Bars & Nightlife
Myrtle Beach Hoping to Attract Craft Brewery
Stone Brewing Co., makers of Arrogant Bastard Ale and Stone IPA, is looking for a suitable place east of the Mississippi to build a new facility. Myrtle Beach, home to a great workforce, high quality of life, and low cost of doing business, is positioning itself as the perfect place for the country’s tenth-largest craft brewery to set up shop.
“It would be a big win for us, we’re looking at an excess of 300 jobs,” said Morgan Dendy, Director of Marketing and Public Relations at Myrtle Beach Regional Economic Development Corporation. “The economic impact would be pretty significant. These are year-round well-paying jobs and that’s always something that we look for when we’re pursuing a project.”
In addition to providing jobs, Stone is heavily involved with the San Diego community. Whether fostering relationships with local businesses, working with local colleges and universities to develop students’ talent and industry experience, or raising money for local charities (over $3 million since its founding), Stone is an upstanding citizen that just happens to make some of the finest craft beer around.
MBREDC has launched a social media campaign to attract the attention of the Escondido, California-based craft beer makers. “We typically keep projects private, so this is the first time we’ve ever done anything like this,” said Dendy. “But this is a very unique opportunity, so we wanted to try something outside the box.” The Facebook page ‘Stone Brewed on the Beach’ garnered over 1,000 likes within the first twenty-four hours of its creation, and hopes to see that number soar.
Founded in 1996, Stone’s sales have grown a year-on-year average of 46 percent, making them the fastest-growing brewery in the United States. Last year, they produced 213,000 barrels of craft beer for distribution in forty states and seven countries, while generating $135 million in revenue. Projected fourth-year revenue for their Eastern location is $100 million, and Myrtle Beach has plenty of competition. Since making their Request for Proposals public, Stone has attracted numerous suitors in South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, and Tennessee, with some areas writing Stone-based songs and others passing Stone-friendly laws in hopes of landing the new plant.
Local beer columnist and enthusiast John Garner is a big fan of Stone’s Sublimely Self-Righteous Black IPA. And while he thinks a new craft brewery would be great for the area, he also cited a few South Carolina laws that are more restrictive than those of our neighbors to the north. “If Stone is really interested in coming here, we should be following suit and passing some Stone-friendly laws if we want to have any chance of luring them here,” said Garner, whose column Beerman runs in Weekly Surge, the local entertainment newspaper. As far as song and dance, Garner thinks the focus should be on our Governor and not necessarily on Stone’s CEO. “I’m not sure if any song writing will help our cause, unless we sing them to Nikki Haley instead of Greg Koch.”
Whatever happens, the prospect of an industry-leading craft brewery is proving to be a rich source of excitement for the Myrtle Beach community.
