San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Pabst Brewing headquarters returns home to Alamo City
The company behind such storied suds as Lone Star and Pabst Blue Ribbon is calling San Antonio home — again.
Pabst Brewing Co. recently closed its offices in Los Angeles and Dallas, and is renovating two floors for its new headquarters at the Rand Building at 110 E. Houston St. downtown. The building is owned by local developer Weston Urban.
The company has operated a San Antonio office for years and already had about 60 to 65 employees here, said general manager Matt Bruhn. Pabst plans to hire 20 to 25 workers over the next few months and will have 115 to 120 employees here when fully staffed.
“San Antonio is filled with opportunity and creativity,” he said. “It has a great talent pool, high quality of life and is experiencing a cultural boom that we’d really like to be a part of. The affordability of the city does make it attractive to business(es) and employees.”
Sean Attwood, vice president of tech development at the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation, echoed
Bruhn. The organization worked with Tech Bloc’s Tech Talent Central and co-working space Geekdom, which is housed at
the Rand Building, to attract Pabst to San Antonio.
“Costs are a significant consideration, but culture, talent and the ability to attract and retain talented employees who want to live here is a significant part of that picture when a company decides where they place their headquarters,” Attwood said.
Pabst, which outsources
its beer-making, is not receiving any incentives for the relocation.
News of Pabst’s new headquarters was first reported by the San Antonio Report.
The business that became Pabst Brewing Co. was founded in Milwaukee in 1844, changing hands and headquarters several times since then. It is currently
owned by private equity firm TSG Consumer Partners and entrepreneur Eugene Kashper, and the company owns more than 50 brands.
Pabst is the seventhlargest beer company in the U.S. by production, down from fourth place in 1980, said Lester Jones, chief economist at the National Beer Wholesalers
Association.
Its share of the market — which he put at roughly
212 million barrels annually — is about 2 percent, or a little more than 4 million barrels.
While the company’s foothold has slipped amid increasing competition from large players and craft brewers, it remains “a significant player … (with) a very broad portfolio,” Jones said.
Pabst’s connection to San Antonio stretches back years.
Beer industry magnate Paul Kalmanovitz and his S&P Co. acquired Pabst in 1985 and took over operations at the former Pearl Brewery.
Pabst moved its headquarters to San Antonio in 1996 after closing its Milwaukee brewery. Lutz Issleib, Pabst’s president at the time, lived in San Antonio and spearheaded the relocation.
Pabst bought nearly a dozen brands in 1999, including Lone Star.
But the Pearl plant grappled with increasing competition and its owners didn’t upgrade the brewing equipment, said Jeremy Banas, author of
“Pearl: A History of San Antonio’s Iconic Beer.” The quality of the ingredients also was lacking.
Despite employees’ efforts to keep the brewery open, S&P Co. shuttered it in 2001 and laid off more than 300 workers.
The closure dealt a significant blow to the area.
“It was part of the economy, part of the culture,” said Banas, who also coauthored “San Antonio Beer: Alamo City History by the Pint” with former Express-News beer writer Travis E. Poling. “It pumped so much money into the economy, and
they did so much with the community.”
Pabst moved its headquarters to the Chicago area in 2006 but kept an office here, initially at the Pearl and later near the airport and at the Rand Building. The company eventually moved its headquarters to Los Angeles.
Its best-known brand, Pabst Blue Ribbon, or P.B.R., underwent a resurgence in the early 2000s as snowboarders and skaters embraced the budget-friendly, no-frills beer.
Part of the appeal? “The marketing of no marketing,” as a New York Times Magazine headline put it in 2003. Sales exploded during the recession, with retail volume reportedly jumping 20 percent in 2009.
Pabst’s independent ownership status fed into its coolness factor. P.B.R. became “hipster beer,” Banas said.
“It’s your grandfather’s beer, but it’s also not your
grandfather’s beer anymore,” he said. “You’re reclaiming it for yourself.”
The brand’s popularity began waning several years ago, Bruhn said, but Pabst has since expanded its P.B.R. offerings. The company launched a stronger lager, hard coffee, seltzers and whiskey, and interest has picked up again during the coronavirus pandemic.
“We’ve done a lot of innovation and brand work on it,” he said. “With (COVID-19) hitting, we started to see strong growth again.”
Pabst, like many others in the industry, has been battered by the pandemic. Nearly 30 percent of the company’s business comes from bars, pubs, restaurants and similar venues, many of which remain closed or are operating at limited capacity.
“That business is coming back, but very slowly,” Bruhn said. “It’s pretty volatile and uncertain in that space.”
The popularity of flavored malt beverages and alcoholic seltzers is rising, and there are opportunities for Past to expand its brands into those areas, he said.
The company also has a distribution and sales deal with New Holland Brewing Co. and has worked with the brewery on several products, including Pabst Blue Ribbon Whiskey.
New Holland is a Michigan brewery known for its Dragon’s Milk stout.
“We have a lot of cool brands, which will keep growing as they innovate aggressively, and then a pretty cool craft partnership, which is doing really well for us,” Bruhn said.
What about San Antonio breweries?
Pabst has no plans currently to work with local breweries but
“would never rule it out,” he said.