New Orleans-based Dixie Beer shocked the South last summer when it announced it would change its name amid the social justice protests that followed George Floyd’s murder.
Nine months after that announcement and four months after the company revealed it would become Faubourg Brewing Company, the first Faubourg branded beer will begin rolling out of the 114-year-old company’s brewery. Consumers are warming up to the new name, which means “neighborhood” in French, a nod to New Orleans’ more than 70 named neighborhoods.
“Early on, we got a lot of very negative feedback, and that has changed quite a bit,” Faubourg Brewing general manager Jim Birch told Brewbound. “Part of that, I think, is just a little bit of the passage of time and also we’ve been talking a lot about Faubourg being the neighborhood beer and the corporate responsibility that we have and what we’re going to do under this new brand.”
The March 26 draft launch and May 3 package release were originally planned to coincide with Mardi Gras in February, a major driver of New Orleans’ hospitality industry. But the mid-February holiday weekend was subdued, with bars in the city closed and to-go drinks from restaurants banned due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Our wholesaler was guiding us to push it back, which worked out well because cans were on backorder,” Birch said. “We’ve pushed everything forward about a month and a half.”
The company will initially launch five beers under the Faubourg label. They include
Faubourg Lager, the brand’s flagship, which has been tweaked slightly from Dixie Lager’s recipe to remove rice from the grain bill and increase the alcohol from 4.6% ABV to 4.8% ABV.
“We’ve been actually blindly testing at our retail bar for the past two months,” Birch said. “We’ve gotten feedback on what people like, what they don’t like and, actually, the feedback’s been very positive, so we’re excited.”
Faubourg Lager will be available in 6- and 12-pack cans and bottles, as well as on draft.
Four styles will join Faubourg Lager on draft and in package:
- Dat’suma IPA with satsuma oranges, 7.2% ABV;
- Golden Cypress wheat ale, 5.2% ABV;
- Blackened Voodoo dark lager, 5.5% ABV;
- Westwego West Coast-style IPA, 8% ABV.
All four brands were available in cans to-go from the brewery over the last year as part of a retail program called Crafted By Dixie, which allowed the company to gather consumer insights on new styles. Westwego IPA was the “fastest seller by far,” Birch said.
“It wound up being perfect last year because it was mostly a to-go program for almost two quarters of the year,” he said. “We will roll that forward — it’s going to be called Crafted By Faubourg — and the opportunity really is for our brewers to do some weirder style beers to test the market.”
In Year One, Faubourg products will be available in Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida panhandle. Both wholesalers and chain accounts have said “really positive things” about the rebrand, Birch said.
“We’ve had some key accounts like national chain grocery stores that have said ‘We’re behind what you’re doing, we’re gonna hold spots for your brand,’ even before we’re able to show them the graphics,” he said. “That was really satisfying. So when we roll package, we know that we have placements lined up for these grocery stores.”
Other wholesalers are taking a wait-and-see approach.
“You have to prove that your brand is performing well at home, which I completely understand, before someone else is going to take you in,” Birch said.
In 2020, the company sold 11,000 barrels of beer, up from 9,500 in 2019. Volume has steadily increased since owner Gayle Benson and her late husband Tom Benson, acquired a majority stake in the brand in 2017. The company restored its brewery, which was damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and reopened in January 2020, about two months before the COVID-19 pandemic forced the shutdown of on-site service at taprooms, bars and restaurants.
“Our forecast for 2021 is totally dependent upon the pace of the COVID recovery, so too soon to tell,” Birch said.
The 85,000 sq. ft. brewery’s annual production capacity is 100,000 barrels, which allows for contract brewing.
“We are ramping up our contracting business, so we’re able to keep our entire production team employed, even while Faubourg starts to grow itself,” Birch said. “I want this to be a Faubourg brewery, I want to make all Faubourg beers, but the reality is we’re going to make some other people’s beers for a couple of years too while we grow.”
Since the name change was announced, some consumers haven’t been shy about giving Birch and other team members their feedback.
“Not everyone has to agree with us, but if we’re putting out really great beer and our customer service is fantastic, then I think in the long run, we’re gonna do really well,” Birch said.
A frequently asked questions page on the company’s website hints at some of the pushback Faubourg has received, including one question asking if the company is aware that the name Dixie comes from the $10 bills issued by the Citizens’ Bank of New Orleans. Dixie, commonly used to refer to the South, has ties to both the Mason-Dixon line, which divided free states and slave states, and the bank’s ten-dollar with “dix” (French for 10) printed on them, according to History.com.
“We choose to no longer debate that the word has unfortunately come to also have negative connotations that are indefensible and contrary to our core values,” Faubourg wrote on its website. “Beer is meant to bring people together, and if we are excluding, offending, or hurting anyone by using a specific word, we are simply not doing what we set out to do for our community.”
The potential for growth under the Faubourg name far outweighs the loss of consumers who disagree with the change — many of whom likely weren’t regular Dixie drinkers anyway — and the steep expense of rebranding, Birch said.
“We would be capped eventually with the Dixie name,” he said. “We know that we couldn’t expand our distribution, and so the cost is less than the long-term cost of maintaining Dixie. Luckily, we were able to make those financial decisions, but it is significant.”
As it reintroduces itself to New Orleans, Faubourg is launching a jobs training program in partnership with the city’s JOBS1 career initiative and Equus Workforce Solutions. The program offers training for both front of house and back of house work, with one trainee in each sector as the program begins.
“The front of house is about teaching the service industry, high schoolers going into college or just going straight into jobs — how do you bus a table, how do you pour beer and how do you interact with the customer,” Birch said.
For back of house trainees, Faubourg will offer entry-level classes that cover soft skills and safety requirements in industrial settings.
“They’re gonna come with non-traditional skill sets, they may never have been in a factory before and that’s totally fine,” Birch said. “We realized that we have to change how we recruit in order to change the pool. Otherwise, we’re never going to be able to actually have a more diverse workforce.”