My July/August issue of Inc Magazine arrived today (a bit late) and in it I discovered a neat little profile piece on Sam Calagione and his Deleware-based Dogfish Head Brewery, which brought in $28 million in revenue last year, producing 74,600 barrels of their “off-centered” ales.
As opposed to the exposé on the brewery which appeared in The New Yorker last November which really highlighted the brewery’s beers as heralding the “extreme beer movement” in Amerca, the Inc Magazine piece, told in the first-person, is really a look at “a day in the life of”. Since the magazine caters to Entrepreneurs, it was a neat peak into how Calagione runs the business:
To keep meetings from being oppressive, we all swear like truck drivers.
I’m trying to run a fun company where people aren’t working for me. The people who do the best at our company are working for themselves.
And a look into the mind of one of the country’s most fun entrepreneurs and most successful craft brewery owners.
Every word that I read, I filter through this Dogfish prism. Every thought that I have in some way pertains to Dogfish. It’s kind of sick in a way.
Anyway, if you’ve ever wondered what Sam does on a day-to-day basis and how things have changed from when Dogfish Head was a one man show 14 years ago, to the way the 106 employee company is run today, check out the Inc Magazine story here. It’s a short, entertaining and really pretty fun read.
[image by Martha Camerillo for Inc Magazine]
