2001 Cook County High School graduate Ryan Petz is now president and co-founder of Fulton Beer, a craft brewing business he and three friends started in a one-car garage located in the Fulton neighborhood in southwest Minneapolis. Ryan is the son of Ben and Mary Petz of Hovland.
When Ryan Petz graduated from Cook County High School in 2001, he had no idea that he would one day be the president of a highquality craft beer-making company.
As a highly recruited football player, the 6’4” 270-pound Petz went to St. John’s College and played four years under legendary coach John Gagliardi. Petz attended St. John’s from 2001 to 2005, graduating with a bachelor of arts degree in English. From 2009-2010 Petz attended the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management and earned a Master of Business (MBA) in marketing and entrepreneurship. Between his undergraduate and graduate degrees Petz worked as a relocation counselor for SIRVA Relocation, and after graduating from Carlson, he worked as an associate channel manager for General Mills.
One very cold (-20 degrees) January night in 2006 Petz and three of his friends brewed their first batch of beer in his friend’s one-car garage in South Minneapolis in the Fulton neighborhood. A couple of months later, needing more space, the crew moved their operation to a two-car garage. In early 2009, while Petz was working toward his MBA at Carlson, they formed Fulton Beer. Since they couldn’t sell what they made in the garage and couldn’t afford to build their own commercialscale brewery right away, the partners began brewing their beer at Sand Creek Brewing Company in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, and sold their first kegs on October 28, 2009.
In 2011 Fulton Beer moved into a 6,000-squarefoot brewery at 414 N. Sixth Ave. in downtown Minneapolis. It looked so big, said Petz; they never felt they could use all of the space. That first brewery, located near Target Field, was capable of producing 3,500 barrels—or about 108,500 gallons—of beer per year, a number they thought would take years to attain, until the orders came in quicker than they could produce their craft beer. But Fulton has continued to grow so fast that the partners recently announced they are adding a 51,000-square-foot production facility to help meet its growth.
The goal for 2014 is to increase production 40 percent, to 15,000 barrels, said Petz, adding that its 2015 goal is 20,000 barrels.
“We are currently distributing our products to a little more than 1,000 bars and restaurants. Most of those are in the Twin Cities and up the North Shore,” said Petz.
Not bad for a company whose tagline is “Ordinary guys brewing extraordinary beer.”
Although the new facility will make all of the beer the company distributes, the old site will continue to produce beer that will be sold onsite at its taproom. Current laws forbid breweries from having more than one taproom.
When asked how big he thinks Fulton will get, Petz replied, “We’re not trying to be the next big national brand. That’s never been our goal. We do expect to continue to grow, however. We have distributors in the Dakotas, Iowa and Wisconsin that continually ask for our product, and we will try to meet that demand in the near future, but we don’t want to get so big that we compromise the quality of our products.”
Currently Fulton employs 32 people, 16 full-time and 16 part-time. But for the company’s first three years of operation it was mostly Petz and his three partners, Peter Grande, Brian Hoffman and Jim Dilley.
“We worked full-time jobs or, in my case, worked for awhile and then went back to school to get my MBA, and then we also worked in our free time to build the company. Essentially it was like we were all working two fulltime jobs, but we didn’t pay ourselves so we needed to work for a paycheck. It was the best thing we could do until it [the company] got so big that we needed to make this our full-time job,” Petz said.
Although Petz is heavily involved in running the business, putting in about 60 hours per week, he also makes time to help with the creation of new beers. “I enjoy working on the product side of the company. As we have grown and expanded it’s gotten busier and busier, so I don’t have as much time to devote to that side of the business as I used to, but it’s something I do as much as I can. We are always working on producing the next new beer. But we can’t always make them as fast as we would like to,” Petz said.
Fulton beer is now co-sponsoring a local bicycle racing team and Petz said he enjoys working with other “like-minded business owners that care a great deal about their products.
“There are mutual benefits to working with these people on joint advertising ventures and other projects that benefit us. It’s been a great experience so far,” said Petz.
Fulton produces two main beers year-round, Sweet Child of Vine and Lonely Blonde, and a great variety of specialty beers for different times of the year.
Petz said he is currently working with a coffee roaster in Minneapolis to make a beer called War and Peace (yes, that’s named after the book) which he describes as “a strong dark stout beer that’s almost 10 percent alcohol. If you don’t like dark, strong beer or you don’t like coffee, this beer’s not for you. But if you like both, it’s a great beer.”
Ryan and his wife Michelle and their yellow lab Murray make it up the shore, “about every three months” to visit Ryan’s parents, Ben and Mary Petz of Hovland.
“Even though Michelle is from the Cities she loves coming up the shore. We get up as often as we can, but [noisy background] as you know, we don’t lack for excitement around here,” said Petz with a laugh.
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