This is Greg Koch, CEO of Stone Brewing, pictured, I am informed, at the National Homebrewers Conference in San Diego last month. And yes, that face on his tee shirt is, erm, Greg Koch.
Greg recently received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Award for San Diego, and will go forward as a finalist in their national competition. Accepting the award, Greg said,
Receiving this award is a true honor. I’m proud to accept it on behalf of the intense—yet rewarding—work that my business partner Steve Wagner and I have put in over the past 15 years to help unite people who have exquisite taste with craft beers that have the same.
Proud, determined, aspirational. Makes the heart soar. A bit like Bono. A true Mission Statement for the craft beer movement.
Here's another pic...
The picture on the presentation screen appears to be God as envisioned by Terry Gilliam for Monty Python & The Holy Grail. I think those people in the surplices are Stonies (like Moonies) ready for Stonestown, where Kool-aid will not be on the menu. We've had cult beers. Now we have the world's first Beer Cult.
Only kidding. However...
The point of all this is that we know that BrewDog take a great deal of inspiration from Stone in the marketing and promotion of their business. Therefore, I'm offering a prize for the first person to send me photographic evidence of either James Watt or Martin Dickie wearing tee shirts adorned with their own fizzogs. They're at The Rake this evening (flogging shares, I imagine...), so take your camera and be ready. I'll give the first person to send me the goods a bottle of decent beer. Or a beermat. Or something. BrewDog management and staff are encouraged to enter. Especially James and Martin.
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3 comments:
Heh. Too funny. However, I'm well known as a healthy food advocate, so you certainly won't see any KoolAide coming from my camp! Fortunately, the fight against lowest-common-denominator and mediocrity doesn't require suicide pacts (voluntary or otherwise).
BTW,that is indeed the Monte Python still you identified, but with a rather significant difference. My art team decided to put my screaming face (aka #gregface) superimposed into it. When it was shown to me, I think they might have been thinking they'd get a negative reaction, but instead I couldn't help laughing at it's absurdity and came to the conclusion that I HAD to use it in my presentation.
We don't have a vid posted of the National Homebrewers Conference 'speechification,' but we do have an impromptu one from a month or so ago in Los Angeles: http://vimeo.com/24850724
Cheers,
Greg Koch
@StoneGreg
Thanks Greg. If you set up Stonetown, maybe you'll have Electric Ruination. Sounds like it does something similar ;-)
Have you got any inside info on whether the BrewDog boys have followed your example? I hear they have a bar at GBBF this year...
"stonegreg", your frat-boy antics have long been a pox on the craft brewing industry. "Your not worthy", "Fizzy yellow beer is for wussies"... this discourages mainstream drinkers from approaching craft beer. You seem more intent on consolidating your little niche in our little niche than in helping grow our market. I know the above pictures were taken at a "gathering of the faithful", so to speak, but they reflect poorly on you personally and our industry as a whole. I'm sure you get quite a kick out of jumping up on a bar wearing a picture of yourself and "evangelizing" through a bullhorn, but many in this industry are finding the joke old and tired. Have some dignity, man. Try to be a positive force for craft beer, like you are for local/organic food. Knock off the juvenile shenanigans.
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