Posted on May 1, 1998

At a weak moment in 1989, Nicholas Matt '67 took a chance and “jumped off a
cliff,” as he puts it.

The chance he took was to leave his job
as president of Vicks Health Care Division of Procter and
Gamble and join his brothers and sister to buy out the
trust of the family brewery, now the Matt Brewing Co.,
Inc., producer of Saranac Beers.

Originally called the West End Brewing
Co., the brewery was established in 1888 by Nick Matt's
grandfather, F.X. Matt. Matt had worked in the brewery as
he grew up, but had not joined the family business after
graduating from Union. After spending three years in the
Navy, he went to Cornell for an M.B.A. and then joined
Vicks as a management assistant in 1973. From there, he
worked his way up to president of the health care
division.

So why take a risk and devote himself
to the struggling brewery? “I didn't want to wake up
at age sixty-two and ask, 'Is this all there is?'”
Matt says. Ready for a change and a new challenge, he
found it by returning home to the family business in
Utica, N.Y.

He discovered that the West End Brewing
Co. was in a very difficult strategic position,
struggling to compete with large national brands such as
Budweiser and Coors. “We were one of the last
surviving regional breweries,” Matt explains.
“What happened to us happened to many small
companies — we just couldn't compete with the big
guys.”

Like other small breweries, West End
was producing regular and light beers similar to those
produced by the large breweries. When Matt and his
siblings took over in 1989, they knew that they had to do
something different, but weren't sure what it was.
“I wish I could say that we had a grand plan, but
that wasn't the way it happened,” Matt says.
“We tried a lot of different things and fell into
something that worked for us.”

That something was the Saranac family
of beers — high end beers with distinctive flavors. In
1991, Saranac Adirondack Lager, then the only Saranac
beer they produced, won the Great American Beer Festival.
“That was evidence enough to convince us that the
consumer would recognize Saranac as a great product, so
we decided to focus on developing that line,” Matt
says.

At the time, Saranac constituted only
one percent of the brewery's total sales, but luckily the
decision by Matt and his partners mirrored the move of
consumers toward higher end beers. In the early 1990s,
the company's beers were distributed mostly to upstate
New York; today, they're available throughout the East
Coast. Saranac now constitutes fifty percent of the
company's sales (the other half comes from contracts with
small companies, exports, and Matt's and Utica Club, the
two original beers of the brewery that have continued to
do well regionally).

The brewery continues to introduce new
Saranac beers that have been embraced by consumers. One
of the company's most popular, Black and Tan, is much
more successful than they had expected, Matt says, and a
“Trail Mix Package” featuring a variety of
Saranac beers has also been a surprise hit. “We
introduced the Trail Mix Package because we weren't able
to get our beers distributed to bars where people usually
try new products, so we decided to distribute a mixed
product,” he says. “We had no idea it would be
so successful.”

And what is his favorite beer?

“It depends on what I'm in the
mood for,” he explains. “I just open the
fridge, which is usually stocked with all the Saranacs,
and choose what sounds good for the moment.”