If you’re not familiar with Montucky Cold Snacks, you’ve missed the memo about beer’s biggest overnight success stories in recent years. Founded in Montana, contract-brewed in Wisconsin, and boasting a charitable ethos (it gives 8% of profits back to local charities), Montucky has quickly become a Pabst Blue Ribbon alternative, but with more personality—and is being hailed as a “once-in-a-decade brand” for its distributors.
Montucky co-founder Chad Zeitner admits it’s not the liquid in the cans that has put his business on a rocket trajectory of growth. Montucky’s sales in grocery, convenience, and other retailers tracked by market research firm IRI exploded from 742 barrels in 2016 to 14,096 BBLs in 2019, based largely, according to Zeitner, on the brand’s personality. The beer has to be “good and consistent,” he says, but Montucky’s success is predicated on “who we are as a company … the fun, carefree vibe we portray.”
That feeling has clearly translated to consumers. In 2019, Montucky’s only product, its Lager, sold more volume in IRI-tracked stores than Ohio’s MadTree Brewing, and nearly as much as the entire portfolio of Florida’s Funky Buddha Brewery.
The carefree vibe is evident in the company’s name, which combines “Montucky” (a term used by rural Montanans to affectionately refer to the backwoods portions of the state), and “Cold Snacks,” a synonym for what you’d find when reaching for a beer from your fridge. This attitude suffuses the brand’s marketing and social media channels, which feature skiers, dogs, neon colors, memes, Montucky-branded ugly sweaters, and dudes in onesies.
“It’s about having fun. Whatever your version of fun is, we want to support that,” Zeitner tells GBH. “We’re not taking ourselves too seriously. We do make fun of the bro-ness of the world quite often. It’s part of the culture we’re in but we know it.”
The brand began as the brainchild of Zeitner and co-founder Jeremy Gregory in 2012. The pair, based in Bozeman, Montana, originally considered opening a more traditional craft brewery. But as 20-somethings with no brewing experience, they found banks unwilling to loan them the $1 million they were asking for in order to buy or build a brewery.
“That ended up being a blessing in disguise. Once we figured out that there are people who will contract brew for you, it allowed us to focus on the brand and the marketing aspect of it,” Zeitner says. “In the light domestic space, that’s what it comes down to.”
That reality flies in the face of nearly all of craft beer’s messaging over the past two decades, which has touted quality and obsessive attention to brewing details as key differentiators from what it derided as “fizzy, yellow beer.” Montucky bet from day one that quality wasn’t consumers’ top priority when it came to the general style of Light Lager. It was meant to be fun.
Focusing on easy-drinking domestic Lager was always the plan. PBR, Rainier Beer, and other similar beers are staples on the ski slopes and fly-fishing rivers of Montana. What if drinkers had a homegrown beer in that style to call their own? Zeitner says he and Gregory originally set out to create a PBR rival born in Big Sky Country; if they were able to capture 1% of PBR’s sales in the Treasure State, they figured that would be enough to call it a solid business.
Montucky deliberately prices itself to compete with other value-priced beers, sometimes retailing for less than PBR or Busch Light on shelves. Its suggested retail price is $5.99 per six-pack of 16oz cans; the beer is also sold in 30-packs ($20 at Costco; roughly $24 elsewhere) and 12-packs ($9.99-$11.99) of 12oz cans.
That price point is crucial: ski bums, college kids, and fly-fishing guides aren’t known to be flush with disposable income; many of them drink macro Lagers and feel comfortable at that price point. But, Montucky figured—if there were a similar-tasting product at a similar price, but with an independent spirit and more connection to the Rocky Mountain lifestyle—people would have no financial reason not to make the switch.
After initially launching in Montana in 2013, the brand opened up other markets starting in spring 2014, including Oregon, Washington, Northern California, Texas, and Colorado, the latter of which is now the brand’s top-selling state and the only market to have Montucky on draft. (Bozeman still consumes the most Montucky per capita of any city.) After originally signing with a smaller Colorado distributor that went out of business, prompting a lawsuit over Montucky’s distribution rights in that state, Montucky eventually landed with Breakthru Beverage Group.
Ryan Mac Isaac, Breakthru’s director of beer trade development, says the distributor saw the brand’s potential early on. Mac Isaac himself noticed, when he was outside playing volleyball or softball, that people of all demographics and ages were carting around 12-packs of Montucky. Given changes in Colorado law that passed in 2018 to allow for sales of full-strength beer in all grocery and convenience stores, Breakthru felt the sooner it could snap up the brand and get it into chain accounts, the more growth potential it had.
“We saw the brand growing in distribution and rate of sale. Knowing that we could take it to additional outlets, including chains, we saw an enormous amount of potential for one of those once-in-a-decade type brands,” Mac Isaac tells GBH. “One thing I have said about many beer brands is that they must find a way to be socially acceptable to show up to a barbecue or a party with. You don’t want to be perceived as too cheap, showing up with certain brands, but you also don’t want to be perceived as too snobby or have beers that are too particular to a taste and can’t appeal to everyone there.”
Mac Isaac cites that versatility as part of Montucky’s appeal, noting that while Breakthru has been able to position Montucky as the “craft alternative” to macro Lagers in bars and grocery stores, higher-end bars and restaurants also feel comfortable serving the beer as an approachable “cool kid” option at a lower price point, typically costing around $4 per 16oz can. While Montucky isn’t brewed in Colorado (or even the region), the brand has donated 8% of profits to dozens of organizations in the markets in which it’s sold, including Human Rights Campaign Arizona, Boulder Food Rescue, AIDS Services of Austin, Wasatch Backcountry Rescue, Seattle Children's Hospital, and more. To date, Montucky says it has donated more than $150,000 to community organizations.
Mac Isaac says the “8% back” policy endears the brand to drinkers across markets, as they see its sales benefit organizations they’re familiar with. But perhaps more crucially, it’s also a tactic to help Montucky knock off a PBR placement: distributors can argue that if an account is carrying a domestic macro Lager, why shouldn’t it switch to a craft one that sells at the same price point and donates to local organizations?
As Zeitner is quick to point out, it’s not the donations that have created all the success for his beer. He acknowledges it himself: much of Montucky’s appeal is driven by its branding.
The bright colors of its retro can design pervade its marketing, social media channels, point of sale, and off-beat merch like swim trunks, rain ponchos, snowboards, and dog toys. At a time when some companies are trying to position themselves as lifestyle brands (think Dogfish Head Brewery pivoting as craft’s “better-for-you” option, or the unstoppable force that is Michelob Ultra), Montucky nails an up-for-whatever ski attitude with a youthful brand voice. (But with youth comes folly: in August, Montucky issued an apology on Instagram after posting a video that apparently included a grizzly bear consuming the beer.) Its ardent fans do much of its marketing for the brand, posting their own social media photos wearing swag and posing with cans. Like White Claw, which saw a surge of free, viral marketing from 2019’s “ain’t no laws” fanfare, Montucky’s vocal fans make outsiders wonder just how it hooked drinkers so loyally.
“With items like retro one-piece ski suits and giant flamingo floaties, people have come to expect and appreciate [unique swag and point-of-sale items] from Montucky,” Mac Isaac says. “People know that it’s the Montucky brand before even seeing an actual logo.”
Mac Isaac says Montucky is also the rare brand that’s made deliberate outreach to and activation with skiers and drinkers in Colorado’s mountainous West a priority, sponsoring ski athletes from that state and focusing on winter sport venues and events. Montucky has also been an advocate for LGBTQ organizations, releasing a rainbow Pride Month can that benefited the Lifelong AIDS Alliance. What Zeitner calls Montucky’s “independent spirit” plays well even in markets where he didn’t expect to see such strong sales, like Tennessee.
Following years of expansion into these new markets, 2020 will be a quieter year for Montucky. The company, which currently employs 12 full-time workers with plans to add two more this year, hasn’t ruled out adding new states for distribution. But Zeitner says that’s contingent on finding the right distributor partners—sometimes a tall order given how mergers and acquisitions affect distributors’ ability to take on new brands. For most of his company’s eight-year history, Zeitner says Montucky has seen triple-digit growth, but he acknowledges that’s likely to decelerate in the coming year. Even at that slower rate of growth, Montucky enjoys sales other breweries can only envy.
“In 2019, it slowed down a little bit and we’re around 67% growth [at the end of the year]. That’s on a much larger base, so it’s getting tougher and tougher to sustain the astronomical growth, especially trying to fund from traditional bank financing and things like that,” he says. “We’ll probably cap it down a little bit so we can manage it internally in 2020, probably shoot for 40-50% growth and just be selective on entering new markets.”
That would still make it one of the most successful breweries in the country, growing at a rate that’s especially impressive given the struggles regional breweries have faced in recent years. 2020 will likely see the debut of 24oz cans for the brand, an effort to play more in the convenience store space. Overall, the company hopes to push itself harder in off-premise channels; chains including 7-Eleven, HEB, and Whole Foods have been strong partners, Zeitner says, and he’s confident Montucky will pick up new placements during this spring’s resets. The slowing growth he sees for the brand is more a brief hibernation to start the year before exploring the regional limits of what Montucky can do.
It’s a much more sophisticated approach to growth and new accounts than Montucky began with eight years ago. Initially launched in Montana, the brand expanded to its second state, Oregon, accidentally.
“We weren’t even planning on being outside of Montana; our business plan was essentially to be the PBR of Montana,” Zeitner says. “But some people were passing through [Bozeman] from Portland actually and they were like, ‘You’ve got to enter into this Lager fest that Portland does.’ Jeremy threw 20 cases [of Montucky] in his Honda and drove to Portland. That was a little bit of a hiccup because we didn’t realize we had to go through a distributor to do that. We got it sorted out, then people saw the reaction at this beer fest and a distributor was like, ‘Hey do you guys wanna sign in Oregon?’ and we said, ‘Sure, we’ll give it a go.’”
As the brand grows and matures, preserving its goofy, fly-by-the-seat-of-its-pants attitude becomes more of a branding challenge. Zeitner says it was easier in the beginning, when the company was just two guys who both implicitly understood what its branding should be.
“The people we hire, they’re younger, more in the Instagram world and I think everyone kind of just gets who we are as a company,” he says. “We realize as we grow, we’re not always going to have that pulse on the culture. We have to put parameters in place, but we don’t really have a set system yet on that. I guess I don’t have an answer … we just are who we are for now.”
So far, who they are is working just fine.
Words by Kate Bernot