Brewing a Healthier Future: The Story of Athletic Brewing Company (Re-Run)

(Originally aired 2021)  Ever longed for a beer that won't sabotage your fitness goals? Join me as I welcome John, the co-founder and head brewer of Athletic Brewing Company, to unveil the captivating narrative behind their ground-breaking non-alcoholic beer. This all began when Bill Shufelt, the original founder, chose to prioritize his wellness over his high-pressure hedge fund career. His bold decision led to the creation of a product that is challenging the negative perceptions around non-alcoholic beer. Get inspired by their journey from just a dream to quitting stable jobs and building the first non-alcoholic brewery in the U.S. John also candidly shares his experience of relocating from New Mexico to Connecticut to join forces with Bill on this exciting project.

Discover the distinctive philosophy Athletic Brewing Company brings to the craft beer world. Learn about their noble initiatives such as the Two for Trails program and their future ambitions. Beyond the beer, we dive into the broader discourse of health and fitness, touching on the mental advantages of sports and its role in creating a better future for ourselves and our progeny. Regardless of if you're a fitness fanatic, beer enthusiast, or just someone yearning for motivation to make a lifestyle change, this episode is brimming with insights and stories that enlighten and inspire. Prepare to see non-alcoholic beer in a whole new light!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 2:16

Hello and welcome to Health and Fitness Redefined. I'm your host, anthony Amen. Join me today as we take a dive into all the health and fitness where we learn how to overcome adversity, to pick back first fiction and see health and fitness in a whole new light. Today we have a special guest on John. John is the CEO we get ready for this of athletic brewing company. I know a lot of you guys watching this right now are like oh my God, that's the beer you drink during almost every episode. Yes, it's true. So I'm super excited to do this. I absolutely love what he's done with the company. I want to know history. I'm sure you guys want to know it too. So, john, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2: 2:58

Thanks, thanks very much for having us and, yeah, super excited to share the story. One little correction so Bill Bill Shufelt is the original founder and CEO, as it were. I'm the other co-founder and I'm the head brewer guy, so that's even better. The head brewer on production side. But yes like to be here, thank you.

Speaker 1: 3:20

I'm super excited, man. I want to hear, I guess, tell us from Bill's perspective, because he said he was the original one who founded it. Tell him why he started the company, how you got involved, and let's hear it. I'm excited.

Speaker 2: 3:32

Yeah for sure. Yeah. So you know, way back in Bill's history Bill was a busy head fund manager type and you know living a pretty wild life, trading in the European market and the Asian markets and US markets, and you know life, as you can imagine, was super busy and stressful in that, in that workplace. So you know that was busy and there are after hours engagements that you're kind of like required to go to, and all during that he was like on a journey to improve the quality of his life and a little more mindful about. You know how he spent his days and you know I think in that he decided that alcohol didn't have a place in that life.

Speaker 2: 4:20

You know if he wanted both things or but wanted to prioritize the health and wellness aspect. So he cut alcohol out by choice and was just super psyched about everything that was evolving in his life and you know the positivity that came of it, from relationships to functionality, to activity, and you know the way he was able to perform and training and whatnot. So the one thing that he was missing was a good beer and he did love beer and he also loved the occasions that surround beer and you know, having a drink with friends A lot of times he would you know you can imagine like non-alcoholic beers were always considered like the penalty box beer and so if you were the one that ordered that beer, all your friends were like, oh geez, what's wrong with this guy?

Speaker 2: 5:13

You know you're the butt of many jokes, so you know I think long story short is that he wanted to dream up this company that destigmatized non-alcoholic beer, made a fantastic product out of you know, using a method that was unique and new and innovate in a segment that hadn't been innovated in or paid any attention to in decades, and meanwhile, you know, build community and friendships and just create general positivity. So that's kind of which is.

Speaker 1: 5:47

That's interesting because I'm going to talk from a little bit my perspective growing up, where I was heavily involved in that party life once upon a time. But you're right, the only non-alcoholic option that I was aware of was the duels, and it was the butt of the joke. We're going to sit here and all sip of the duels and then throw up later because we're so bad.

Speaker 2: 6:08

Yeah, yeah, so you know it was like. You know, the rest of the world doesn't really have the stigma around non-alcoholic beer. It's a pretty significant portion of a number of markets throughout the world and it's a very normal thing for people to enjoy, and so you know why not here. And so that's kind of that was the start of it, and eventually, one day, after doing a lot of research and business planning, we all got the blessing from his wife to throw caution to the wind, quit his super stable job and start up the country's first non-alcoholic brewery, which is amazing, only making non-alcoholic beer. And so it took a long time to get to that point, and a long time even more, just like build up the base of investors who would believe in our cause, cause there was no proof of concept, there was no track record of success, of sales in the country, there was no business model to model after. This was new. So he did it and we met in 2017.

Speaker 2: 7:18

And I was working in Santa Fe, new Mexico. I was a head brewer at a couple brew pubs down there and you know we had been doing really well, but I had been looking for the next step in my career and was also kind of on a similar path to try to improve the quality of my own life, and so meeting Bill was super fortuitous and, you know, just awesome. And I learned the mission and it was a little bit of a shock at the beginning to hear that he was hiring for someone to run a non-alcoholic brewery, but I was like you know, I get it, it makes sense and I don't know why more people haven't done this yet. So me and the family moved in September of 2017 to Connecticut and that's one way signed a lease here in Stratford and started home brewing, basically.

Speaker 1: 8:18

So you moved from New Mexico all the way out to Connecticut. Yep, Talk about a difference of people, a difference of climate. Yeah, it's upside down man.

Speaker 2: 8:32

Yeah, so I had grown up in, I grew up here in Connecticut. I left at an early age. I left when I was 17 years old and at that time in my life I vowed to never return. Come to find out that later on in life, when I became a father and in retrospect, I was like, oh you know what? That's a fantastic place to raise children. And so we were kind of looking for a great place for our kids and to be around family. But yeah, I mean totally different lifestyles, different food, different pace of work. You know very, very much, go get them in the Northeast and very laid back in land of Mignana out in New Mexico. They both have their benefits.

Speaker 2: 9:27

But yeah very, very different.

Speaker 1: 9:30

Yeah, this is coming from a Long Island boy, so my foreign and race just ate this. In New York, same as Connecticut, and when you go down South and you're waiting in line for the grocery store, it's always that stigma like the person in front of you is gonna have a 20 minute conversation with the cashier about how life is going and you're just like, come on, I gotta go, I got places to be here.

Speaker 2: 9:52

Yeah, so yeah, my 17 years in New Mexico, you know, I think, helped me build some patience and helped me slow down and appreciate the finer small things.

Speaker 1: 10:04

Which is definitely healthier for us than a long run, which I think we need to take a step back in New York.

Speaker 2: 10:10

Yes, no, I agree entirely. So yeah, that's kind of our story and like, from there we started from ground zero as far as brewing because we didn't wanna do it the way it had been done for decades in the past, and so we kind of spent nine months developing our own process by way of home brewing in the warehouse and then, as the brewery was under construction, we started brewing in my garage and Bill would come up on the weekends or weekdays when he wasn't doing sales calls or fundraising and we would hand bottle in my garage. He would bring those bottles to like Whole Foods and Trader Joe's and local markets and be like, hey, you guys wanna buy this right. And it turned out people did.

Speaker 1: 11:02

I wanna talk to you about that, cause I've home brewed very, very amateurly, like I've done it three times in my life, and each time it's coming out. Just I one time try to make a 3% alcoholic beer and it came back 12.12 and a half. I was like, well, I screwed something up, yep. But how do you brew not alcoholic beer, cause I know, technically there's alcohol in them, correct? It's below a half a percent, correct? So how does that process work? If you don't mind taking us a little through the back end of it.

Speaker 2: 11:37

Yeah. So I mean, you know, traditionally speaking, there's vacuum distillation. You can brew a normal strength beer and then remove the alcohol via vacuum distillation, reverse osmosis If you really need to, you can boil it off because alcohol is volatile at a much lower temperature. So we kind of didn't want to go that path. So basically, we took the just a normal brewing approach and tweaked the you know, tweaked the recipe, tweaked the process, the temperatures, you know, all the times in the process. Basically, we have like this mosaic of changes in the traditional brewing process that allows us to have a fully fermented beer at under a half a percent.

Speaker 1: 12:28

That's pretty interesting. I just want to know a little bit. Athletic brewing. So for those that don't know, it's on the back of the can. You have the calories, you have the carbs, protein, fats. It just gives you an idea of what's inside. And where did that name come from? And what made you take that approach of going more of the healthy like? This is the nutrition label on the beer, because you never see that. So how did that come into play?

Speaker 2: 12:52

Yeah, so the I just know the backstory on it and because it predates me. So Bill had some friends that he was working with and there's still our great friends and partners in the creative landscape Fairfolk out of Boston. But they had, you know, they did this whole name search and this feel out like what is this brand going to be? What's the what should it be? And athletic was on the list and I think at first it wasn't everybody's favorite, but then, when it came down to it, what it evoked in people's lives and like what it stood for was everything that we wanted the company to be which is positive, active, inclusive, engaging and just a good, happy thing, and so that's kind of where it came from.

Speaker 2: 13:45

So we stuck with it and yeah, it's a in hindsight like it's a super strong name and I love what it does for the category and for our community as well.

Speaker 1: 13:58

Yeah, definitely it does a lot. It makes you feel better drinking. I don't know if it's all psychological, but you just feel better because you're like oh look, it's athletic.

Speaker 2: 14:07

Yeah, I mean. So you know, maybe it's. It isn't non-alcoholic beer, but more importantly, it's an athletic and that means good.

Speaker 1: 14:16

Absolutely. I got two important questions that are just burning in my mind, just like. The first one is what made you guys start? I know you do your two for trails program, which you donate to help rebuild parks and help get involved in wildlife, so I want to know more about that. And then I want to know how the heck do you make them taste so good? Because, like I've said, I've had different NA beers and they're just horrible, yeah, but that IPA, especially it's it tastes very similar to the IPA's and usually drinking that are alcohol. I want to know both and you can pick which one you want to go through first.

Speaker 2: 14:54

All right, cool, yeah. So the yeah, let's start with the beer, because we're on process. What it comes down to is that I think historically, nobody had really paid the attention that non-alcoholic beer deserved, that craft beer does a great job of which is showcasing the ingredients. You know, just nobody had cared for a long time. Craft beer came along and they're like hey, guess what? All these malts, all these hops, they're super unique, they taste great, they're delicious, and so we have to showcase them. And that's what you know.

Speaker 2: 15:31

Aside from community, I think that craft beer was built on flavor and people love flavor and so kind of took that. And we're like you know, how do we showcase all of these same ingredients in the same way? It's basically by doing nothing to them, just letting them be. And so you know, we use all the same exact ingredients. We use an organic base Vienna malt that's custom made for us. We have all of our hops come from the Pacific Northwest and Germany and the UK, and you know, it's just like all the great flavors that craft brewers are using, just in a different form. So, yeah, don't do anything differently, basically. So that's the answer to that first one, and thank you.

Speaker 2: 16:20

And two, for the trails is, yeah, just one of a couple of our impact programs that was there again from inception, where 2% of total sales from our company go directly to trail and park cleanup.

Speaker 2: 16:37

So you know, this year we're donating upwards of $300,000 to trail and park cleanups. Wow, and so, yeah, I mean really what that's about is what we want and what we're looking for is, like that, healthy, active, engaged lifestyle and supporting the environments in which we thrive and the environments that we enjoy and making sure that we can preserve and help maintain them for, you know, my kids and my kids' kids and so on and so forth. So you know, we donate heavy and it's on a national level all the way down to a really local level, and we do it all across the country and different. You know team members can select where we're doing it next, how we do it with you, and it's pretty awesome. And then our team will actually go out there. This year's a little fuzzy just because of COVID, but you know we'll all get out there and physically help with the rehabilitation. You know, build a rope fence, build a bridge, move boulders, clear trail stuff like that. So it's pretty awesome.

Speaker 1: 17:47

So you're taking that to the next step. You're just, you're actually going there, you're doing the work. Not even just. I don't think companies are doing that.

Speaker 2: 17:56

Yeah, no, I, you know it's one of those things. It's like it's super important to us. It's it's core tar mission and people love it and it's a great way to like get out. It's a great team building activity. It's like, you know who doesn't love being outside nature a little bit? So I think you know it's a win for the team, it's a win for the company, it's a win for the world, so it's pretty it's pretty great.

Speaker 1: 18:22

Yeah, I love that. And then, what's the future coming for you guys? I mean, it's the new year. We're just starting 21. Where, where are you guys? What's your plans for this year? Where do you plan on taking the company? Can you give us any insight of where we're going?

Speaker 2: 18:37

Yeah, for sure. So, you know, it was a crazy 2020, for sure, and we did a whole lot of groundwork building in that in that quiet time and we built our team up tremendously and we're hitting 2021 running. We're hoping and basically the goal is to, you know, impact as many people's lives as we can in a positive manner and also, you know, to clear, you know, put our stake in the ground and be that that non-alcoholic fear that people come to recognize, like, if you want a non-alcoholic fear, it's athletic. And so we've got a lot of work to do as far as, like, getting across and into the country. You know we're probably in 25 states right now and we'd love to be in all 50. So we're gonna push hard and we've got both production breweries cranking, incredible teams that are ramping up production and just dive in deep. So we, you know, just hope to get out there and if we can raise that amount into for the trails and donate a million dollars, that would be incredible. You know, like Same.

Speaker 2: 19:52

The more we can do the bigger impact we can have, and it's great for everybody.

Speaker 1: 19:57

I absolutely love that and just kind of get the wrap up on this. You have any advice you can give our listeners I mean everyone, listen to this If they want to get healthier, they want to work out more, they want to start eating better. You live and breathe this with this at the NA beer. So what kind of advice can you give to people? And whatever you got, go for it.

Speaker 2: 20:23

Yeah, our tagline is without compromise, so brewing without compromise, and we do that, and I think that's how we attain a premium product, great in flavor, full experience of having drinks with a friend, having a drink by yourself, whatever it is. It's just a great product and we put a lot of effort and a lot of love into it and it takes a whole lot from our team. And so just do everything without compromise and from a daily perspective. I used to go home and crack a beer and it was that repetitive motion on a daily basis that the motion meant more than the actual activity or the liquid. And so for me, I replaced that beer with non-alcoholic beer and I liked the beer just as much, if not more, and my day is far better. So if you actually want to switch things up, try and plug an athletic in where you had an alcoholic and see where it takes you.

Speaker 1: 21:33

Yeah, just a little food for thought for people listening that want to get ahead in life and start it, want to be healthier. I got to say the worst thing about drinking is the hangovers the next day. And you want to talk about a lack of productivity, a lack of energy, a lack of just, you feel like shit. I don't know about you, but personally, even if, like the hangover, the headache part would last one to two days, but I felt it in the gym even six, seven days after drinking.

Speaker 2: 22:08

Yeah, yeah, no, I concur entirely. And another thing that people don't really think about is if you aren't drinking, or aren't drinking as much, your sleep is so much better. You sleep more and deeper, and this wake up revive.

Speaker 1: 22:26

So yeah, it makes more of a difference and you can get more done, accomplish more of your goals. I mean, it's the new year, so we talked about in the previous episode about smart goals and all how you can start planning, set the short term goals and really push yourself. So take that, don't drink as much, even if it's cutting back one or two beers. Whatever it is, you don't want to go to extremes and accomplish your goals and live a better life. I mean, what's better than that?

Speaker 2: 22:53

Yeah, absolutely yeah, and there's nothing negative about that. It's all positive change.

Speaker 1: 23:00

So absolutely, and thank you for joining us on this week's episode of Health and Fitness Redefined. Don't forget, subscribe to our show and join us next week as we take a dive into this ever-changing field, and remember fitness is a journey, not a destination. Thanks so much for coming on, john, it was great having you my pleasure.

Speaker 2: 23:19

Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1: 23:24

For us. We know what it's like to feel unhealthy, depressed and downright defeated. We want to show others there is a right way and through fitness you could do anything you set your mind to. Fitness can give you that motivation, confidence, energy you need to bridge that mental gap and prevent you from missing important life events. We understand it's about feeling better, living longer and being good examples for our kids. We understand this because we live it and for us that's the redefined difference.