FX Matt Brewing Company and Flying Dog Brewery announced a deal Monday in which the New York legacy brand would acquire the Frederick, Maryland-based craft brewery and transfer all production to Utica, New York, later this summer.
The transaction is expected to close August 1, pending the clearing of state and federal regulatory hurdles.
Flying Dog will maintain a presence in Frederick with an innovation taproom that FX Matt CEO Fred Matt said he hopes to have up and running by September 1. That location could be “the first of more sprinkled through Maryland,” he added.
Matt and new Flying Dog president Ben Savage shared details of the deal, the challenges Flying Dog has faced in the past and the opportunities ahead in a conversation with Brewbound editor Justin Kendall. Here’s a lightly edited (for clarity and length) Q&A.
Brewbound: How long has this deal been in the works?
Fred Matt: I’d say maybe, I don’t know, six weeks? [Flying Dog owner] Jim [Caruso] and I have been talking for a while. It started with Right Coast [their spirits-based vodka whips line] with Harpoon and Flying Dog and doing more things together. We got talking about some shared sales services and all that, and I think as Jim looked at their facility and said, ‘I don’t have canning and I don’t have pasteurization, and I’ve got a lot of money to put into this to get it right,’ it just made more and more sense for us to do a deal.
Brewbound: That might be an all time record on deal speed.
Matt: Yeah, I’m calling Goldman Sachs and offering Jim’s and my services to close deals for them.
Brewbound: Did you work with advisers on this? Any financial services firms?
Matt: Nope. Jim proposed what he wanted, and I thought it was fair, and so we got the lawyers together. Even that. Jim knows my brother, who’s our corporate lawyer. So Jim and I were basically on phones with him, and then Jim showed it to their legal, and they thought it was all fair. This was lightning speed for getting a contract done. Just being really collaborative, and I’d say that both of us wanted something that was win-win for all, and we got there really quickly.
Brewbound: What was attractive about Flying Dog?
Matt: A lot of things. One, it’s a tremendous brand, and I think it’s got a lot of energy. Two, it’s in a fun space right now where high alcohol is a hot button and they’re high alcohol. They’re very underdeveloped in cans. They’re underdeveloped in on-premise. And so I think that’s all good. And then for us, it gives us a lot of strength in the Mid-Atlantic to use basically Flying Dog as a lead and then all FX Matt products to support the sales team down there as well.
Brewbound: Is there a lot of overlap as far as wholesaler footprint?
Matt: There’s some consistency. We’re not going to push changes right now. Obviously, it’s always easier to be in one house. But we will stay with the Flying Dog footprint.
Brewbound: How many states are you in, Ben?
Ben Savage: We’re in 25 states, plus D.C.
Brewbound: As far as the old facility, was the lease coming due? Was the property owned by Jim? How does that work itself out?
Matt: No, that’s all owned by Flying Dog.
Brewbound: OK. So this was an IP deal, essentially, and then, equipment, and they keep the property and figure out what to do with that next.
Matt: Yep, yep.
Brewbound: How many employees are you looking to take along with you?
Savage: It’s about 16 on our sales and marketing team that are moving over as part of the deal.
Matt: We’re talking to some brewers, and there’s some finance people, we will take. The production people, unfortunately, we don’t really have a need for, but we have needs and we can build up on our compliance or finance department, logistics etc.
Brewbound: Ben, what do you see as the biggest opportunities for Flying Dog in the future?
Savage: FX Matt has incredible capabilities that frankly we just don’t have here in our building. Like other regional craft breweries, other national craft breweries, there’s been a real push to become adult beverage companies in some respects, and we’ve been pushing into that category as well. The lines continue to blur, so we are innovating in all those spaces. As we continue to innovate, even over the last year, it became obvious, whether through the joint venture, even our hard tea that we released, every new idea that we came up with was impossible to produce here in Frederick.
From my standpoint, it opens up a lot of doors. They’ve already moved into these spaces with Flying Dog products. For us, we’re really excited that we’re able to take our sales and marketing team and continue to innovate and continue to push the limits of what Flying Dog can do in all the alcohol spaces: spirits, cider, everything.
Brewbound: Fred, you mentioned the high octane products, which ones are you most excited about at Flying Dog?
Matt: Well, The Truth [imperial IPA] is doing very well. And I think Double Dog [double IPA] is also doing very well. When you now add can packages to all those products. I think we just got home run in single-serves etc. So high octane in c-stores is crushing it, as we know. [New Belgium’s] Voodoo [Ranger] has done a great job of staying consistent in the c-store market. When craft wasn’t really doing as well in c-stores, they really leaned into it, and their consistent push in c-stores has shown that you can win there.
I will tell you, I hate having to copycat and plagiarize, but they’ve done a great job. I think the Flying Dog brand lends itself to that consumer in its appearance and its high alcohol.
Brewbound: How much of the Flying Dog portfolio is in cans already?
Matt: About 18%.
Brewbound: So you’ve got a lot of runway and opportunity with these brands.
Matt: I look at Flying Dog and we got a really, really strong brand. They only had 18% of their business in cans versus a craft market being anywhere from 60% to 70%. And their on-premise business is 11% versus more like a 30%. The other opportunity for Flying Dog is having a little lower alcohol.
Brewbound: Not to jump on the bad puns, but Ben, you got to feel like this is going to unleash the brand.
Savage: It’s pretty widely known, even with our wholesale partners, because of our facility limitations, we’ve had to make some strategic decisions to kind of hold back. We couldn’t just move certain SKUs into cans, and wake up and realize we had zero production in Frederick.
We’ve made some decisions on the portfolio that we probably otherwise wouldn’t have made if we didn’t have any production limitations. And now, with this acquisition and where we’re headed, Fred’s facility has almost zero limitations. So we’re going to try to optimize the portfolio and we’re gonna innovate without any restrictions basically on package or format and that’s sort of the whole point. That’s the opportunity that Fred sees and that’s liberating for me and my team.
Brewbound: Do you see a move away from the bottle format?
Savage: It’s never up to us, right? I think consumers have moved away from it. Certainly the younger consumers, they’re more attracted to cans. They don’t have the bias that back in the ’80s and ’90s [when] people had some perception that cans were lower quality. That doesn’t exist anymore. We’ve got to move wherever the customer goes, and if they prefer cans, we owe it to the Flying Dog fans to provide cans.
Brewbound: Fred, does this foretell future M&A activity from FX Matt?
Matt: We are going to grow. That’s growing our own brands. It’s growing our contract production. We’ve had some real success with doing some joint ventures with Harpoon and Flying Dog, which is not only fun because it brings a real brain trust together and a lot more creativity, it also gives more investment strength. And so I think you’ll definitely see some more JVs from us.
As far as acquisitions, where we see things that are appealing, whether it’s taking an interest in a brand that we think is a good brand, and being able to produce it as well, or just outright acquisitions, I don’t think we’re done writing any stories.
We’re in a really strong financial position, we had zero debt, and our coffers are pretty full. I just think the opportunities are endless in the beverage business, and we’re ready to play.