Oral history interview with Uli Bennewitz, 2018

Richard Cox: All right, so if you could start by please saying and spelling your name for us.

Uli Bennewitz: Uli Bennewitz. Spell that U-L-I and then Bennewitz is B-E-N-N-E-W-I-T-Z.

Richard Cox: Okay. And today is Friday, August 17, 2018 and we're in Raleigh North Carolina. I'm Richard Cox, talking today with Uli Bennewitz owner of Weeping Radish Farm Brewery in Grandy North Carolina as a part of the Well Crafted North Carolina project. So if we get started could you just please tell us a little bit about yourself?

Uli Bennewitz: Yes, I've been I'm actually I was born in South America Lima, Peru and I moved to Bavaria in the early 80s went to school in Bavaria and then after high school I fled to England and did College in England. Went to 00:01:00agriculture college and then ended up in Eastern North Carolina and I've lived here ever since.

Richard Cox: How what's agricultural college in England?

Uli Bennewitz: Which Agricultural College?

Richard Cox: Yeah what was that?

Uli Bennewitz: It's called New ... it was called Seale Hayne Agricultural College. It was one of those hybrid colleges where we had actually a farm on the college. And we had to go to classrooms literally like school kids every day all day and during breaks and vacations, we had to work on farms and do farm projects and then come back again. So it was not a university where you take a few hours of classes then you're on your own, but this was some pretty intense program.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Uli Bennewitz: But it was fun. I loved it.

Richard Cox: How long was the ... ?

Uli Bennewitz: It was a four year program.

Richard Cox: Okay.

Uli Bennewitz: Yeah.

Richard Cox: Awesome. And when did you come to North Carolina?

Uli Bennewitz: 1980, been here since 1980 and ...

Richard Cox: And what the heck brought you to North Carolina?

Uli Bennewitz: I started my life in Engelhard North Carolina. Nobody knows where 00:02:00that is. It's truly the swamp and as I said I'm a farm manager. I manage farms for a living. I currently manage 27,000 acres and Engelhard was my first project they had a huge swamp. And in those days we cleared swamps now we create them again. But in those days, my first project was to I had an Austrian guy who bought 9000 acres of swamp and he hired me to clear it. So I had 30 odd bulldozers in a couple of back hoes and dried land and built a few pumping stations. And we started to clear land and built and now we're in 8000 acre flourishing farm out of that project. So that was my first project.

Richard Cox: So that was actually your job when you came here.

Uli Bennewitz: That was my job. That was my full time believe me, that was a full time job. I was the only resident on a 40,000 acre farm so it was amazing. We had bear and wolf and everything out there and it was an incredible learning experience.

Richard Cox: I know.

Uli Bennewitz: We're the last ones. This is the last we're in the last 00:03:00generation of land developers at that time which is interesting because that was then followed by the Clean Water Act of 1982, which put a stop to all the land clearing that was going on at that time. And now, of course, 30 years later we are reconverted it back into wetlands, some of them.

Richard Cox: Some of them.

Uli Bennewitz: And some are not.

Richard Cox: So what's it like I mean, you're managing 27,000 acres of land still.

Uli Bennewitz: Yes.

Richard Cox: So you're still employed by ...

Uli Bennewitz: I'm independent and I have investors who I've got Germans, Italians, Koreans and Americans. And these are private investors they buy farm land as part of a strategy of diversification of investments, and then I manage it for them and I find tenants and the tenants farm it. And we do corn, soybeans, wheat in three states. It's North Carolina, Illinois, and Wisconsin.

Richard Cox: Okay. And how did you first become interested in the brewing industry then?

Uli Bennewitz: As usual everything's an accident.

Richard Cox: Sure.

Uli Bennewitz: In 1985, while I was happily managing farms, my brother who lives in Munich called me and said, "Brother, I've got a wonderful idea. I'll sell you a little brewery." And she'll spit out beer and money. And of course I believed my big brother and I bought it, and that was probably the last time I ever talked to him in my life. So that's how I got involved in this project so.

Richard Cox: But so you aren't really ...

Uli Bennewitz: No, I've never brewed in my life. And I've never cooked in my life, which is just as well because the beer would be awful and so would the food. No, but it was just the idea was to build a little restaurant and have a little brewery and still farm and then take your wife to eat in your own restaurant once a week. That was the plan. 30 years later, we're still we're 35 years later we're still waiting for that to happen. So but that was the idea of it.

Richard Cox: No, that's great. And so just at the time it was were you looking at Manteo at the time?

Uli Bennewitz: No, the only reason I looked at Manteo was because I happened to live there and that's the only reason because this farm area I was working in is 00:05:00about an hour. My wife joined me in 82, she's from England and she decided she wasn't going to live in Engelhard. So we moved to Manteo, which is a lot nicer. It's a little island called Roanoke Island and so we moved. And of course, when this idea came up it made sense to try to do that in a tourist area. And I couldn't move because my day job was there. So I had no choice but to do it there. And so the only problem was after we bought this brewery, somebody suggested I better check with ABC before we start this project. And obviously I didn't know what ABC was. I thought it was some sort of school activity or learning center, turns out to be Alcohol Beverage Control.

Richard Cox: Yeah, which is unique to this state.

Uli Bennewitz: Well, I would say this is the only so-called civilized country that has such a thing so yes. So ABC, I met with ABC and explained what I was 00:06:00trying to do. And they said, "Wow, this is an interesting idea. However, it's illegal." And so that was it's always a great start to a project when you start like that.

Richard Cox: Well, I think I'll come back around to this too. But it was also a dry county at the time.

Uli Bennewitz: It was a dry county and a dry town which by the way, for those of you who are not familiar with dry towns it's one of the bigger hypocrisies of the American South and we were a dry town but we had the biggest liquor store in the county in the dry town so it's ...

Richard Cox: Run by the ABC.

Uli Bennewitz: Of course run by the ABC and they also give you they sell you the alcohol and then they write you the ticket when they catch you driving with the alcohol so they get you both ways.

Richard Cox: Right.

Uli Bennewitz: So there was a lot to learn.

Richard Cox: Yeah, and that's ...

Uli Bennewitz: And as a European by the way, I had never seen a half liter I mean a half gallon liquor bottle in my lifetime. This is a truly American thing. So that was an experience.

Richard Cox: So the whole thing was a learning experience for you.

Uli Bennewitz: Very much so, yeah.

Richard Cox: I mean when you found out that it was illegal I assume you were 00:07:00still in the investigating stage, you're like, "Okay, I want to do this."

Uli Bennewitz: No, the problem is my mother would have told you that I was the one in the family who never did any homework ever. And that's why I ended up in boarding school. And because I was more interested in fire engines than schools and if I would have done my homework before I bought that brewery obviously, I would have never done it.

Richard Cox: Okay.

Uli Bennewitz: Because I would have realized that it was illegal and I would have never bought it. But then if you don't do homework, sometimes you just get into these projects and then you figure it out as you go along.

Richard Cox: But from there instead of giving up if you actually decided you were going to get the state law changed.

Uli Bennewitz: Well we had no choice. I mean, we had bought this thing and I had a partner at that time who had the building ready to go and we really had no choice. And so the ABC commission was actually the one they were the ones who said, "Look, go ahead and change the law." And I had never heard of such a thing that somebody can pass a law but they meant it.

Richard Cox: And they make it sound so simple.

Uli Bennewitz: Well, actually it was amazingly simple. They helped me draft it 00:08:00and I sat in the office of the ABC legal counsel and it was I mean people it's unbelievable at the time I was here on a visitor's visa. I didn't even have a green card at the time. And I think that visa's actually expired at that particular time. So it was probably the only law that was ever passed by somebody on an expired visitor's visa. I don't think you do that right now by the way, might not work very well. The other thing about that law change it was probably the only law change ever passed in this country with a single attorney hour being billed by anybody.

Richard Cox: Really.

Uli Bennewitz: That to me, I'm still at awe how that worked.

Richard Cox: Well, and I think there weren't even any lobbyists involved with it. It was really ...

Uli Bennewitz: They asked, they said you need to talk to a lobbyist, and I said, what's a lobbyist? I didn't know what a lobbyist was. And so I met this guy and he was very nice. And they had warned me about , ABC had warned me about this. 00:09:00And so he asked me how much beer do you intend to brew? And I said, I have no clue. And I wasn't quite sure what the question was all about. So, I called my brother and said, "How much does this thing make?" And so he inquired and he said about 10,000 gallons of beer a year. So I turned around to the lobbyist and said, "Well, we want to brew at least 100,000 gallons of beer a year." And of course the lobbyist said, "No way."

Uli Bennewitz: And then we started to negotiate with the wholesale lobbyist. And we finally reached a compromise which at that time was 66,000 gallons of beer a year so he could report back to his money people that he had cut me down by one third and he deserves a raise. And I was very happy because that was six times as much as we can brew anyway. So it's what you called a win-win. And so that was my first experience with North Carolina lobbying.

Richard Cox: Interesting. So how was it like drafting that law?

Uli Bennewitz: It was fascinating, quite honest the real credit belongs to two other groups and not me. The first credit belongs to Senator Basnight who was a 00:10:00legend in his days he was the senator pro tempore lead of the Senate for North Carolina at the time. That was his first term and then he was amazing he was just incredible and he said I'll never forget his speech on the Senate floor when this law was introduced and he said this is only a bill for a little hobby project on the outer banks. It's only for tourists and it has no financial implications that it's just a little thing from my hometown and we have a few tourists down there and that's what we need and it's just nothing. It won't amount to anything and so that's how we got passed through the senate. Now it's about a billion dollar impact industry or something like that so.

Richard Cox: It's yeah, it's two billion I think.

Uli Bennewitz: Yeah and the other one that deserve credit for this which nobody talks about is Biltmore. Biltmore passed the wine law.

Richard Cox: Right, it was two years.

Uli Bennewitz: Two years before us. I think it was 84, 83 and of course Biltmore has a real connections and the real money and the real lawyers and they did the 00:11:00real work. And so they passed the wine law allowing wineries to sell wine in North Carolina. And I've never met anybody to shake anybody's hands. I wish I could sometimes I hope I will go up to Biltmore and say thank you very much for doing all the work because I got the credit you did the work and so then you paid for it and but they passed it and all we had to do really is wherever it said wine not quite that simple. But whenever it said wine I added and beer.

Uli Bennewitz: And so that's how we got done. And then it was an interesting kink to that which again is fascinating from a historic point of view. I looked at the Virginia ABC law, they're very similar and this was in 84 when we got going. And I thought well, Virginia and the Virginia law said a brewery in the state of Virginia may have one and only one retail license in the state of Virginia. And I couldn't figure out who wrote that because laws don't show up, laws get written by somebody who has an interest. And I finally figured it out, 00:12:00it was Budweiser. Why? Busch Gardens.

Richard Cox: Right, Busch Gardens.

Uli Bennewitz: They wanted a retail license for Busch Gardens. So they wrote the law specific.

Richard Cox: And narrowly enough.

Uli Bennewitz: And narrowly enough. But the irony of this law in Virginia is that Budweiser opened the state to brew pubs, which is the last thing they ever wanted to do. And, of course, ironically at that time nobody knew what a brewpub was.

Richard Cox: Right.

Uli Bennewitz: So when you talk about unintended consequences it's hilarious that sometimes that's what happens. So the Virginia law story is just as fascinating I know we talked about it, but that's how we got along. And that's where I learned about it.

Richard Cox: Well, and that's the sort of lesson that still is I mean happening with the legislature here in North Carolina we craft freedom legislation for example.

Uli Bennewitz: Yeah.

Richard Cox: So yeah, it's interesting how these things thread through.

Uli Bennewitz: It's amazing. It is incredible how that worked. And that was the beginning and it was an interesting process to say the least.

Richard Cox: I'm sure. Yeah.

Uli Bennewitz: It was passed in six months, by the way.

Richard Cox: Really?

Uli Bennewitz: You try to pass a law these days in six months good luck.

Richard Cox: Yeah, you can't write it in six months.

Uli Bennewitz: Exactly.

Richard Cox: So just adding to that as well. I mean, as you said you're an immigrant. So you're an immigrant writing a law in the country that you've been in for less than five years probably at the time.

Uli Bennewitz: Yes.

Richard Cox: So there's a unique perspective there.

Uli Bennewitz: There is, there is indeed yes. I'm very obviously very honored to be able to stay in this country. And eventually, I got my citizenship and I'm on my third citizenship now. So very few people have three different citizenships in their life so but I'm truly honored to have made come here and been able to do that without about it.

Richard Cox: A man of the world.

Uli Bennewitz: I don't know about that. A farm boy out of control I think is more like it.

Richard Cox: That's even better really isn't it? So what did the final brew pub law other than brew pubs actually allow what came out of the process?

Uli Bennewitz: The process is very straight forward. We have a three-tier system.

Richard Cox: Right.

Uli Bennewitz: And which is obviously even now a very political animal. It says a brewery can only sell beer to distributor and a distributor can only sell beer to a retailer and they mustn't have any financial interest in each other. That's the three-tier system. It was based on two things. It was based on the English system of the tied house. Where breweries in England basically at some point in their history treated the pub owners like slaves because the brewery owned the beer and the pub. And the public and just had to work there and they could do what they want to do as far as pricing goes and squeeze them to do whatever they want.

Uli Bennewitz: So that was one of the reasons why the three tier system was designed. And the other system, of course, was it's a franchise law. It is no different than we have today for good reasons with cars. If you have a car dealership, you are protected by franchise law. Why? Because there are only five car manufacturers in this entire country and they're probably whatever, 100,000 00:15:00dealers. So if you don't have franchise protection and you invest half a million dollars in your franchise and then Ford decides goodbye, you go bankrupt. And that's what the franchise protection was about.

Uli Bennewitz: And of course it made sense to have that for beer as well because when we started there were less than a hundred breweries left in this country and over 10,000 distributors. So they needed protection because obviously Budweiser Miller and Coors they control whatever 90% of the beer business. So the franchise law made perfect sense when it was at that time for the two reasons I mentioned.

Uli Bennewitz: The problem with these laws unintended consequences now we have 8000 breweries and the franchise law is still in effect and of course that we really don't need a franchise law anymore because there is no need to protect distributors because they have an unlimited choice. And my God distributors now distribute soft drinks, water, milk and God knows what. I mean really I mean 00:16:00they don't need protection they are just a distributor just like US Foods are. But they love to hang on to it politically because it's a money making machine obviously. So that's the political side of it.

Uli Bennewitz: But I am not I mean you need to look at the history of this and realize what it was meant to do. And when it was set up, it was not just set up by rich folks trying to make more money and by squeezing small breweries. That was never the intent of this thing so again, that's you need to look into a historic content and see where it came from and what the purpose of it was. And now it's in my opinion, of course, it's outlived its purpose. The more breweries we have the less there's a need for franchise law but of course once you have a money making donkey you don't want to get off your donkey.

Richard Cox: Right well, it sounds like I mean just to jump way forward to Weeping Radish for just a second is like I mean, you all have done distribution but you actually pull back a couple of years.

Uli Bennewitz: Yes, we did. Yes, we did. Yeah, so you want me to get into that?

Richard Cox: If you like sure.

Uli Bennewitz: Sure, well we started off doing only on premise and then we fumbled around. And the problem is we didn't have the space. We were in a 5000 square foot building that was mostly restaurant and 400 square foot brewery and you can't do anything with that. And we had wetlands on one side and other jurisdictions on the other side and the town of Manteo hated us anyway so they told us up front, if we ever catch you sell a keg of beer off-premise we'll shut you down because you're not supposed to be in the wholesale business in a commercial space. So we started doing contract brewing and that doesn't work well or didn't work well for us. So we pulled back.

Richard Cox: Okay.

Uli Bennewitz: And now we do self-distribution only.

Richard Cox: Okay. Yeah, because I figured it tied in some way with some of this.

Uli Bennewitz: Yeah, we tried there's nothing we haven't tried.

Richard Cox: Yeah, so we're going back to laws and legislation. So like I mentioned earlier you discovered owning a brew pub is illegal in North Carolina. 00:18:00But you were moving into a dry county. So, what was the process of getting started in a dry county? Because the more local you get with these things, the more thorny and personal it can get.

Uli Bennewitz: It got very personal it. It was clearly not a love relationship with the town of Manteo. It was very much more a hate relationship. And they threw everything but the kitchen sink at us, they couldn't stop us, but they could throw bricks at us and bricks they threw. And boy, it was something else. This you shouldn't do it. Of course, I'm not the most diplomatic person in the world. So I went to them one day and I said, "Look, guys, what really is it that you have against us?" And they said, "Look, we are a family friendly town. A brewery just doesn't fit into a family-friendly town." So I said, "I'd be glad to help you with that one. And we had a little beer garden outside so the first thing I did is build a playground.

Uli Bennewitz: And boy they were spitting fire like never before because that's exact opposite of what they wanted to do. And then I did bumper boats and they were great. I put 50 cents in them and boats there was this little pond there and you could remote control drive your boats around. The town hated us even more because that was a magnet for children in the town.

Richard Cox: I was even going to say.

Uli Bennewitz: They came there after school and an ice cream shop there and then that didn't help political matters if you do that but I think you call that rubbing it in. I think that's the right English word for that.

Richard Cox: That's a good phrase yeah. But the kids loved it.

Uli Bennewitz: Well the kids and the parents loved it. The parents it was hilarious, I mean the parents it was great. I mean the parents come in for something to eat and every five minutes the kids came in looking for more money because they need to run the boats again. The parents were glad to give their children coins and I never forget my mother who was very anti-American visited her wayward son in Manteo and my kids at the time were probably eight or nine. 00:20:00And I never forget my mother's face. These boats were so successful that we had sauerkraut buckets of coins. And my kids had to roll coins. So we had a machine that we put on the kitchen counter, and you roll coins. That was their afternoon jobs to roll coins.

Uli Bennewitz: My mother, just every stereotype, anti-American feeling she ever had was that picture there of her grandchildren rolling quarters on the kitchen table in America. That was just it. I mean, I don't think she ever came back to America after that so. But it was very successful with ... not with a local community but it was successful for my children, and it was successful for them for the restaurant. The parents loved it.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Uli Bennewitz: I repeated something years later in Currituck in our new location. We put a ice skating rink out there. We probably were the only brewery ever with an ice skating rink. And the idea was again, very simple. I mean ice skating and beer is a perfect combination because the more beer you drink the less it hurts when you fall down. And that was my idea of entertainment. And so 00:21:00we had a special area for small children again, and it was the same reaction because the kids normally hang on to the rails when they're first time on skates. So I helped the situation by giving each kid a keg and they would do walk around with a keg on ice.

Richard Cox: Oh yeah.

Uli Bennewitz: It was perfect. It worked perfect. We have 50 liter kegs perfect for that you should have seen the parents and grandparents they refuse to take pictures of their grandchild with a beer keg. It was the same cultural experience that we'd had 20 years earlier in Manteo so I'm still learning about the ...

Richard Cox: There's a little bit of a flashback.

Uli Bennewitz: Yes exactly. I'm still learning about the local culture.

Richard Cox: So when you're in the dry county I mean was there anything that had to happen with the local laws?

Uli Bennewitz: No.

Richard Cox: As long as you stuck with like there was that as long as you stay where you are.

Uli Bennewitz: We couldn't wholesale. And no they couldn't stop us. They tried everything wastewater restrictions, they tried everything. And I mean, they really did they shut us down for one summer. They thought they can kill us that way. But I was lucky that was in 88 and I just opened the brewery in Durham at 00:22:00the time. And I'd got myself a tanker it's a four hundred gallon water tanker and had a trailer and a F-150. And I spend my summer tankering beer from Durham to Manteo while the town had shut us down and we survived one summer with a tanker.

Uli Bennewitz: And the town couldn't believe that we survived and they couldn't understand where the beer came from. And by the way, when you do something like that which may be slightly illegal always make sure you do it in broad daylight never at night. And if somebody asked you what you're doing, always tell them what you're doing. So I always had to stop in Williamston to get gas get some fuel and always somebody asked me what's in that tanker. Oi, what's in that tanker? Oh, we said beer. And they always laughed and moved on.

Richard Cox: Walked away.

Uli Bennewitz: And they would obviously.

Richard Cox: Oh the image of this tanker like pulling through Manteo at the same time was .

Uli Bennewitz: It was great, it was lovely.

Richard Cox: So I think you're already like hopping around this one though.

Uli Bennewitz: I'm sorry.

Richard Cox: No, I'll just lead I know this is great. Because I was going to ask 00:23:00what your greatest challenges you remembered in working with local and state law that sounds like ABC and the state themselves, they were really open to what you were doing.

Uli Bennewitz: ABC is easy. ABC was easy. I'm not quite sure about now I don't know anybody there. And they had a very, very interesting legal counsel. A very nice young lady. And she was wonderful. And the thing I remember was that in those days, America was truly in the boondocks. We had no coffee in America in those days, not just no beer but also no coffee. All we had those days was Maxwell House which I'm sorry, doesn't qualify for coffee just as much as Budweiser doesn't qualify for beer. So she had real coffee. So it was always wonderful to visit and at the ABC commission because she had a real coffee machine and real roasted coffee. So we had a wonderful smell coffee first thing in the morning. So I had good relationships with ABC commission. Nothing to do with alcohol.

Richard Cox: No, it doesn't mean.

Uli Bennewitz: It was coffee.

Richard Cox: Well, yes it's building the relationship, right.

Uli Bennewitz: That's right. That's exactly right.

Richard Cox: Yeah. So the state.

Uli Bennewitz: No, the state was easy. The feds were tricky because it was ATF at the time. ATF has changed a lot they now call them TTB. And they have reform focused their mission they're now chasing terrorists and not breweries anymore which I think is wonderful.

Richard Cox: That makes sense.

Uli Bennewitz: But at the time they literally treated us the same way they had to by law as Budweiser and it was a horror show. They spent weeks and weeks and weeks and Manteo. I've spent I mean my agent I knew him, I knew his wife she always joined him on Fridays for the weekend. I'm sure there was a correlation between the amount of fellow visits you get and your proximity to the beach area it does work that way magically so anyhow, what it was of course we were the first brewery in the southeast and they didn't know how to handle it. And then they only all their book is a rule book this thick was applicable to Budweiser Williamsburg.

Richard Cox: Those macro breweries, yeah.

Uli Bennewitz: Sure and we had to have the same bond in my case an interesting one if you had a brewery at that time you needed an FBI clearance to be able to get a brewers license. Well because I was on a visitor's visa guess what? I needed a CIA clearance so I am the only Brewer in America I promise you with a CIA clearance. Because and they literally flew a guy they told me that they flew a guy from Paris to Munich and to go to my little hometown and check me out and make sure I wasn't a terrorist. And then he wrote the report and I got my license so nowadays it's a joke. TTB is the easiest buy I mean they can't handle what they got.

Uli Bennewitz: But those days it was wild, it was really wild. We had an interesting dilemma when we opened up we were brew pub so we only had two serving tanks. And TTB or ATF said you can't do that the law is specific. The law says you can only draw beer out of bond which means pretax determined in 00:26:00either bottles, cans or kegs which works for Budweiser but it didn't work for us. We didn't have bottles, cans or kegs. We just had two tanks. And so and then we studied this a bit further and there was a definition of what a keg size was and then there was a hog's head from way back when so we ended up with a little compromise.

Uli Bennewitz: We took our tanks, the dispense tanks and we used them as sealed portable consumer containers of even quantity. That's how they were defined. And that's how we got around it for the first time. So this five barrel and was a sealed portable consumer container of even quantity. And the thing was and nowhere was it defined if a consumer had to buy five barrels and take it home with him. And then they came back again and said, "No, you can't do that because you have to that's your portable consumer container has to move from bond to 00:27:00non-bond." And then they said you need a wall between your bond and your non bonded premise and a door to get it through there.

Uli Bennewitz: By that time I was lucky because I was in farming so I was working in some tobacco things. So I saw a tobacco warehouse where they also have bond and non-bond. And they have forklifts running back and forth with bales of tobacco between bond and non bond and they just draw white lines in their tobacco warehouses between bond and non-bond so similar goods for tobacco surely are going to be good for alcohol. So we literally painted a white line right through the middle of the brewery and then we took our sealed portable consumer container pushed it across the line filled it up with beer then pushed it back again. That's how the first beer was taken out of bond in North Carolina so.

Richard Cox: That's great. And this is also interesting because not only are you dealing with having had changed the laws but the original law let you even happened but you're also figuring out all these I won't say minor things, but all these things that you don't think about until they're happening that later 00:28:00on, it's like people don't even think about anymore. And you're like I won't say you're making it up as you go. But you're having to deal with these things as they're coming up.

Uli Bennewitz: Again, at the time they weren't minor.

Richard Cox: Right exactly.

Uli Bennewitz: They were true catastrophes. My God every time you think what else can they throw at you? What else is going to ... and we had no choice I mean we had to it was just it was just one thing after the other and it was neverending so.

Richard Cox: Wow. And then, of course, you had the local locals and the local government on top of it.

Uli Bennewitz: Then we had the locals and I mean we were pretty stupid. I mean you shouldn't first and foremost opening a brewery in a dry town is not smart. Secondly, to open a Bavarian theme restaurant in the South is stupid as well. There aren't any Bavarian themed restaurants in South there's good reason for it. Nobody wants any but it took me 15 years to figure that one out. Now don't get me wrong it was always packed in July and August when the folks from Pennsylvania and Ohio were in town but the rest of the year it didn't work.

Uli Bennewitz: And then our biggest blunder probably was we decided in 86 you 00:29:00talk about stupid we only served our own beer in 1986. Nobody knew what a microbrewed beer was in 1986. If we would have done Bud Light and chicken wings, we would have had a chance with the locals, but microbrewed beer only? I mean they wouldn't set foot in that building. But I was just typical, arrogant thinking my God if you have a normal restaurant you don't allow kids to walk in with a McDonald's food sets and why would I allow somebody coming in a Budweiser. That was my logic, it was stupid logic it doesn't make any sense. But that was my justification and so that was we really I mean some of it was the background that's some of the mistakes were surely self-inflicted and that was self-inflicted.

Richard Cox: Yeah. So that is all we're talking about because of when it was happening, I was going to say, was there any surprises along the way that like around every corner, there was a new surprise for you.

Uli Bennewitz: Absolutely.

Richard Cox: If you're moving forward.

Uli Bennewitz: Absolutely, there was no end to surprises.

Richard Cox: Yeah, I mean that's what comes I guess comes with being a trail blazer.

Uli Bennewitz: Years down the road we had some restaurant owners come up to me and I asked them I said, "If we could would you buy our beer?" And they said, "Why would we buy your beer? A, it's more expensive and B you're a competitor. Really? Bavarian restaurant?" They're all seafood joints but it was the mindset at the time and then five years after that restaurant owners come up to me we're now into 10 or 15 years down the road and say, "Look, can we buy your beer?" Because all these people are strange they want to ask for the local beer. And the restaurant owners didn't understand why people wanted local beer so this is not Chapel Hill we were. This is not farm to table country we were down there in the boondocks so it was I could watch this educational process coming along slowly, slowly, slowly.

Uli Bennewitz: And now of course at a meeting recently with a buyer from Harris Teeter and he called it hyper local. He said we are in an absolute hyper-local 00:31:00world and he said I apologize for not carrying your beer right now in our outer bank stores, but quite honestly we don't have a lot of interest in your beer in the Charlotte stores because in Charlotte, no one knows who you are. So that's where we are that's how far we have come in this whole system in the last ...

Richard Cox: And what was it like? I mean because you're seeing it happen it sounds like it's happening slower on the coast than it was maybe elsewhere.

Uli Bennewitz: Way slower on the coast, way slower and I mean we started quite honest we started this farm to table in 2000 with the butchery. And even today if you google people ask me what's stupid thing what's that stupid name? And the name was really quite interesting because it was way pre Google. And in those days in the 80s if you had a German rest... a Bavarian restaurant the only thing you can call it was Old Heidelberg or old Europe or something like that. And we 00:32:00called it Weeping Radish and everybody said that's really stupid.

Uli Bennewitz: And then but in comes Google and if we would have called it Hofbrauhaus house or something stupid and Google it Hofbrau find yourself there good luck. Weeping Radish we own it, I mean thank you very much. And that's and right now we're at the same point we are a brewery butchery a brewery charcuterie. If you put brewery charcuterie into Google there's only one name that pops up and that's us. So it's incredible how this is all evolving 10 years from now it won't be but right now it is.

Richard Cox: Some of the challenges you talked about at that point about being Bavarian and being very specific in what you're doing becomes a benefit.

Uli Bennewitz: It does, it does obviously because it's unique. If you ever talk about, I own a brewery well what kind of brewery? Well, it's a brewery with a butchery and a restaurant and a farm, now you narrow it down to one in the whole country basically that's it. There was only one that does all that so from that 00:33:00point of view, it is unique.

Richard Cox: So you faced these challenges you had the laws changed. And then you're opening up and you're ready to move forward. Like, how is that so then you're like, okay, we can do this now.

Uli Bennewitz: Well, I'm glad I kept my day job is all I can.

Richard Cox: Okay. So you were planning?

Uli Bennewitz: Yeah. Oh God absolutely without my day job I wouldn't be here today and so but that applies to many microbreweries.

Richard Cox: Oh I'm sure, yeah.

Uli Bennewitz: There are many microbreweries that have day jobs and do it as a passion.

Richard Cox: Or outside owners who are coming in.

Uli Bennewitz: Or same thing or have outside investors that pay for it and yeah. But it's a passion more than anything else and I feel it's a fascinating passion and it goes way beyond beer, it's a fun project.

Richard Cox: Oh yeah absolutely. I guess that's how it feels looking back as you went through all this now you're looking back at this project and it's like.

Uli Bennewitz: It's looking back to it, it is a movement. There is no doubt about that. If you would have told anybody in 86 that we're going to have 8000 breweries again in America, and even the West Coast would have laughed at you. But it's way beyond brewing. It's a celebration of craft again. And to me, that is the next focal point. And it's the young generation that is driving this movement. And the movement again, the microbreweries are upfront, but we need to see it in a completely different context we need to see it as a regeneration of craft.

Uli Bennewitz: And if you look at it from an educational point of view the Germans have an education system where our goal in this country is send your kids to college and I've been there. I've had parents, I've been on PDA councils 00:35:00and if you ever suggest to a parent that their child would not go to college, they'll kill you right there on the spot. Because our mindset is as parents, our kids are smart and smart kids go to college, which is the dumbest way of looking at all this because a lot of these craft folks are extremely smart, but a lot of them are not college material. And that's why in hindsight, looking at the German system their education goal is for every child to have a profession when they leave education.

Uli Bennewitz: And their profession involved craft training just as much as college or university training. So they define everything as professional training and they've got these craft schools which are amazing. And it does it's not just brewing but it's baking, it's culinary it is whatever you want it. These are all traditional crafts and they're coming back fast in this country too. And this is a craft movement which really is an alternative to our we keep 00:36:00saying that the only and even NPR much to my annoyance keeps talking about the only way if you want to get out of the income hole get a college education. And only the bright kids go to college and this that and the other.

Uli Bennewitz: It's absolutely ridiculous the Germans in Germany I looked that up recently, their professional unemployment rate among academically trained professional is higher than the unemployment for craft trained professionals. And if you honest in this country it would probably be the same. But we need to rebuild our craft system from an educational point of view. Go to a microbrewing convention for God's sake. The passion that's in that building is palpable. It really is. I've been to a Budweiser plant passion my foot. I mean the average age is 58 and all they talk about is unions and retirement.

Uli Bennewitz: Go to a microbrewing conference and those kids are on fire it is 00:37:00incredible. And I've been to coffee conventions it's the same thing. These kids talk about coffee growing regions I've never heard of in my lifetime, but they have a passion for what they do. And I really have a problem with old, white people because they're always down on America. And I keep telling them, "Look, you need to go to a craft convention and watch these that next generation, what they the passion that they have." A little more passion than these white old folks had when they grew up. That's true. So, get out of the way and let these kids get on with it. And because that's what it is. It's they need to get out of the way and let this craft movement grow. And it's making it's charcuterie. It goes on and on and on. We've just seen the beginning of it.

Richard Cox: Great, that's awesome. So now we can start talking about Weeping Radish.

Uli Bennewitz: I'm sorry.

Richard Cox: No.

Uli Bennewitz: I'm always off to tangents.

Richard Cox: No, that was not a tangent. That was totally part of this, so if you were going to try to describe Weeping Radish to someone unaware of the 00:38:00brewery, how would you describe it?

Uli Bennewitz: It's a work in progress. It's a celebration of craft. And that's really what it is. We started with beer. And on the beer side of it, I made again a huge miscalculation. I thought, let's do German lagers. Because if you want to transition from Bud Light to microbrewing, a German high-quality German lager is an easier transition than a triple bock or double hopped IPA. And yet again I was wrong as nearly always. The craft movement went the exact opposite they swung into the experimental side and because I was looking as the customers being traditional American beer drinkers, that's where I was wrong. The 00:39:00customers are college kids, mostly over 21. And their mindset is I want to try something different. And if it were the coffee culture, it's identical.

Richard Cox: It is.

Uli Bennewitz: They didn't start off with a mild coffee which was a vast improvement on whatever. But they started with Starbucks and Starbucks is about as far away as you get from Maxwell House as you possibly can. And Starbucks in coffee is exactly what a triple hopped IPA is in beer. It is way out there on the other side but it creates such a wave that it brings another huge amount of new people into that same market space. So again, 30 years later, it's easy to see that. I wish we had seen that but we have stuck with basically with lagers from the very beginning and now we are in lager we're known for lager beers.

Uli Bennewitz: And the way we look at beer as different to a lot of brew pubs because we have a restaurant. We have a family restaurant believe it or not, 00:40:00despite what the town of Manteo said but what it is is we look at beer as a companion piece to food. Which is very different. There is impact beer and there's drinkability beer and we are the drinkability column. We have a Black Radish which is the mildest dark beer most people have ever tried and it's truly a companion piece to meat.

Uli Bennewitz: It doesn't overwhelm the food and that's the difference because there are a lot of beers that clearly overwhelm food. Which is I'm not disparaging [crosstalk 00:40:37] but that's I'm trying to explain why I did yet again with the lager breweries in North Carolina. We are the key to the minority and then somehow I end up always being the weirdo out. But that's my reason for it.

Richard Cox: Sure.

Uli Bennewitz: And if I would have looked at that 20 years later it's easy to say well, sure if I would have opened my brewpub 20 years later in Chapel Hill, I would have gone for the triple hop too because that's impact stuff wow. But I 00:41:00wasn't and I never was in Chapel Hill I wish I was that would have been much easier to. And on that same base we started that brewery in Durham was an incredible story. Shortly after we opened it was an investment club out of Germany came in and they said, wow this is awesome we want to bring German culture to America. Never a good idea.

Uli Bennewitz: Don't export culture. But they had money and they said, "Look, we fund it you build a brewery." And Durham came up because I had a connection to Terry Sanford Junior at the time and he pointed me towards that part of Durham which at the time was the highest crime rate anywhere in the southeast. And so we put a brewery in the middle of the crime rate. And we literally took an old warehouse and converted to the most amazing 20,000 square foot thing you've ever seen. It was unbelievable.

Uli Bennewitz: I mean, they gave me $2 million for God's sake in the 80s. And but my problem was they only gave me 90 days to build it. And what they'd done 00:42:00is this was an investment club. So when you bought your share in this investment pool, you got a ticket for the grand opening. But we weren't allowed to start building until it was fully subscribed. So we ended up with a 90 day building project for a 20,000 square foot building, but we did it. We got our occupancy permit at 10 o'clock in the morning and we had our grand opening at two o'clock in the afternoon. So we had everything outside in trailers from food to plates to everything else.

Richard Cox: That's amazing.

Uli Bennewitz: And we made it work. But the interesting thing about that project was it was '88 and this project was two blocks away from Duke University. And I thought was a no-brainer. During construction, I realized I was wrong one more time because I saw a Porsche convertible drive by, which was obviously a Duke student and professors couldn't afford those things. So he had a keg of Schaefer beer sitting on the backseat and I saw that for my rooftop looking down and I knew I was in trouble. Because if you can afford a Porsche, you can afford a 00:43:00decent beer. And but at that time they didn't. And they weren't interested.

Uli Bennewitz: We opened up we didn't see a single Duke student in that building. It was unbelievable. We had the Durham Symphony playing there, which was awesome. We had Mahogany booth, it was gorgeous. It was absolutely gorgeous. But we had one other event six months after we opened and it was a Duke event. And 70 Duke students piled in there. And of course, there was a fire marshal another one of my friends and we were only allowed to let x many people in and these Duke, I was in trying to keep them in line. And all these Duke students came up to me and said, "Oi, is it true that there's a brewery in there?" This is two streets away from Duke. And I said at the time I said, "Guys, when I was your age I knew when there was a brewery in town." I mean, but that was 80 today, unthinkable.

Richard Cox: Yeah, I was going to say.

Uli Bennewitz: That's the difference in what's the difference 25 years makes.

Richard Cox: And exceptionally too because ...

Uli Bennewitz: And how Duke is I mean now Durham is one of the my God they think 00:44:00they invented beer over there.

Richard Cox: Well it's interesting because that's one of the things I was going to say it's another point where you were actually ahead of the curve and that now Duke or Durham is this place that.

Uli Bennewitz: Absolutely.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Uli Bennewitz: And people are always saying wow, you're way ahead and that's great no it's stupid. You don't want to be that far ahead it really is not very smart. You need to be there when the market is there not when you think you need to do it. And that's it really is not very clever. So don't give me any flowers for that one.

Richard Cox: So, I won't ask.

Uli Bennewitz: I'm sorry back to the Weeping Radish.

Richard Cox: No, I think we were done with Weeping Radish. The next one that I was going to ask about Manteo when we first opened but I think you've certainly talked about Manteo.

Uli Bennewitz: It was the problem obviously was Manteo is a tourist town as we had mentioned locals don't drink that kind of beer. So we had basically a 90 day window.

Richard Cox: Right.

Uli Bennewitz: And a brewery with a 90 day window is a nightmare. A brewery is a fixed cost operation, you have to employ a brewer 12 months of the year. You have to have tanks. Everything is fixed costs and year long. If you're trying to run a brewery for a 90 day period it again, it doesn't make any financial sense. If you want to do a 90 day window, open ice cream shop because after 90 days, you can shut up and close up and go to the Caribbean for the winter. You can't do that with a brewery. So the whole concept of a brewery in a resort town with a 90 day window again makes no sense at all. So, why did we do that?

Richard Cox: No, well that's where you lived.

Uli Bennewitz: That's where I lived, that's it.

Richard Cox: That's where you were exactly.

Uli Bennewitz: That's it I still live there.

Richard Cox: So and actually you touched on this, but you didn't get into it which is why did you name it the Weeping Radish.

Uli Bennewitz: It was my idea. But I explained I had an American partner at the time and I explained to him that in Bavaria they have beer gardens and they have 00:46:00radishes as appetizers in beer gardens. And they are big white things they're called daikons over here. And they look like a turnip and they cut it with a spiral cutter. Pull it apart, sprinkle salt on that thing and stand it up on a plate begins to weep. The salt will draw the moisture out of the radish. Makes the radish very mild. And the trick is afterwards when it finished weeping, they serve it on a plate. Then you take those slices with your hands, you dip in the liquid, then you eat it. Because the liquid is pure salt water makes you very thirsty makes you drink an awful lot of beer.

Richard Cox: That's win win.

Uli Bennewitz: That's the story of the weir it's a win win. That's why I tried that in Manteo one of the first menus we did beautiful German menu, absolutely ridiculous. And of course we had radishes on there and nobody would ever buy a radish no way. And then from second season we tried to give them away and nobody wanted them. So we decided it was time to quit after the second year. So we haven't done them since.

Richard Cox: More people think of radishes these are small.

Uli Bennewitz: Yeah, the red one we use it for radishes obviously but that wasn't the radish but as I said earlier, the thing about them the name is so 00:47:00amazing because it got us into Google in a big way. Even now, it's amazing. So which is fun.

Richard Cox: Yeah. So beyond the laws and the locals what challenges did you face when you first opened Weeping Radish?

Uli Bennewitz: Well, I mean as we already said, it's nothing but challenges obviously. It was the timing wasn't right. And it was we had the classic example where we had a couple of local people who had relatives in Europe. And I would meet them sometimes at the post office and they said, "I haven't been in your place but I have an aunt and she's going to come next year to visit me and I'm going to make sure I'm going to bring her to the Weeping Radish." Because we were kind of the exotic place you go when you have some weird people coming to visit you. That's really what we were so not a good business concept really it's not. Not where you want to be.

Uli Bennewitz: It never really it was just not a small thing to do. And it's ironic because of course now as we all know the beer culture has moved to Asheville and that's where the capital of beer is for North Carolina. And Manteo couldn't be as far away from Asheville is you can't get much further than that. And so and even but now finally in the outer banks even we're getting local distillery and we're getting there. We're getting there it's kicking and screaming but we will.

Richard Cox: But you're getting there.

Uli Bennewitz: We're getting there as a yeah.

Richard Cox: Yeah, so what would you say is the main mission or theme of Weeping Radish?

Uli Bennewitz: Again the mission is hopefully well Weeping Radish has another component which we haven't talked about and that's the food component. In 2000, we started with this new concept which is what they now call farm to table. At that time they said huh? Having a farm and a restaurant and a butchery all in 00:49:00the same place they said you've got to be crazy. And we looked around by the way in 2000 and in 2000, there wasn't a single training facility for artists in butchering in this country, it did not exist. We had a couple of culinary school by that time we had a couple of brewing schools, but charcuterie didn't exist.

Uli Bennewitz: So we literally flew in a German again, German master butcher, and started all that. Let me say something by the way, backtrack a little bit about the brewing side of it.

Richard Cox: Sure.

Uli Bennewitz: We started off with German master brewers. And by now I've learned something which is fascinating. The Germans have this wonderful apprenticeship training program, which is second to none. Which has an incredible advantage because if you are a German Master whatever, and you have an apprentice you come to work in the morning, you explain something that you 00:50:00want this apprentice to do. And then you get on with your job and the apprentice will come in the next morning and replicate the tasks that he was taught to do the day before.

Uli Bennewitz: That is more or less un-American. In this country, you got an hourly guy coming in one day and you explain something, you better be the next morning and explain the same thing again. And the Germans fall apart when that happens, because they're not used to this sort of thing. Their training is so different. They have training for a start. But it is so different in the first place. However, and this is where microbrewing gets interesting of course, when we started the Germans just laughed at us and said, "You want to do what now? Beer in America what a joke."

Uli Bennewitz: And now the Europeans are coming to America looking at microbrewing. Why is that the case? Because of the training that they do. Let me explain that. If you are a German apprentice you have the German master brewers 00:51:00guild defines the styles of beer for which you will be trained. And these styles are extremely detailed and defined. So every student of the craft of beer trains as hard as they can and their final exams are literary scored as to how close they got to that standard that were developed by the senior brewers in the country. And the same is true for everything by the way bakers and everything else.

Uli Bennewitz: With the result that you will never find a bad beer in Germany. However, the flip side is most beers taste very much the same. We don't have standards in this country. Do whatever you want to with beer. Wake up in the morning and whatever do a Christmas beer throw some pine straw at it because it's Christmas. You can do whatever you want to and that's why the Europeans are now coming to America because our craft industry is so different and we are so wild and wide open so that we yearn on the one hand to have a proper trading 00:52:00system. But they yearn to have this flexibility that we have and this example for beer by the way I flew to Munich not that long ago. And my God there are craft breweries now in Munich. What a joke? If you had told me there would be craft beer in Munich. I mean really?

Uli Bennewitz: They wouldn't have looked at a craft brewed beer over there now they're doing it themselves. And they're having fun with it suddenly but they come to America to learn about it. And I went to the craft brewers thing in DC two years ago and there was a lady there with a Bavarian outfit on and of course I talked to her. And I said, "What are you doing here?" She said, "Well, I'm a hops grower. I'm a hops farmer." I said, "Why are you coming to American microbrew event?" And she said, this is the most fun I have the whole year because everybody comes up to me and wants to talk about hops. About different 00:53:00varieties about different she said if I go to a German beer event, there are corporate buyers there asking for discounts.

Uli Bennewitz: And she said, "I don't want to go there." So that is so fascinating about this craft beer trend in this country. And we're now seeing the same thing I have gone through the same thing with butchering. That has been the exact same experience. We were again 15 years too early. When we put our first sign out there we wrote butchery on there because that's the only word people knew, 15 years later guess what? We call it a charcuterie because that is a butchery is basically cutting steaks. And pork chops and stuff like that charcuterie it's cooked smoke, cured. It's a completely different thing. You couldn't have done that 15 years ago because nobody knew what that was.

Uli Bennewitz: So we are going through the same process again, and I hate to tell you this but the regulatory side was even worse on the meat side of it than 00:54:00it was on the beer. Because they came in and they still are they still have that book 800 pages Smithfield Foods. And we have a permanent inspector in the butchery every day of the year. Supervising one guy because they haven't figured out that a one man band artisan charcuterie cannot be handled the same way as a Smithfield Food Chinese owned conglomerate.

Richard Cox: Well, and that's what I was going to say is you have so many more corporate interests on the food side.

Uli Bennewitz: And that's exactly right. And I hate to tell you this, but I've been very very very very disappointed with our university system because I don't blame inspectors. They're just there to look at page number 396 and give you a ticket just like Highway Patrol. But the university systems are the guys who are supposed to be the food scientists. They are supposed to be the ones who figured 00:55:00out that there's a difference between food farm to table regulatory issues as compared to Smithfield Foods export all over the world.

Uli Bennewitz: When you do Smithfield Foods, they have this what's called HACCP which was developed for NASA. Well, Obviously NASA needs to have safe food because once they're out there and the food goes bad, guess what they're dead. So but you can't treat a one-man band butchery with NASA standards for God's sake. I mean, it doesn't make any sense. But that's what they do. That's what they do. So eventually that will change as well. And I'm sorry to say I've been through this twice, once with beer and now with chacouterie, this is my second round to the same identical issues. Trying to develop a craft system that is different from our corporate structure. And so it's but I've learned some lessons from the beginning that I'm trying to apply to the craft. It's interesting.

Richard Cox: Well, there's an interesting parallels there.

Uli Bennewitz: Well, they really are. And the craft training really is the same 00:56:00thing, it is an art it's artisan it's different to factories. That's the whole point. If you have a brewery and all you do is have a computerized brewhouse, and all you do is you punch in your program, that's not the same as having an artisan brewer who's actually interacting with the public and doing niche products. And we now do specialty beers for individual restaurants. And we invite the restaurant owner to come in and brew the beer with us because that's how you get the local buy in to the local loyalty. So all of this was unthinkable 20 years ago, they asked us as I said earlier, they asked when you go, "Why would I buy your beer? And Budweiser is much cheaper." Now they say, "Can you do a beer for us just for us and I'll come and help you brew?" So that's how this where this is going.

Richard Cox: Yeah, that's awesome. So talking about lagers you have a 1516 00:57:00Bavarian Purity Law brewery?

Uli Bennewitz: Yes we are, yes we are and quite honestly it's again that's even the Bavarians admit, the honest ones, that that's somewhat of a marketing gimmick. Because no additives, no chemicals, no preservatives really if you have a brewpub who the hell needs additives, chemicals and preservatives anyway? Here we are the difference between distribution and local beer as I keep telling people it's if you really want fresh, local beer we have a funny notion about fresh and local beer. We now have these tap houses and we had lunch in a wonderful brewery today where they have 30 draft lines.

Uli Bennewitz: Well they have their own beer but these tap houses with 30 draft lens quite honest from a Reinheitsgebot point of view is not a very smart way to go. Because, think about it you got 30 kegs of beer there at the same time. How often do you think they change a keg of beer when you got 30 on at the same 00:58:00time? How often do you think they clean beer lines when you got 30 beer lines at the same time. And of course the more natural the beer, the more often you have to clean your beer lines. I went to a place recently in Raleigh and it shall remain nameless. They use their draft lines as decoration for the dining room. I have never seen such a horror show in all my life It looked absolutely lovely.

Uli Bennewitz: They were lit and everything it was gorgeous. But I mean you buy a pint of beer there, really? The first question is how long has it been in the attic before how many weeks ago did it leave the keg? I mean it's ridiculous concept. If you are serious about beer go to the Oktoberfest for God's sake. I mean, they have 20,000 people in that tent and guess how many choices you have of beer? One. That's fresh beer. They fill those kegs in the morning. And by the way, they tap those kegs without CO2, although they are lagers, why? Because they never close the tab once they open a keg. They literally drain a keg in one go.

Richard Cox: That's amazing.

Uli Bennewitz: That's beer. But that's farm to table beer. That's about as close 00:59:00as farm to table as you get it.

Richard Cox: Yeah, right.

Uli Bennewitz: And that's where all this is going to. And it's not just the beer but it's the food. It's collaboration with farms and bringing all this together and hopefully the bakers are next and the charcuteries and so on so on. All of this needs to develop as a culture and it is an employment machine. That's the other thing we keep forgetting. The microbrewing industry is a total industry we have a market share of whatever it is 17%, 18%. Wouldn't believe when you go to grocery store it's true.

Uli Bennewitz: But the microbrewing industry with their 18% employs more people than that Brazilian giant. So there's also an issue of employment in the craft field and when we're talking about I'm not so sure about this our economic system. Economics 101 doesn't work in microbrewing. If you think about it, any 01:00:00of us who have suffered through economics 101 with the textbook that the professor wrote 20 years ago, it's always the same. Budweiser fits that criteria. They have the lowest ingredient cost, rice is cheaper than grain. They've got the lowest labor costs because they hardly use union labor. They got the lowest distribution costs because they've got fantastic logistics.

Uli Bennewitz: They have the lowest marketing costs because they control their distributors. They are the poster child of the modern economy. But guess what their sales are flat. Every brewpub every microbrewery, we are the worst guys we have terrible labor costs because we employ real people. We have terrible ingredient costs because we use real ingredients. We have terrible distribution costs I mean really, I've got a van that runs around with three kegs at a time. I mean, give me a break. It's awful. But somehow this is the new economy. I'll give you this parallel of farming.

Uli Bennewitz: Walmart gets most of the organic vegetables from China. It's the most efficient way of doing organic vegetables and they show up in the semi that is 24 pallets on a semi it's fantastic it works you go to the local farmers market I mean my God they're 18 F-350s with everybody has got three crates of vegetable on the back, really? And those things do eight miles to the gallon of diesel I mean it's an awful system of distribution. But somehow it makes sense to in this new economy because it's a local food system so you have to really rewrite that textbook that professor and he has a problem with that because he hates to rewrite his textbook. And then because he loved it so much he's been teaching the same thing for 20 years so that's where the change needs to happen is on that level.

Richard Cox: Yeah. So 2000, 2001, you moved to Grandy?

Uli Bennewitz: Well we started in 2001. We actually opened 2007. It's the 01:02:00longest building project in history.

Richard Cox: But that's when you also took on the butchery.

Uli Bennewitz: That's when we started the whole thing.

Richard Cox: The farm.

Uli Bennewitz: Yeah, we had a 14 acre organic farm butchery everything and we flew in a German guy and started the whole process and it's again it's all takes time as of this year for the first time we have a co-op in North Carolina. A farm Co-Op and they do 100% free range pork GMO free pork and hormone free antibiotic free animal welfare approved. And it's a fascinating story and these farmers did that and of course farmers don't work together either. And so Whole Foods steps in and said we're going to organize you guys and Whole Foods literally organized this co-op. And now Whole Foods gets all their pork from this Co-Op.

Uli Bennewitz: Just to give you an example how different all that is first time we got pork from that Co-Op the meat inspector shut us down. Why? Well if you 01:03:00listen to a Smithfield commercial about pork it says the other white meat. Why? Because it's indoor and they feed nothing but soybean meal and corn meal and that pork is literally the other white meat. If you have real outside pork like it should be it's red. And the meat inspector his book that he has, which is a training manual from the Holiday Inn. That's when he literally he had never seen that kind of meat before. And so ...

Richard Cox: He just didn't know what to do with it.

Uli Bennewitz: Didn't know what to do with it. They literally shut us down for the day they shipped in a supervisor from Raleigh who had to clear it. That's how far we have gone away but that's what I find so fascinating because we're literally going back. We're now talking about on the farm distilling. We're talking about on farm malting again, we're talking about we're bringing this food chain all back together again. And people would say all the time, wow, you're way ahead. No, I'm just going back faster than most people. That's really what we're doing. We're going back I mean this is another environment where 01:04:00we're going back faster this is not your skyscraper with a bunch of offices and corporate boys in here. But this is we're going back to a different system.

Richard Cox: Sure.

Uli Bennewitz: And so that's really the story about our current location is now taking the next step and applying Reinheitsgebot beer to Reinheitsgebot food, cutting the food chain which is currently 2000 miles down to 200 miles and kicking out all the chemicals out of the food.

Richard Cox: Yeah, and you're looking at all these different things not as pieces but this is a whole thing to you.

Uli Bennewitz: It's a whole it's a movement and it's a health issue let me give you the story that and please cut me off when you want to go back to somewhere else. But after we opened shortly after we opened Elizabeth Dole came. Our then Senator and I hate politicians of any shade but so I'm neutral. But she was supposed to spend two minutes there or five minutes in the photo op and run out the door. She was fascinating she really was I was amazed and she spent an hour 01:05:00there. But then she seriously said what you're doing is amazing but I don't think it's going to work. And I said, "Why not?"

Uli Bennewitz: And she said it's too expensive it really is not going to work. I don't believe it. So I told her I said let me give you my side of this story if you drive back to Raleigh from the Outer Banks the first town you get to is called Plymouth North Carolina. Plymouth has about 7000 inhabitants they have six or seven fast food joints. And I asked her what else is in Plymouth she said, "No what?" I said a dialysis center. And don't blame McDonald's they are an awesome company. How they make a $1 burger and make a profit blows my mind plus they've got the cleanest bathrooms in eastern North Carolina.

Uli Bennewitz: But if you eat that stuff for 30 years you will be on dialysis and that is the issue. And the same with that after and I said, if you keep going less than 30 miles away is Williamston North Carolina. It's the same size town same amount of fast food and guess what? They have their own dialysis center less than 30 miles away. That is the issue about our food system, you 01:06:00either pay now or pay later. And we love to pay later. And she said, this is fascinating. I want my chief of staff to call you Monday morning because I want to take that up in DC. I said, please don't. And she said, why not? I said, because there's nothing you can do about it.

Uli Bennewitz: And she said, what do you mean, I'm your senator? I said, "Ma'am, if you think you can convince your voters that they need to spend more money on real food and less on iPhones, iPads and television channels, you will never get reelected again." And she went very quiet and left. I never heard from anybody since which is exactly what I wanted. But that is the issue right there. And we this is what we need to change. And that's what this new generation is doing. Let me give you the beginning when as I said, I've been in North Carolina on the outer banks since 1980.

Uli Bennewitz: When I came to the outer banks in 1980, America was a true wasteland. We had no coffee in 1980. All we had was Maxwell House. I'm sorry that doesn't qualify for coffee. We had no beer in 1980 all we had was Bud, 01:07:00Miller, and Coors I'm sorry. In 1980, my first glass of wine in America was something red in a glass with an ice cube in it. It was horrific. Now we have wine in America. We have beer in America. We're getting food in America. We are on the right track, Europe's actually on the wrong track.

Uli Bennewitz: Europe just discovered Walmart. They literally are they have butchers dying like flies and their breweries have done the last 15 years nothing but consolidation. They literally lie 20 years behind us. So we are now in the lead and Europe is dragging behind. They've just discovered that it's much cheaper to have a factory in Poland making roles and then ship them half frozen overnight to Germany. Nobody needs to get up in the morning and make breads anymore.

Uli Bennewitz: We have a chain like that. Thank you very much. So we've done all that, we are now swinging back. We have our first bakery on the Outer Banks all of our roll our breads are locally made unthinkable five years ago didn't exist.

Richard Cox: Yeah, it's not like something I've heard you talk about before, 01:08:00which is the idea of applying the Bavarian purity law to food.

Uli Bennewitz: Yeah, to food. Absolutely, and that's what this is about. It really is. It's the same I mean, brewing is exciting because brewing has taken the lead in all this and distilling is next and but it is a much bigger movement than that. And our health care costs will come down but it will take 30 or 40 years because it took us that long to get them there. That's the problem with it. And everywhere we go and export our fast food you can chart their health care costs and they go up everywhere we export this junk. So but it's cheap it is cheap. And at the same time you go to a farmers market Carrboro anywhere beautiful Farmers Market. They're very proud they take food stamps, really?

Uli Bennewitz: I've never needed food stamps. But I would have thought if you have three kids and no husband and you go shopping there and with your food 01:09:00stamp card, you feed your kids for one meal and you're broke. Whereas you take that card to the local dollar store and buy enough junk, you can feed your kids for the rest of the week. That's the problem with it. So that's a social component.

Richard Cox: Sure.

Uli Bennewitz: And this is true with beer just as much as it is with anything else. You can draw your voting thing with by beer. I mean, I can tell you who is going to vote for what by tell me what they drink and food is no different.

Richard Cox: Sure.

Uli Bennewitz: So we are creating a political two-tier system based on that.

Richard Cox: Yeah, and another thing you were talking about that seems really important to you is the idea of beers connection to agriculture.

Uli Bennewitz: Absolutely.

Richard Cox: And North Carolina still being primarily a rural state. It's interesting that it is an important aspect of it but is something that more broadly in the craft beer industry in North Carolina doesn't seem to stress as much as it could.

Uli Bennewitz: It's coming, as we said earlier there are now two malt houses 01:10:00here. I think because my agriculture connection obviously I'm very passionate about value added farming. I give you my best example. One of our best customers on the meat side of it is a dairy in Maryland they're outside DC called South Mountain Creamery. They're amazing. It was just a regular old dairy the parents what could milk cows for all their life.

Uli Bennewitz: They're lucky too, and the son came along. And the son's about 10 years ago when we started meat, that's when he started too and he said, "I'm not going to milk cows for the rest of my days." And because they were literally on the line of profitability and the parents just worked forever and I've known those parents, they are the hardest working people I have ever met. I stayed in their house there just incredible people. But typical the margins were so slim because they were in the wholesale business. So the son comes in and says we're going to retail so they started with milk.

Uli Bennewitz: Retailing milk and wow that operation is now the biggest employer 01:11:00in the town of Middletown, Maryland. They have I think it's 23 delivery vans doing everything from milk to eggs, to meats to God knows what. They use the same software in their offices to schedule their delivery vans that UPS is using that's value-added agriculture. We have tried it on a much smaller scale. We do our own french fries, and we do sweet potato fries. And if you have a small potato farm, wow, you need to add value somehow, either by creating vodka or by selling frozen sweet potato fries and don't sell sweet potatoes wholesale. But literally deliver sweet potato fries to the nearest restaurant. That's the way to add value and malting is the same way. So yes, I do look at it as a agricultural very much an agricultural thing as well.

Richard Cox: And you're talking about the malting, you all were actually the 01:12:00first invoice from Riverbend, yeah.

Uli Bennewitz: Yes, we were. We were invoice number one from Riverbend.

Richard Cox: Which is?

Uli Bennewitz: I drove all the way up there just to get it because I was desperate for it. I just wanted to do that. It had to happen. So it was fun. But that's because I believe so strongly in that concept. And it needs again, but it takes time to develop an infrastructure. Look when we opened the brewery for God's sake. The only spare parts we could get was either Germany or California. That was it you couldn't get a spare part for a brewery anywhere in between. Now My God, we have a warehouse and Raleigh for breweries. I mean, it's like wow. I mean it's like kids in a candy store. Wow, they got tanks they got everything there. You can just go shopping in there it's fun. But that wasn't that's infrastructure. But it takes a while to develop all this. And farming the transition to farming takes even longer.

Richard Cox: Yeah, it does. So this might be a redundant question because you also own a farm but how do you choose which local ingredients you want to use in 01:13:00the restaurant and the brewery?

Uli Bennewitz: Wherever we can get it. The problem and I do sympathize with the restaurants with this farm to table movement because let's face it's not all sunshine and there's an awful lot of fudging going on. Every restaurant these days wants to be farm to table even McDonalds wants it would love to be farm to table. And you can't do it. And malt is no different. You can't get consistent malt every week for the amount of beer that you want to brew so you can only do it for specialties until it builds up over time. So it's just a process of trying to get the local malt people into business and feed them along until they get enough volume so we can actually make it a 12-month operation.

Uli Bennewitz: A restaurant is the same thing every restaurant Whole Foods had the same problem I mean they started with that problem. I admire Whole Foods, I really do they started with this local vegetable thing and of course they did a 01:14:00wonderful job. Farmer whatever. John Smith got his cabbage in there. And so they took a picture of John put it above the cabbage and everything else and then they started selling his cabbage. Well the cabbage was gone after two days but the picture still hung there. So now what? They have to fill it in with something else, that's the problem. It's supply chain and Tobiko in Durham is the company that does the best job on the food side of it to feed organic local farm products into the main markets.

Uli Bennewitz: They are the link in between and they do a hell of a job. But that's one company in North Carolina doing it. So it's again, it takes years to develop this. It took us 40 years to get into this mess.

Richard Cox: Right. So 30.

Uli Bennewitz: Why do we expect it's going to change in a year?

Richard Cox: Exactly, yeah. So how do you think using those local ingredients impacts the flavor of the beer?

Uli Bennewitz: I mean it obviously does. Are they better because of it? I don't 01:15:00know but can you tell an organic egg or a local egg sometimes from the factory egg? It's a lifestyle and a concept that you need to embrace not just are your beers will your beers win every award in the world because it's local malt? No, because there are some damn good national maltsters out there. So it's not necessarily that you improve your beer by buying local ingredients and that's a big misconception.

Richard Cox: Sure, right.

Uli Bennewitz: And same too with restaurants. Just because you use a local ingredient doesn't mean your food is better. It's still the chef that makes the difference but it's we just you need to look at this as an overall long term healthy community based system again. And by the way the brewpub has become a 01:16:00community gathering.

Richard Cox: It really has.

Uli Bennewitz: And that to me is fascinating. I mean, in the 90s it started we got phone calls from various parts cities on the east coast from developers, they were doing a development. The first thing they were looking for was a coffee shop and a brewpub. That's what they want in every development becomes and my daughter lives in DC and she is exactly that generation. The generation before her working in DC they always went outside bought a house in some subdivision with a lawn and then raised a family and then they commute into the city. And went on the weekends to the shopping mall.

Uli Bennewitz: My daughter's generation hates that thought of all of that. They want to live in the middle of the city within walking distance of the coffee shop of the brewpub of the everything else and it's become a community-based system. There is a lovely story to that out of England. Very recent last couple 01:17:00of years somebody opened a brewpub in England with that very concept in mind. And you know what he did? He covered the entire brewpub in aluminum foil. You know what that does?

Richard Cox: Heat.

Uli Bennewitz: No, it kills every cell phone reception.

Richard Cox: Ah.

Uli Bennewitz: Brilliant idea because if you are community and then you have 50 kids there drinking beer and just playing on their phones that ain't community. So he was going to teach them a lesson it was the dumbest business decision ever I'm sure. I could have had that because you're going to get nothing but complaints from his customers I mean it's a stupid thing to do. But I love the concept because it's just he had it right.

Richard Cox: Yeah, well yeah.

Uli Bennewitz: But it's a stupid decision anyway. But it's a fun story.

Richard Cox: Yeah.

Uli Bennewitz: I'm sure he took it out by now but he had the right idea.

Richard Cox: He had the right idea, exactly. So another area of interest is you've talked about is the diversification of the food chain as what was bringing in local. Can you talk a little bit about what that means?

Uli Bennewitz: Yes.

Richard Cox: Because it might be counterintuitive to the idea of bringing things more local but at the same time diversifying so.

Uli Bennewitz: Yeah, well its value added really more diversification. For example, if you grow barley and you sell barley on a small farm, you're going to go under. But if you use that barley to turn into malt and then retail the malt directly to your local brewery, there's enough value added in there that you can actually create a proper profitable sustainable business. And I've gone to the point now where I'm not talking about sustainable anymore. I'm just talking a profitable more than sustainable because I really feel that strongly that unless we do that we need to recapitalize rural America quite honest.

Uli Bennewitz: And what we've done with rural America is we practice what's called brain drain. Anybody in rural America if you have kids, you send to college never to return. And this whole movement is literally going back to the farm. There's a wonderful place near Chapel Hill. He did that he has his farm there. And then first thing he did is converted the barn into housing and now he 01:19:00has nothing but [inaudible 01:19:06] in there. And he creates a whole culture around these kids coming on his farm and working and it's great. It's a much healthier environment not just for less chemicals in the food system but also from a community-based system. So those are the two components that flow into that at the same time.

Richard Cox: Great. So swinging back around to beer in North Carolina. What do you see, again, having traveled as you have, what do you see as unique about Southern beer and specifically North Carolina beer?

Uli Bennewitz: Well, it's interesting I mean when it started, and I guess we have to blow our own horn because we're North Carolina. But it was the West Coast and there was North Carolina and there was nothing in between. And so we do have a leading role. Norfolk, Virginia For God's sake, I tried to sell beer 01:20:00in Norfolk, Virginia 15 years ago and you couldn't give away microbrewed beer North of Virginia. Now they're so proud of their breweries we feel like saying excuse me, where have you been for the last 20 years?

Uli Bennewitz: And I feel like everywhere else the same thing I go to Iowa now and they have brewpubs in Iowa really? I mean wow that's and it's just so we have a lead role and I think we need to and we have a very good geography in North Carolina which lends itself to that. Atlanta, Georgia is a much tougher animal because they have Atlanta. And then they have rural Georgia and they might as well be two different countries. We have the coast which is a little bit rural but then we have RDU and then we have the Triad and then we have Charlotte and then we have Asheville and these are all urban centers.

Uli Bennewitz: And these urban centers are all surrounded by small scale rule 01:21:00communities. So we have a much better opportunity to ring tie this knot. To literally integrate our rural we need to get back to where the rural areas around the communities become the breadbasket for the urban area. That's really where we need to go with that. And we haven't even covered canning or all this stuff that goes along with it and there's so much more to do and you can do I mean we already have now chefs going on to farms and doing farm dinners. If you would have told anybody that a chef comes to the farm and charges a hundred bucks for a plate 10 years ago, he'd say are you for real? That's now happening. So we are getting there.

Richard Cox: And related to that you now actually have breweries really doing what you've been doing which is food pairings either in the brewery or in select restaurants.

Uli Bennewitz: Yeah, it's happening. It's in North Carolina geography. What I'm 01:22:00trying to say is our geography is much easier than New York has the same problem. Up New York state, and then you've got the city. Wow, they're two different worlds and our state lends itself much better to that because we have this blend of urban and rural. So we have a unique opportunity to do that better than many other communities that other states have in the Union.

Richard Cox: Sure. So you've been both or are both an agricultural consultant and a locally focused farmer. So how do you feel that those two aspects of your life inform and influence one another?

Uli Bennewitz: Well, it was interesting when we and I'm a farm manager not an agricultural consultant.

Richard Cox: Sorry.

Uli Bennewitz: It doesn't matter. When I started, the local food movement was in its infancy. And in those days if you were involved in local food, you were politically considered to be on the left wing. And they always got after them 01:23:00for being hippies and left-wingers and God knows what. Well when I joined that was kind of tricky because I was at that time managing 10,000 acres of land for Tyson Foods. So nobody could ever accuse me of being some left wing hippie that's for sure. So that was always my wonderful role there and I wasn't the left wing nutcase that they all perceived these others to be. I never did, but they did.

Uli Bennewitz: And now of course it shifted. This is now the progressive side more than the left wing fringe. So we've moved this thing. But it's still there still is a rural versus urban thing. But even though the large-scale farming we're swinging back I have two farms that I manage in Illinois. We are now growing non GMO corn and that is exported to Korea for Pepsi in Korea, you talk 01:24:00about crazy. For the last 30, 40 years everything in large scale America, farming was GMO, GMO, GMO and we are forcing other countries to buy our GMO stuff even if they don't like it because we are America. And now wow we're turning this thing around and now suddenly these farmers are discovering their niche markets over there and we're going back to non-GMO.

Uli Bennewitz: So it's and large-scale farming is changing. You're talking about kicking and screaming they really kick and scream. Because now we have super weeds and God knows what and they're beginning to realize that this dream that they had of easy chemicals is coming to an end. So you see a different it really is changing even on that front. So it's fascinating to watch these two very different but they both have impacted by the environment.

Uli Bennewitz: They're both impacted by environmental changes of course. They're 01:25:00also impacted by the chemical use or the excesses of chemical use that it really is there are a lot of parallels between those two.

Richard Cox: Yeah, interesting. So what is it like to work in the craft brewing industry today?

Uli Bennewitz: Again, all I can say is when you see turn on the television at night and you see all this negativism about America about the future about everything else, go to a microbrewing convention, and look at the optimism. Look at the enthusiasm and look at the excitement in that industry. It is amazing. It is truly amazing. If we can channel that and broaden that out, we can take a whole generation and correct the mistakes that have been made in the past mostly by white old men by the way, so.

Uli Bennewitz: So it's time to push that. But that's really it's the enthusiasm in this industry. And I've been to culinary schools. It's the same thing. Go to a culinary school Johnson Wales in Charlotte. I don't know if you've ever been there, but it's a phenomenal campus. You walk in there and my God those kids, they are awesome. I mean every one of those kids you meet in that hallway will look you in the eye and say hello and see you ask if they can help you find something.

Uli Bennewitz: Go to the average college campus. Good luck those kids slouching around, not knowing where they want to go with their ear phones on. So and our goal is for every kid to go to college really, is that what we want to do? So I think we need to wake up politically and from an educational point of view and really I see more people when I started saying things like that years ago, I was 01:27:00worried to be attacked by university professors and they still do, but also by parents. Not anymore. You find more and more parents saying you're right craft is respectable.

Uli Bennewitz: And I've employed brewers that the parents were so disappointed that their kid became a brewer because they wanted him to really become a lawyer. Really? So that is changing. It's a value system that is changing. And that to me is we have a future. I mean if you think about the high tech industry in this country, what makes it so successful as compared to Europe is that enthusiasm, that young merging of cultures that makes it just blow up and try all sorts of things. And what literally the value is for high tech that's what microbrewing is in this new education system or hopefully soon to be education 01:28:00system. But in the new world of young kids as alternative to just year old college pile of debt, become a teacher and spend 40 years paying it off.

Richard Cox: So where do you think this enthusiasm and passion can take the brewing industry in like five years?

Uli Bennewitz: I think a long way. I think I mean obviously the brewing industry as compared to distilling if I would quite honestly if I would be 30 years younger today I wouldn't open a brewery I'd open a distillery after they changed the law.

Richard Cox: You've changed enough laws yourself.

Uli Bennewitz: I wouldn't touch it, believe me. But it is the dumbest thing ever that you're allowed to sell a bottle of vodka at your distillery to a customer a year and you're supposed to keep up with it, but you can't sell them a glass a shot, really? Wow. What religious thinking went into that one? So never mind. 01:29:00But I really think that obviously the field is crowded for microbrewing. There's no doubt about that. We all agree to that.

Uli Bennewitz: But the brewpub concept and the brewpub concept to me is where it is because you imagine this concept here as a brewpub concept, where you have a brewery on one side a bakery on the other a charcuterie on the third, a chef in there somewhere and then you have fresh eggs and everything else see what I'm saying. You put all that together and you are doing what they do in the valley with tech we could do with food, beer and craft and make it a craft hub that's where I hope we're going to go five years from now.

Richard Cox: And a community.

Uli Bennewitz: And obviously the community, it would be the community meeting place period.

Richard Cox: Exactly, right.

Uli Bennewitz: It really would be because you'd have it all under one roof.

Richard Cox: So within those next five years or so into the future, how do you see Weeping Radish growing?

Uli Bennewitz: We are the food, the butchery is where the growth is going to be the beer side of it we're going to have fun with now. That's fun, that's established, that works. As I said, we now do collaborations with local restaurants. We've never done that before. That is fun. We have a German guy who wants to export Kaffee Kölsch. He's coming in two weeks that's a unique project exporting a beer just one style Kaffee Kölsch and that's it. Just for that particular market and of course in marketing it's a German immigrant coming to America and then we import the beer back again. So that's I can see something like that happening.

Uli Bennewitz: But the collaboration with local restaurants is where I think the beer is going to go. I'm not interested in saying I want to grow to 5000 01:31:00barrels, 10,000 Barrels. I'm too old, too old for that. That's not me. And then on the charcuterie side of it, wow the sky is the limit there. We haven't even done prosciutto yet. And that's the next step. Doing good cured and do farmer raised charcuterie and then prosciutto and things like that. That's the sky is the limit on that.

Richard Cox: That sounds exciting.

Uli Bennewitz: So it really is exciting, it really is. We need to rethink the idea of our education to the point where we need to figure out a way of doing it. We need culinary we need craft training schools. We have the community colleges that for years and years and years, not quite sure what their mission was other than enabling more kids to go to college. We need to reconfigure that and create a better training system preferably with internships for all these crafts to a more formal system of education prior to catch look, my example that 01:32:00is and we've all talked about, we know politics of school shootings and all this stuff.

Uli Bennewitz: We have this attitude that now we have advanced classes. So you have a regular class, halfway through the class, the door opens and somebody walks in and says, okay, the advanced kids now leave the class, go to an advanced class. Really? What does that make the other kids feel like? They are obviously the dumb ones in the room. And it is so depressing to see that instead of saying, "Hey, give them something to do with it." Again, craft in German means hand, do something with your hands. And that is where the skill sets are for our community. It's with our hands, we brew with our hands, we cook with our hands, we cut meat with our hands we make breads with our hands. All this is hand in hands-on but he requires your hands to do that.

Richard Cox: Exactly.

Richard Cox: But that doesn't make you not smart as compared to the smart kids 01:33:00that go to college I resent that every step of the way. And I think we will stop a lot of our school shootings and everything else if we give the non-college balance kids an alternative. Basically what we do in education is we educate 25% of our population those that want to go to college the rest of them they whistle. They get some sort of primary education and then they're on their own. And that's what we need to work on it's a 75% and we will get them moving into this direction.

Richard Cox: Showing them that there's.

Uli Bennewitz: Showing them that there is a way. And it can be from furniture making to anything. I mean my God there are endless opportunities. This thing that the global economy is going to kill all the workforce is a joke, an absolute joke.

Richard Cox: So what would you say is your favorite beer from a North Carolina brewery other than Weeping Radish?

Uli Bennewitz: I am great fan of Highlands beers and Red Oak does a heller style 01:34:00beer that is excellent.

Richard Cox: Another lager house.

Uli Bennewitz: Yes, absolutely. And obviously, I'm in favor of I'm a great fan of lagers. No doubt about that. That's my heritage I can't help it.

Richard Cox: I understand. What would you say is Weeping Radish's flagship beer, not your personal favorite but what would you say if there's one that represents the brewery.

Uli Bennewitz: Well it's interesting, there is now a beer it's called Yours Truli. It's spelled T-R-U-L-I. Believe it or not. And it wasn't my idea yet again. It was the North Carolina Brewers Guild. They got together in Asheville and they brewed this beer in honor of our 30th anniversary. And it was a wheat beer and they really did their homework. And because our first beer we ever brewed in Manteo was a wheat beer.

Richard Cox: Oh, wow.

Uli Bennewitz: The first brewer we had was a German wheat beer guru. His PhD was on wheat beer and he came to America and brewed a beer that we served for the 01:35:00first time on July 4th, 1986, and it was the best wheat beer I have ever tried. We could not give it away in 86. Nobody knew what a wheat beer was.

Richard Cox: Now they would clamor for it.

Uli Bennewitz: But now my God so the brewers, the directors of the guild brewed this beer and called it Yours Truli and brewed in Asheville and they were kind enough to let me have the recipe and the logo and the everything so now it's brewed with local.

Richard Cox: That's awesome.

Uli Bennewitz: Tridicale malt so we're now doing it we've just launched it. And so we now have Yours Truli available at the Weeping Radish. Shameless self-promotion but what can I say?

Richard Cox: That's fine, that's great. Is that your favorite beer from Weeping Radish?

Uli Bennewitz: In the summer time it is, yeah.

Richard Cox: It is.

Uli Bennewitz: Yeah, and schwartzbier in the winter I like Black Radish in the wintertime.

Richard Cox: Oh yeah.

Uli Bennewitz: Black Radish we brewed that for the first time in 86 and again nobody knew what a black dark beer was and schwartzbier was unknown. So and we've done it consistently so it's those are our flagships really. And we have a Corolla gold which is lovely we're now doing that. We just got a new can came 01:36:00out and we have the Corolla wild horses in Corolla and we're doing a collaboration with the wild horse fund.

Richard Cox: Oh, that's cool.

Uli Bennewitz: And we have that wild horse beautiful can with a corolla wild horse on the can. And we do a donation for every can to the wild horse fund. And that's again that's part of this collaboration that microbrewers are so good at.

Richard Cox: That's amazing.

Uli Bennewitz: And it's really fun, I only have a problem with political collaborations. The local lobbyist always tells us you need to entertain your politicians at the brewery. I have a problem with that because if you invite one party's politician and he or she indicate your brewery then everybody assumes you're on his side. That may not be the case and then you invite the other one and he said well, the other party was there just now. So it puts you in the political hot seat between the two and I don't want to be in a political hot seat I just want to be in the community and not a political party. So there I 01:37:00have a problem trying to pick what to do beyond that no if it's a Corolla wild horse fund, we're at it we're doing it.

Richard Cox: Yeah, so I mean I think it's probably apparent so far but we haven't come right out and said that Weeping Radish was the first brewpub in the state.

Uli Bennewitz: Yes.

Richard Cox: It was a so now not only did you open the first brewpub, you had to change laws to do it, you had to not only like state laws and deal with local people and then you're dealing with various regulations you had to deal with just to get everything going so now when you sit here 30 years later right and look around how does it make you feel to see basically not to overstate it or I don't feel I'm overstating it but in a lot of ways you started this and now when you look around the how do you feel?

Uli Bennewitz: I only made one mistake when I passed that law. I should have written the law to say there shall be one and only one brewery in the state of 01:38:00North Carolina. That's what I should have done and it would have been much better. I would have been in the Caribbean somewhere in my yacht and then things would be much better. But then no, that's. It is humbling. It is truly humbling to see this happening in both two ways. It is humbling to see this growth, not just in the beer, but also the food side and the enthusiasm of people that are getting it.

Uli Bennewitz: It is also humbling for me that my Bavarian folks from where I was raised, their breweries are now coming to America, looking at what we are doing and they are now copying what we are doing and bringing it back to Bavaria. That to me is amazing. Because that's what I never never never thought.

Richard Cox: And that tradition there just goes back.

Uli Bennewitz: Exactly. I mean they've got the tradition my God like nothing on Earth. I mean but they are look, they are seeing the advantages of tradition, 01:39:00which is what they have. But it can lead to being stale, versus our system of non-tradition. But enthusiasm has its disadvantages, but it also has its advantages. And we see the advantages here. And I just especially if it all comes together. It's not just the beer, but it is farming, it is food, it is craft. It is a young generation focusing on this and we see change and hopefully what I really hope is going to happen. The problem with the old generation is the fear of the future that's their problem.

Uli Bennewitz: And this generation is the optimism going forward, which is the opposite of fear for the future. And that to me is I can walk around a 01:40:00microbrewing conference all day long just walking around and looking at these kids and watching what they do. And now of course beards are compulsory which is hilarious. But that's it's all fun. It is all fun. But the optimism for the future is what this is really all about at the end of the day. And of course let's live healthier. I mean, my God if you would have told me 40 years in the outer banks we're going to have three breweries one distillery and five gyms really I would have laughed all day long.

Uli Bennewitz: We didn't have gyms when we were younger, it didn't exist. We just sat back and did nothing. I mean we worked hard but we didn't do exercise. Now this combination of healthier with exercise changes this country for the better. There's no doubt about it.

Richard Cox: Absolutely.

Uli Bennewitz: Despite old white people. So I may have said that before.

Richard Cox: There's a certain trend. That's all I got. Is there anything else 01:41:00you'd like to add to round out your story?

Uli Bennewitz: No, I think this has been fun.

Richard Cox: Good.

Uli Bennewitz: I'm sure you only wanted 20 minutes and you got an hour.

Richard Cox: Oh, I got plenty. Wonderful. Thank you so much. It's been an honor. Thank you so much.

Uli Bennewitz: Not at all, not at all. It's been great fun.