In 1989, Jeff Lebesch took a bicycling trip through Belgium on his fat-tire mountain bike, stopping frequently for Belgian brews. As he pedaled through European villages, he dreamed of returning to his home in Fort Collins, Colorado, to make beer this delicious and interesting.
Lebesch returned home with a head full of recipes and started brewing in his kitchen. Two years later, in 1991, he launched New Belgium Brewing Company with the company’s flagship Fat Tire ale. As of 2012, New Belgium was the third-largest craft brewery and eighth-largest overall brewery in the United States, with 480 employees and an annual production volume of more than 700,000 barrels.
As an employee-owned company, New Belgium prides itself on finding better ways to get things done. The company urges employee-owners to find smarter ways to work, eliminate waste, and improve continuously. It was one of the first craft breweries to employ extensive automation and use Microsoft software from desktop to data warehouse to improve beer consistency, quality, production, and promotion.
Read more about their story and the technology solutions they use to streamline administrative tasks and keep focused on their customers.
