Bill Shufelt never thought he’d start a business, much less a beer company.
“I didn’t have the entrepreneurial streak in me,” he says. “And I’ve never brewed a single batch of beer in my life.”
More than a decade ago, Shufelt decided to quit drinking. Almost immediately, he gained a recent sense of well-being. However, his search for a nice non-alcoholic beer was unsuccessful.
“I would stand at the bar in a restaurant and think, ‘If that bartender could pour a great non-alcoholic beer, I would gladly pay full price for it.’”
Shufelt, who was a financial trader at the time, decided to conduct 1000’s of consumer surveys and realized he was not alone.
“Fifty-five percent adults [in the surveys] “They said they would be happy to drink great non-alcoholic beer if it tasted better and had less stigma,” says Shufelt. “But [non-alcoholic] shelf had basically no variety or innovation. This category was promoted in the same way it had been since Prohibition. And it had this huge stigma that if you drank NA beer, you had a drinking problem. I thought, “Maybe we need to completely reinvent the way non-alcoholic beer is made and thought about.” It all seemed to be happening in my head. I finally said it out loud to my wife and she said, “You should do it.”
In 2017, Shufelt partnered with renowned brewer John Walker, whose mission was to craft non-alcoholic beers “without compromise.”
“I found someone who had seen this idea,” he says. “We started homebrewing from Gatorade jugs in an empty warehouse. John is so talented that we actually got to the point where we had great non-alcoholic beer.”
A yr later they launched Sports brewing. Currently, Athletic brand products are the most regularly chosen category, overtaking non-alcoholic options from Heineken and Budweiser in US grocery stores. The company had revenues of greater than $100 million in 2023 and was reportedly valued at $800 million in July. All of this earned Shufelt a finalist spot on our 2024 Entrepreneur of the Year 20 Innovative Leaders list.
Nowadays, sports are in all places. But the beginnings were actually difficult. What were your first challenges?
I left this great job in finance and got here up with this concept myself, and there was no interest in the industry. From finding a contract brewer, to a brewer to partner with, to fundraising, every part was top notch.
But then I met our amazing co-founder, John. He won all of those brewing awards at the New Mexico brewpub where he worked. Where every other brewer I talked to was very quick to say, “No thanks,” John thought about the concept for a few days and got here back. He said, “I think it’s brilliant.” He moved his family across the country to affix forces.
Then I began going shopping. Surprise, surprise, no one wanted non-alcoholic beer. The trend was zero, so they simply drew the zero line ceaselessly. I had to make use of bottles that John and I bottled by hand in his parents’ garage. Everything was uphill. We presented the least popular segment ever and were consistently made fun of.
That’s a lot of opposition. What made you push yourself?
I committed to it. I quit my job and was at the deep end. I believed to myself, “I’ll make this work.” And despite all the “no” votes, I believed, “This person has no idea – he has no data.” Ultimately, I signed up 300 retailers who took us to our distributor to launch the product. So it was all very grassroots – really fun, fierce battles.
Fast forward a yr, after many people had tried this beer, we had sat on the shelf for a while and outgrew our premises. Suddenly everyone was shouting at us for not investing sufficiently in the brewery. That’s when we knew we were onto something really exciting. As painful as running out of supplies completely.
How do you retain up with growing demand lately?
We invest ahead of him. We just finished expanding on the east coast. Our East Coast brewery is now one hundred times larger than our original brewery in Stratford, Connecticut. We just bought West Coast Brewery, which is almost twice the size of East Coast Brewery. So our production capability at the end of 2024 can be about 250 times greater than in 2018. During this time, we have gone from one of the smallest of the 10,000 breweries in the country to the 10 largest craft breweries. We finished 2018 with six team members, 2019 with 26 team members, and 2020 also during the pandemic. We purchased our first West Coast brewery in March 2020 and hired 100 team members. And because of the pandemic, we have really doubled our efforts for culture.
How did you manage to define such clear cultural and business goals?
We took advantage of a really long planning cycle. I had two years of business planning before I even left my old job. And then, when I began working with John, for nine months we just drank home-made beer in an empty warehouse, talking about what was essential to us, what we liked about our previous careers and what we wanted sports life to appear like.
Work accounts for forty percent of our waking time and fairly often an even greater percentage of our mental energy. So you have a alternative: either make it an amazing job stuffed with great people, with a great culture and a good mission, or a brutal 9-to-5 grind.
We’re really intentional about our culture, our impact and our mission at Athletic. In 2017, John and I developed an worker handbook [the year Athletic was founded] which we still have and have barely modified. I take it out and talk over with every recent teammate at Athletic about it. We need to be a participant in the communities in which we operate, not a profit taker. Every team member is a shareholder from day one in the company. This increases with each anniversary of cooperation with the company. So there is an ownership mindset. And every part we do is designed to make a positive impact on our customers, their communities and the environment. We are a certified B corporation and our Two for the Trails grant now totals over $6.5 million since we began supporting trails and parks organizations across the country. We strive to have a real impact – without compromising the product or compromising the environment.
Where does the name “Athletic” come from?
My goal is to be a little more energetic and a little healthier. So the name “Athletic” is really intended to be positive and aspirational. I also wanted something that may very well be easily ordered in a crowded or noisy bar or restaurant. Before, ordering a non-alcoholic beer was very difficult and was like wondering, “What kind of non-alcoholic beer do you have?” and everyone at the table turning and looking at you. I just wanted it to be something people could ask for with pride. And we were very careful that our name didn’t associate anything with a specific geography. We wanted a concept and brand that might push boundaries.
How do you propose to proceed to beat other NA market participants?
We invest, invest and invest in the quality of our products. We do it in a completely different way than most of this category. Most firms try to take a position and conserve assets as much as possible – find another person to supply the product and outsource as much as possible. Instead, we source and invest in every part. We need to operate vertically and do every part ourselves. We are one of the few firms that have built breweries for non-alcoholic beer and are still expanding. We have over 175 team members in our brewing lab. Quality and various production principles.
Today you are beating Budweiser and Heineken’s NA beers. Do you continue to see Athletic as disruptive?
Surely. The prevailing opinion among most individuals in the industry is that non-alcoholic beer is reaching its ceiling. They see where it is and say, “That’s an incredible increase, and it’s probably going to be two to three percent forever.” While in my head I’m pondering, “People don’t drink alcohol 99 percent of the time when they’re awake. Therefore, over a long enough time horizon, it is very likely that non-alcoholic adult beverages will become more common than alcoholic adult beverages. ” This is a very different opinion from the consensus in my opinion, but I think it makes perfect logical sense.