Steve Hindy did not just change his own life as an established journalist when he in 1987 quit his life as he knew it and founded the Brooklyn Brewery. He also changed the Brooklyn community and introduced the New Yorkers to great beer.
By Sara Sjølin
Date: October 18th 2010
Two professors from Baruch College enter the door and look around in the yeasty smelling office area. As they wait for their students in their entrepreneurship class to show up a 61-year-old dark-bearded man in a casual navy blue fleece sweater and khaki pants greets them.
“Steve,” he says shaking hands with them.
The name instantly lightens up both teachers’ faces as the female professor impressively asks, “Are you Steve Hindy? The founder of the brewery?”
And it is Steve Hindy. One of the two founding fathers of the 22-year old Brooklyn Brewery that today occupies a large area on N 11th street in Williamsburg and has brought not only Brooklyn Lager, India Pale Ale and Pennant Ale to the Brooklyners, but also a renaissance to the borough Southeast of Manhattan.
On this late Friday afternoon before the big rush-in to the weekly happy hour he has agreed to tell them the story of how he, a war journalist for AP in the Middle East, gave up his profession and started the brewery with his friend and former banker Tom Potter in the late 1980s. A story about both courage and confidence, but also about technically bankruptcy and difficulties distributing the beer to customers.
The two guys met each other in the Brooklyn neighborhood Park Slope in 1984 where their wives had become friends through their involvement in the local public schools that Steve Hindy’s two children Sam and Lily attended. Earlier that year Steve’s wife Ellen had suggested that with two small children it was about time to leave Middle East and go back to the States. The correspondent job had led Steve to cover important stories as the Iran-Iraq War, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and the massacres in the Beirut refugee camps. A month before the birth of his son he was abducted in South Lebanon while traveling with a United Nations patrol, but Steve tells today that the experiences prepared him for his career as a cofounder of the Brooklyn Brewery.
His interest in making his own brew started in those days and back in the U.S. Steve started brewing his own beer in the apartment in Park Slope. Sitting in the backyard and drinking homebrew goodies with Tom, the two friends developed the idea of opening a brewery together.
In March 1987 the business plan for Brooklyn Brewery was complete and the haunt for investors started. To Steve it was a terrifying time. Tom had quit his job as a banker in March and Steve was going to quit his well-paid job at Newsday in October. 35 investors pitched in and three days before the stock market crashed in October 1987 they reached the magic $300,000 that was their minimum to go into the brewing business. Brooklyn Brewery became a reality.
However, the first years as brewers didn’t turn out as the great entrepreneur story it is today. The brewery made great beer and contributed at non-for-profit events to rebuild Brooklyn as a hip neighborhood, but the bills exceeded the income. The first five years the local brewing company was technically bankrupt and struggled with distributing the beer to customers. Steve went to bed every night thinking that the situation was troublesome. But despite the difficulties in creating a profitable company he never lost confidence in the Brooklyn Brewery and his experiences in the Middle East helped him endure and stay determined and focused.
His confidence proved right. In May 1996 he and Tom opened the brewery in Williamsburg after several years of contract brewing in up-state New York and the brewing business started to take off. Last year Brooklyn Brewery grew 20 percent in a difficult American beer industry that lost 2.5 percent the same year.
To the entrepreneur students from Baruck University the Brooklyn Brewery and Steve Hindy are a great story of the American dream. To Steve it is has been not just a dream, but also a great adventure. Experiencing people order a Brooklyn Lager in a bar in Manhattan still makes him really proud and he enjoys being a part of New York like that, he says.
But the brewery does not take up all his time like it did in the first intense years. He went from working 80 hours a week till 40 and is currently writing a book about his years in Lebanon. Now it is no longer the destiny of the brewery that keeps him awake:
“This morning I got up at 3.30 because I’m writing a book about my years in Lebanon and I’m thinking about it all the time.”
However, in December Steve will again have a lot of beer on his mind. He is expanding the brewing business and will go from making 12,000 barrels on the N 11th street premises to 120,000 barrels.
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