A Business Built On Friendship: Ned LaFortune | Westminster Brewery grows into a regional economic driver
Ned LaFortune, president of Wachusett Brewing Co. in his hometown of Westminster, will admit that the first batch of beer he made with his college buddies didn’t taste that great.
Since then, he’s gotten much better.
But that first brew, just a couple of gallons of a dark beer made on a wood stove in a shack on his parents’ farm in the early 1990s, started a journey that, 17 years later, has turned into the second-largest packing brewery in Massachusetts.
Since that inaugural concoction, LaFortune and his college buddies-turned-business partners have honed their beer-making abilities and now Wachusett Brewing Co. makes more than 620,000 gallons of beer a year in 16 different varieties.
In fact, one of those varieties is named after that first batch: The Black Shack Porter, which has been modified and tastes much better than the first time LaFortune made it, he promises.
Passion For The Product
LaFortune, the 2011 Worcester Business Journal Small Business Leader of the Year, always knew he wanted to start his own business; he just wasn’t sure what type. Perhaps it’s in his genes to do so: His grandfather owned three businesses.
While the basic formula of Wachusett’s beer is a mix of hops, barley, water and yeast, LaFortune said the one ingredient any entrepreneur needs to start a business is passion.
For LaFortune, Peter Quinn and Kevin Buckler, his business partners and co-founders, their passion is undoubtedly beer.
“There’s just something fundamental about beer and what it represents to us,” LaFortune said. “We definitely had our fair share of it in college, and I think we just associate it with a lot of happy times that brought us closer together as friends.”
Many of those great times happened at Worcester Polytechnic Institute where LaFortune studied engineering with Buckler, who is now Wachusett Brewery’s plant manager. Quinn, who has a background in biology, began as the company’s brewer but has migrated to managing the company’s sales in four states.
The trio spent many a night guzzling their collegiate beverage of choice — although LaFortune admits in those days it was the cheap stuff — and the passion continued after graduation.
“Right after college we just went out and started trying as many different types and flavors of beers as possible,” LaFortune recalls. “Imports, craft beers, microbrews — anything we could get our hands on.”
Soon afterward they began putting together their own craft brews starting with Country Ale, now one of the company’s top sellers.
Securing the cash to go from making a couple of gallons in a shack into opening a full-fledged brewery proved the most difficult, LaFortune remembers. But he came up with an innovative way of fueling the business’s expansion.
While the company received a small loan from a local bank, many pieces of the original equipment — much of which are still used today — were purchased by friends and family and loaned to the entrepreneurs. LaFortune devised an amortization schedule for the company to buy back the large holding tanks and other equipment over a certain period of time. Now, Wachusett owns all of its own equipment and produces about 20,000 barrels of beer a year with its 28 employees.
Spirit Of Massachusetts
The company has also stuck to its Bay State roots.
Wachusett sells about 90 percent of its beer in Massachusetts, with small sales in Rhode Island, New York and New Jersey.
But the limited geographic reach is part of the company’s success, according to Andy Crouch, who has authored two books about the New England craft brew industry and writes a beer column for the trade journal Massachusetts Beverage Business.
“Wachusett is a solid local brewery that has focused on its local markets and continued to make drinkable beers — nothing too extreme — that appeal to a large audience,” he said. “It’s what’s made them successful.”
The company, according to Quinn, adopted a growth strategy of trying to build up the company’s stature in its own backyard in Central Massachusetts. Instead of spreading out to a large geographic area, the company has tried to saturate a smaller market as fully as possible.
“They really didn’t bite off more than they could chew,” said Mike Cimini, former owner of Yankee Spirits, who has recently purchased the Austin Liquors chain in Worcester. “A lot of businesses try to expand too fast, try to enter into markets they shouldn’t, but these guys have been smart about it.”
Destination Drink
And now the brewery has turned into more than just the product of sweat equity by these three college friends, it’s also one of the companies that make up the character of the region’s business community, according to David McKeehan, president of the North Central Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce.
“It’s just been amazing to see the growth of the company and the creativity, the leadership that enabled that growth,” he said. “It really shows that the entrepreneurial spirit can really thrive here.”
McKeehan, whose offices run the Johnny Appleseed Visitor Center in Lancaster, an information booth on Route 2, said he’s constantly surprised by how many people stop at the visitor center on their way to a tour of the brewery.
Wachusett offers tours four days a week, complete with a gift shop and an on-site tap featuring the company’s freshest brews.
“It’s become a destination,” McKeehan said.
LaFortune also tries to give back to the community he grew up in. He helped found the Westminster Industrial Development Commission in the early 2000s, which he sat on for a number of years, and he’s served on the board of directors for the North Central Massachusetts Chamber.
And, according to Cimini, there’s another reason for the company’s success: “They make a pretty tasty product.”
But no matter what beer is being consumed, the guys at Wachusett Brewery try to remind customers of their motto and the way they have been running the business for 17 years. It’s printed on each bottle cap and on many of the shirts and paraphernalia the company sells. It’s a simple motto that LaFortunate tries to apply to everything in life: “Enjoy with friends.”
Ned LaFortune on what he likes most about owning a brewery:
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