170 | Business World Magazine |
December 2013
A CHANGING MARKET
Ultimately, the small-scale brewing mar-
ket began gathering momentum in a fash-
ion similar to what people had already
been seeing in the wine and specialty cof-
fee segments.
What was good for Starbucks, Pfef-
fer says, was ultimately good for Gritty
McDuffs as well. “You saw it in the in-
creased popularity of California wines.
You saw it in the coffee industry with Star-
bucks. You saw it with Haagen-Dazs in
ice cream,” he says. “People didn’t want
mass-produced products anymore. What-
ever the industry or the industry group,
everyone was looking more toward qual-
ity and they wanted more than just Won-
der Bread.
“That’s really the gist of it, but it still
took a long time to develop and get to that
level. Because of the infrastructure that
existed, you had large brewers who had
Freeport co-founders and managing partners, Billy Stebbins and Jon Soule
