Can someone tell me where Monentucky is? This is Beer in Front. Each
episode I'll bring you the latest and old and new school beers. I'll bring
on people and breweries from across the country, as well as featured beer from
the great city of Chicago. That's Beer in Front and that's coming up now.
Welcome to the June sixth edition, episode one hundred and sixty two of
Beer in Front. I'm your host, Dave's allatorus and Beer in Front is
a proud member of the Odd Pods Media Network. On the show this week
is Shamus Gallagher, who's the vice president of marketing from Montucky Cold Snacks.
That was a lot of fun. I think you're going to enjoy this interview.
I knocked off four interviews last week and I have a few more coming
up as well. So the days of fifteen minute episodes that's in the past.
I had a great time finishing up my vacation last week. I made
it out to Metropolitan with Ruby. I went to Old Irving with my friend
Edgar, and Friday I went over to Gallagher Way at Wrigley Field for the
first Friday night flights of the summer. That was a fantastic time, and
for my Chicago folks, it's worth checking out. If you get the chance.
It's twenty five dollars in advance or thirty bucks at the door. You
get ten three ounce pores from over thirty breweries in the Chicago Land area.
They had cider and mead for those that want that. This one had tacos
from Big Star. I had some really good beer. Check out choose Chicago
com for details on future Friday night flights. All right, welcome back.
Launched in two thousand and thirteen, Montucky Cold Snacks has taken the beer world
by storm. Initially made to be the PBR of Montana, Montucky Cold Snacks
is much more than that. They feature a cool seventies ish retro can design
that just screams fun. They have a price point that won't scare away consumers,
and for me, I really like that they give eight percent back to
local charities in the markets that you can buy it at. Joining me now
is Shamus Gallagher, the VP of Marketing for Montucky Cold Snacks. Shamus,
thanks for coming on, Hey Dave, thanks so much. Thanks for having
me for me here in Chicago. Montucky Cold Snacks seemed to come out of
nowhere and now all of us sudden, it's in every grocery store, liquor
store, gas station. You know, I mentioned in the intro you've been
around for like ten years, so you're definitely not like a one hit.
Wonder what was the thinking behind launching Kentucky Cold Snacks. Yeah, so the
brand was started by two friends in Montana that ultimately were tired of their day
jobs, none of neither of which came from the beer industry. One was
a forest firefighter and the other one was an electrical engineer, and they just
didn't want to have jobs anymore. So did what any normal person would do
and started a beer brand. And um, yeah, ten years later where
we're now to a total of fifty or sixteen employees as of last month,
and uh yeah, doing the best we can to get that cold snacks to
everyone's hands. When I first saw it, I wasn't quite sure what it
was. It was in the liquor aisle, so I figured it was something.
Can you describe, like why the name Montucky Cold Snacks? Yeah?
So the name Montucky is an affectionate name for rural Montana, where both of
our owners are from, and so they wanted to pay homage to, you
know, their roots with that, you know, they never really had national
distribution plans. They thought, hey, wouldn't it be cool if we could,
you know, grab some of our beer after skiing. So that's where
the name Montucky came from. And then cold Snacks was just an affectionate name
for a cold beer. It was one of our owners, Jeremy. It's
what his dad used to refer to beers as, and so naturally, when
it came time to think of the name Montucky, cold Snacks just kind of
together. I notice you wearing a very cool hat. Everything the can design,
all the merch and swag that you have available on the website just screams
out fun. What kind of merch is available? Yeah? Well, first
off, thank you, so you know touching on the can design. The
can design came from Jeremy's brain. Jeremy, not a graphic or classically trained
graphic designer, whipped it up. And with that, much of our merch
has historically been designed by Jeremy as well. We have everything from full onesie
snowsuits to string bikinis, t shirts, hoodies, cool hats, and just
about everything in between. We're constantly trying to push ourselves to find fun and
interesting things to offer our fans. And yeah, we have a bunch of
really cool stuff launching this month and next month as well for spring and summer.
All I keep an eye out for that. Yeah, if you're not
familiar with the can, it's a nice blue can. Good font has a
horse with like the mountains on the back. I don't know if this was
intentional or not, but this screams like seventies van to me. It's a
really cool looking can. Yeah, it's it's the logo is inspired by the
license plate of Montana. And it's funny you say seventies van. I actually
have a Montucky van in my driveway right now. That is just that.
It's says seventies seventy nine Chevy Van, all branded out and h yeah,
it's you know, we're just a brand that like oozes nostalgia for a bygone
era that we were actually never a part of. It's it's funny. Oftentimes
I'll meet somebody at a bar and they'll be like, oh, Montucky,
that was my granddad's favorite beer, and I don't have the heart to tell
them, Yeah, there's no way we were your grandfather's favorite beer unless he's
really cool and started drinking at dive bars. You know, ten years ago,
I turned fifty six today. I've never been a mascot. But you're
having a Monentucky mascot competition and the winner is going to get their picture on
a can. How cool is that? How did this contest come about?
Yeah? It's well, first off, happy birthday and you say you haven't
been a mascot. Let me just say you haven't been a mascot yet.
Who knows it could be your face on the can. But so, you
know, when I came over to the brand, I was blown away with
how every single day in our DMS, in our inboxes on via email,
people would be saying, hey, I'm your number one fan. Oh you
know you're the brand that represents my you know, me and my friends.
How do we get you to sponsor our lifestyle? YadA, YadA, YadA.
So as we were thinking together our brand playing and for this year,
you know, we just kept coming back to like how people love the brand
and identify with the brand, and we're so proud that like our consumer doesn't
isn't just like one thing. It's not just the country music fan or the
outdoors person. It's really everybody. So we were trying to think of different
ideas and my co worker Annie was like, oh, we should make a
or a calendar showing all these people, all the different faces of Montucky.
And then we just kept like one upping each other on like how much dumber
we could make it, and we landed on mascot. And you know,
it's not just on the can I. You know, we're actually putting their
face on billboards in rural you know, Saint Louis or wherever, but also
on a NASCAR truck, which is like probably the most irresponsible thing a brand
could do, is like, oh, we get one opportunity to get our
brand out there, what should we do. Oh, let's put our consumer's
face on it. But that's kind of like our mo and you know,
it's like how dumb can we be? And yeah, at the end of
the day, our consumers are the brand, so we're happy to put them,
you know, face forward. You just mentioned a NASCAR truck. Is
this the one off or do you sponsor the truck for the full season.
Yeah, so we are a sponsor of a truck spencer Boards truck number twelve
throughout the year. We you know, are we're not full truck sponsors,
we can afford that. I wish we could this one race, we will
have a larger placement on it. And again, how sillier we that the
one chance we get to get more branding on, we're actually going to put
less branding on. Yeah, but you know, we would have it no
other way. The price point is in line with a lot of the mackerels
that are out there here in Chicago. I could grab a twelve pack for
about twelve ninety nine or a six pack of twelve boys for eight ninety nine.
Personally, I'd much rather spend my money on a fun company like Montucky
Cold Snacks than the giant behemoth conglomerates that are out there. When creating the
brand, was that something they set out to achieve a price point for everyone?
Yeah? I mean ultimately we aim to be, you know, a
beer flavored beer for everyone, and price points definitely a big part of that.
I mean, truth be told, we would love to come at a
price point below where we're at. But when you're not making beer with adjuncts
and you know, some of those other ingredients that the as you said,
the behemoths use. It's just hard. Plus when you're not doing that same
volume to offset those costs, it's it's pretty difficult. And you know,
we don't really like to talk about like us using like like premium ingredients or
anything. But ultimately we're a quality product. We just don't take ourselves seriously
enough to talk about that. We're just a beer to have fun with.
Yeah, we've talked about everything else, but the beer. I'm gonna try
it now. I have it in front of me. Montucky Cold Snacks checks
in at four point one percent alcohol by volume, only has one hundred and
two calories. I'm having this now. It's a great beer. He mentioned
no adjuncts. They only use your basic four ingredients barley, hops, water,
and yeast. I think this is an easy drinking beer that you could
have more of. You don't need to have one. You could have a
couple of them. You're not gonna feel hammered or bloated or anything like that.
It's a really good, crisp, clean American lagger that someone's grandparents was
drinking. You know Montana somewhere, Well, Dave, I can't let you
drink alone. There you go. Yeah, Ultimately, it's beer flavored beer,
right, and we're happy to put it out there like that. We
don't take it too seriously. You know, we want to make a top
tier product, but we don't claim to be craft or anything like that.
You know, I live in Denver and annually we have our migration of beer.
People come to town for gabf and inevitably, at one point at the
at the end of the night, when everyone's been drinking nine percent I PA's
or a blueberry Lapeno stout, you start seeing these blue cans appear across town
and and it's one of those things that you know, regardless of where you
are and your your beer love, you can always find a place for Kentucky
and grabbing a cold snack. Now, you mentioned you're in Denver, and
Denver is a huge craft beer market, and they started out in Bozeman,
which is another huge craft beer market. How were the sales in like big
beer cities like that, Denver's are number one market in the country. Oh
really, okay? Cool? Yeah, hands down. It's you know,
from farm to table restaurants to dive bars. We are often the beer of
choice there and we're super proud to be. I mean when I first became
aware of the brand was when I moved to Denver and all the places where
you would have your other macro beers. I saw these blue cans with white
horses on it, and it just seemed to follow me everywhere I went,
you know, and eventually I gave in and tried one, and I've never
gone back. Are there places like I haven't seen them here in Chicago yet,
but are there places where you could get this on Draft? So right
now Draft is limited to Colorado, and uh, we're kind of using it
as an experiment to see if it makes sense to your point earlier, you
know, competing against the macros, you know, at this point, you
know, the space in the cooler is increasingly challenging. If we were to
do it, we could only offer it in a half barrel. Then you're
directly competing with those big big boys. And the price point, I don't
know that we'd be able to meet it because we'd be probably shipping from somewhere
central, and you know, when you start adding on those shipping costs,
I think it would be pretty cost prohibitive. But we're not ruling it out
just yet. But also to your other point, earlier the can. There's
so much equity in this can, and it's it's one of those things that
as people start seeing it on the bar, they just are drawn to it.
But what's that, what's the whole Let me get one of those.
So, you know, we also don't have that brand equity that some of
those other big players have, so right now, this can does so much
of the legwork for us. So I don't know that we're quite ready to
just be another yellow beer in a glass across the country. But maybe one
day, hopefully, hopefully one day. Are there any new products? Is
this the only beer you have? Are is there going to be a Monentucky
Cold Snacks barrel aged stout or anything like that coming up down the road?
Yeah, you know, in the days of you know, flavor of the
day, you know, and you see all the wholesalers or the beer aisle
and it's a you know, a hundred skiws from every supplier. We're committed
to just offering this one product. I mean, we've barely gotten our foot
in the door with this one product. We've got a long way to go
to get really good distribution across the country. So for the time being,
we have no desire to make a strong snack or anything like that. You
know, we I certainly throw around a bunch of dumb ideas, but for
now, I think it's actually a refreshing change for a lot of consumers to
not feel like this brand is trying to be something for everybody and trying to
offer a million things. Frankly, I get overwhelmed when I go to like
a beer bar. You know, you end up getting the Cheesecake Factory menu
of beers and you're like, I don't even know where to start. And
then regardless of if you enjoy what you got or not, you wonder like,
can I get the right thing? So for now, we want people
to count on Montacky to just be a cool crisp blogger. Yeah. You
know, the premise of my show is to just enjoy the beer that's in
front of you. And I think you put this in front of you,
you're going to be satisfied. It's a great beer. One other thing that
I want to mention, and I don't know if a lot of people know
about it, even though you do put it on the can and think eight
percent of the proceeds go to local charities in the markets. That you have
from LGBTQ I A plus organizations your main one for last year, which is
one I love Punk Rock Saves Lives to here in the state of Illinois,
it's the Support Staff organization. They work with mental health professionals to change the
perception of mental health in the field of hospitality. What made the company decide
to support local charities? I mean, for me personally, it seems that
even though it's a Montana company, it's almost local. We're knowing that some
of my money is going to go to a charity in my area. Sure,
yeah, I mean from day one, the owners and founders were just
committed to giving back to their community in Bozeman, and then as we grew,
it just became part of the culture, and then they put it on
the can. And once they put it on the can, it was full
steam ahead. And each one of our when we launch a new wholesaler in
any state, one of the first questions we asked them is like, hey,
or do you have any charity partners that mean something to you that we
can partner with? And as we get our own people and in those communities
rooted, we look to them to bring the things that matter to them to
the table because we understand there's a million brands out there and consumers are increasingly
concerned with where their money is going spent is being spent. So you know,
we want to help them make that choice and make that choice easier by
by just to your point, it's making sure some of that money stays locally,
you know, by finding those partners that we can partner with to make
sure that that you know, we're putting our money were our mouth with and
being good, you know, good community partners. I mean that's really cool,
and I think that's probably helpful to you too, going through your local
like distributors or whatever. Hey, what's an important charity? I would think
if I'm a distributor, Hey, I'm going to really start pushing this product
because I know they're donating to something that I care about. Yeah. Absolutely,
And we actually take it. One level up is with our retail accounts.
If they have i mean a coworker that got sick or you know,
or they're they have a pet charity or group, we often do one off
events where it's like, hey, Montucky is going to give a dollar off
for every can sold or whatever, you know, to make sure that we're
there. You know, we don't have those million or millions of dollars of
marketing resources, so we look to these, you know, tools to like
really a give back and connect with consumers at the end of the day.
I mean, it's such a fun company and it's very refreshing to see that
where I don't think you take yourself very seriously. It's such a cool company
to like get behind as a consumer. I really thank you, and I
think the person that reached out to me. This is a great brewery.
I think I mentioned in the intro. You could pick that up everywhere here
in Chicago. You could go to your local grocery stores like Jewel, Marianos
and pick it up. I've seen it at gas stations, so you don't
have to hunt Montucky Cold Snacks for a long time. You're gonna find it.
Such a cool company, and the beer is as cool as the company.
I enjoy it. I think if you just like a clean, crisp
American style lagger, you're going to enjoy this one too. Shamus, I
really appreciate you coming on and talking about Montucky Cold Snacks. Is there anything
else you want to tell the people that are listening about the organization, the
company, the beer. No. Just to your point earlier, you know,
we're a simple brand who doesn't take ourselves too seriously. The only thing
we do take seriously is like trying to be a part of the community and
helping wherever we can. You know, we are a small but mighty organization
of sixteen people. We're in about thirty six states and growing. We do
have a snack finder on our website, so if you do, in fact
find yourself hunting for Montucky, head over the too Montucky Cold Snacks dot com
and see where you can pick it up local to you. Excellent. Well
yeah, death only hunted down. I think you're gonna enjoy it. Check
out their swag and you can get yourself everything. I need to pick up
a hat and I think I'm gonna have to grab the punk Rock Saves Lives
shirt that I saw there yesterday when I was looking Shamus. Thanks again,
sir, I really appreciate you taking time out and I'll see you down the
road. Absolutely. Dave, thanks so much. Hey, I'm pansl Sarin.
This is Stevie and I'm Aggie and we are b FY tw a podcast
all about playing games and having fun. Our games are usually based on British
panel shows and game shows, but we'll play anything that captures our attention and
imagination. Why it's right there in the title. You'll never guess what the
F stands for. Head over to b fytw and check their podcast out.
All right, they talked about it with Shamus, but I wanted to go
more in depth on my review of Montucky Cold Snacks, So I'm going to
crack this one open. This is twelve ounces of refreshment and according to the
can, it's the official unofficial beer of Montana. Montucky Colt Snacks is a
really nice light color, good carbonation, good two fingers of foam. Here
just smells like a beer, smells like old school macro lager. Nothing pretentious
about it. It just smells like beer that's just good. It's clean,
not I mean, you get some malt flavor there. It's not overpowering.
It's just solid. There's a little bit of hops to this. This is
just a really good It's not a macro beer, but that's what they're going
for. That's what this taste like. I think if you're going to have
something like this at the price point, I mentioned on the interview, and
especially with eight percent going to local charities. I think Montucky Cold Snacks is
a definite winner, one to put in the cart if that's the road you're
going down at night. It's like you said, it's a rock solid beer,
delicious, beautiful blue can. If you see Monucky Cold Snack, put
it in the carts. The local beer I want to talk about is a
collaboration between Hopewell Brewing and Revolution Brewing. This is Logan Export. This is
an export lagger six percent alcohol, brewed only in Chicago. Wonderful can.
Nice artwork on the can from all around the neighborhood, the Logan Square area.
I cracked it open a bit ago to take a picture for Instagram,
because you know that's what you do. It's a really nice color, nice
amber color here. The Roman is good, nice solid Lagero Roman smells great.
That's really good. A lot of walt sweetness here, little bitterness at
the end from the hops. I really like this. And proceeds from this
go to Logan Skate, so that's good as well. Like everything about this.
Both Hopewell and Revolution always put out great beers from the city. If
you're in the area, and you see this by all means pick up some
Logan Export lager. I think you're going to enjoy it. This one is
a winner. All right. That's gonna wrap things up for this week's episode
of Beer in Front. I thank you for listening. Once again. I
want to thank Shamus Gallagher over at Montucky Cold Snacks for coming on. I
had a lot of fun talking to him learning about the company. Thank you
again, Shamus. Next week's show, I'm going to be speaking with the
folks over at Great Lakes Brewing in Cleveland. I've talked about that brewery on
the show countless times. One of my favorite old school craft breweries. That
was a lot of fun. We were talking about some of the older Great
Lakes beers and a couple of the new ones. So definitely check out next
week's episode of Beer in Front. Thank you very much for listening. I
will see you next week on the podcast. And remember, sometimes the beer
in front of you is the best one yet.