Yards will soon brew even more beer of smaller brands
The 30-year-old Philly brewery is teaming up with two other Northeast breweries to increase its contract-brewing efforts.
Yards Brewing Co. is increasing production as part of a new partnership with another Pennsylvania brewery, Bald Birds, and Connecticut’s Two Roads.
The manufacturing collaboration, called B3 Beverage Co., is set to expand on the contract-brewing efforts that have been underway at Yards since the Philadelphia brewery moved to its massive Spring Garden Street location in 2018.
On top of the 25,000 barrels of Yards beer the company produces each year, it also brews and packages 30,000 barrels of beer for other brands, including Fishtown’s Evil Genius and the Shore’s Cape May Brewing Co., according to Yards’ founder and president, Tom Kehoe.
In the first year of the B3 Beverage Co., Kehoe said, Yards hopes to increase its contract-brewing output by about 10%.
“We will continue to do what we are doing best at the same quality level — but now have more resources,” Kehoe said in a statement. “In fact we can expand through this partnership to now go beyond beer, cider, and seltzer to include RTDs.” (That last one is shorthand for ready-to-drink canned cocktails.)
The idea for a collaboration started percolating a few years ago when Kehoe said he connected with Joe Feerrar, co-owner of Bald Birds Brewing Co., which has a taproom in Audubon and a production facility in central Pennsylvania.
When Feerrar and Kehoe reconnected last year, they “chatted about increasing volume and growth in the beer industry,” Kehoe said, “and we came up with this idea to partner on contract brewing and co-packing.”
The pair learned Two Roads was also looking to up its co-packing business, Kehoe said, and B3 was born.
“Instead of being competitors, we thought it made sense to become partners for this new type of ‘super’ beverage company that gives you the best of all worlds,” Kehoe said.
Kehoe, who founded Yards with a college friend in 1994, called the collaboration a “win-win,” a savvy business move that would allow Yards to make use of its extra capacity.
As for craft beer drinkers in the Philadelphia area, Kehoe said the partnership won’t have much of an impact on what they see on store shelves — or what they taste when they crack open a beer from Yards or any other brand.
“Consumers really shouldn’t see any major changes,” Kehoe said. “We will keep putting out the best beer in the market as we always have.”