Previously: 40 Years in Beer (Book II) Part 52: “Anheuser-Busch, Gone Home,” our classic 1997 victory lap.
I’m devoting a great many words to 1993 and 1994. There is a reason for the focus, because quite a lot was happening during these years.
Had Rich O’s been a rock and roll band, our very first chart-topping hit was about to come. On July 29, 1995, Susan Reigler’s highly favorable restaurant review (“A Beer Lover’s Dream”) hit the Louisville’s Courier-Journal newspaper’s Saturday Scene supplement.
The review opened a market across the river that we’d never counted on reaching in the first place. Business promptly doubled, remaining at this volume for a long while before settling into a sales range far higher than we’d ever known. The review boosted us to that elusive “next” level, which is a testament to the newspaper’s influence prior to print media’s decapitation at the hands of the internet.
Mirroring the usual reaction when a previously little-known entity becomes a “thing,” some people asked me about the Rich O’s “overnight” success story. There wasn’t one, and in fact, “overnight” is almost always a myth.
The rock band had been rehearsing, recording demos, playing juke joints and bar mitzvahs, and surviving on doses of...Read more
