverage industry thinking nonalcoholic was exciting,” he says. “I would go to conferences and no one would want to talk about it.”
Enter John Walker, a Connecticut native who was, at the time, head brewer at Second Street Brewery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And he admits it was a little sleight of hand that initially got him talking to Shufelt.
“He left out some keywords in the help-wanted ad,” smiles Walker. “He didn’t mention that it was a nonalcoholic position.”
When they spoke on the phone, Shufelt dropped that shoe — and then begged Walker not to hang up.
“Hearing his passion and drive and vision for the brand, combined with his ambition to not do it like anybody else, was really exciting to me,” says Walker. “Because craft brewing, which I had kind of grown up in, was all about innovation and thinking outside the box.”
Shufelt flew out to meet Walker and his family, and the partnership that launched Athletic Brewing was sealed.
They’d go on to create one of the country’s most successful nonalcoholic brewers that’s still expanding in Connecticut and beyond. Athletic Brewing is now the 20th largest craft brewery in the U.S.
Something special
The road to success wasn’t an easy one. Shufelt had found angel investors early on who would end up giving the pair an 18-month runway before they had to make a sale. But what exactly were they going to sell?
“We broke down the traditional brewing process, dissected it entirely,” says Walker. “We formulated our finished goal and what we wanted to be drinking and worked backwards.”
It wasn’t glamorous. Shufelt describes standing around in an empty warehouse, home-brewing test batches in plastic jugs for months on end. Fun, to a point, says Walker, but also stressful and scary.
“In craft brewing, a lot of what the culture celebrates is sharing and helping and talking to each other,” he explains. “And we didn't have any colleagues to call upon and say, ‘Hey, you know, how do I make this better?’ ”
But eventually they knew they had something special.
“As soon as we had beer to go, we started bottling it by hand and I would drive around New England, sharing it with people from distributors to retailers,” says Shufelt. “And it was amazing how many beer buyers were like, ‘people have been asking for this, I can't wait to buy it.’ ”
The first big “get” for Athletic was Whole Foods, which agreed to a test run of the beer in select stores — and found they couldn’t keep it on the shelves.
Retailers and distributors weren’t their only targets — Shufelt also wanted to take the beer straight to the kind of customer he felt would understand the brand, and that meant seeking out athletes.
“Bill would go to all the races in New England,” Walker recalls, “drive there at three o'clock in the morning and go be at the finish lines, sharing the beers and embracing that celebratory culture.”
Hand-in-hand with the taste of the product was their determination to revamp the dusty image of nonalcoholic beer. The name Athletic was a key first step. It fit the image they were going for, and it’s what Shufelt calls “an easy bar-call.”
His point being, it’s not always easy to ask for a nonalcoholic drink in a loud, crowded bar.
"I feel like anytime people used to ask that, the music would stop and everyone would look at you — Athletic is an easy-to-hear, positive word,” he says. “It's a brand people can get excited about and has cool, outdoor imagery on the can.”
Shufelt and Walker want their customers to feel proud of what they’re drinking, and not feel like they have to hide the label.
“It has to be their favorite routine,” says Shufelt. “Whether it's in their house after a busy day of work or with friends and colleagues at a bar, we wanted the Athletic can in their hand to be the favorite part of their day.”
Expanded production
The passion and the image, combined with a tasty product, paid off. The fledgling company found itself struggling to keep up with demand from its first brewery in Stratford, even while figuring out how to grow the business.
“We were still learning how to make product at scale and get it into cans and what logistics looked like,” says Shufelt. “And before we knew it, we had outgrown that brewery in about 10 months.”
As sales grew well beyond New England, they very quickly began to think of Athletic as a national brand. Athletic closed on a second brewery in San Diego in March 2020.
Meanwhile, they began to look for another Connecticut location. They broke ground for a new facility in Milford in 2021, and produced their first brew there in May 2022. It was a significant increase in capacity.
Stratford had been built to produce 5,000 barrels a year and eventually expanded to 12,000 barrels. Milford currently has capacity of 190,000 barrels and potential for growth to 450,000, which has been a slight infrastructure challenge for Milford, says the town’s economic development director Julie Nash.
“The biggest need for them was sewer capacity, to make sure they have enough for their production to be successful and keep growing,” she says.
But it’s a problem the town is happy to solve for Athletic, Nash says.
“Having a company of that stature here in Milford, it makes all the difference in the world,” she says. “It puts us on the map, it’s a global company.”
“The owners are so humble, and they're absolutely transforming the world of beverage,” says Nash. “Their philosophy and how they treat their employees and their sustainable mission is something that most companies should look at and replicate.”
That mission-driven philosophy begins with the company structure. All employees – at last count, 210 – are equity owners with a stake in the business.
And in April 2022, Athletic became a certified B-corp. That designation measures a company’s full social and environmental impact, and marks it as a leader for an “inclusive, equitable and regenerative economy,” according to the B-corp website.
Athletic has committed 3% of sales to charitable efforts. The bulk of that is its Two for the Trails initiative, which has so far donated more than $2.5 million to restoring hiking trails and improving outdoor access. A further 1% goes to a community impact fund.
“That could be anything from diversity brewing scholarships, mentorship in the community, fighting food insecurity and a whole range of other things,” says Shufelt.
Collaborative leaders
Their outward-facing work also includes creating new communities in the nonalcoholic beverage world — the sort of community they didn’t have starting out. In 2021 Shufelt and Walker helped to found the Adult Non-Alcoholic Beverage Association. Shufelt is now the organization’s board chair.
ANBA CEO Marcus Salazar calls them collaborative leaders in the field.
“They've been a driver of raising awareness about the category by producing some of the best tasting nonalcoholic beverages out there,” he said. “But then also being supportive of all the other players in the space as well.”
And there is a rising tide to lift all of those boats. Sales of nonalcoholic beer grew more than 30% between 2020 and 2021. Athletic has some of the top-selling beers in the category, competing with breweries many times its size.
Athletic is also forging relationships across the craft beer world, as an active member of the Brewers Association, and entering its offerings into tasting competitions with alcoholic brews.
Brew Bound magazine named them Craft Brewer of the Year in 2021. Inc Magazine had Athletic at No. 26 in its 5,000 fastest-growing companies of 2022, with 13,000% three-year revenue growth. (The company declined to disclose its annual revenue.)
For Shufelt, the accidental entrepreneur, these achievements are just the start.
“We really feel like we’re just getting going,” he says.
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