December 2013
| Business World Magazine | 181
The process allows the beers to pick
up oaky, smoky vanilla, caramel or toffee
flavors and a new set of the various aged
beers will be rotated through each Oggi’s
location every three months.
“We launched it four or five months
ago through our restaurants,” says Tom-
my Hadjis, who handles the in-house Left
Coast Brewery operation that both sup-
plies Oggi’s restaurants and distributes its
products through retail outlets in 28 states.
“Using the new barrels brings more of the
wood character into the beer and not so
much the alcohol character. We want to
show our customers that we’re still a craft
brewery and we want to show that cre-
ative side.”
MANAGING THE HERD
The perpetual change that has been such
a frequent and important element in the
Oggi’s evolution isn’t always the eas-
ier thing to manage when it comes to a
franchise-based operation and the differ-
ent mindsets and goals that come with
it. Unlike a corporate-owned operation
that sends mandates from the top down,
getting buy-in from franchisees involves
more finesse, George Hadjis says.
“If a business is corporate owned, you
simply recognize the change and then you
make it across the board,” he says. “In our
case, creating change is extremely diffi-
cult. They’re buying in to a concept and
we oversee things to make they’re ad-
