Small Kansas breweries call new law a 'big win' for sales

DOUGLASS, Kan. (KSNW) - Green Frog Brewing has been open for about a month in the small town of Douglass. On Friday, they already had customers at four in the afternoon.

"We do some traditional styles and we do brown ales and red ales. Peanut butter porter. Honey beer," said Jay Sanderson, head brewer at Green Frog. "Open for four weeks, it has gone really, really well. Business has gone way better than we thought it would have. We sold out of four beers already so I am brewing faster than, the sales are going up faster than I can stay up. Which is a great problem to have."

Sanderson said they have invested in more equipment to make more beer. And they may need it now that they can sell beer outside their own doors without having to use a distributor in the wake of Kansas House Bill 2421 being signed into law.

The bill allows microbreweries to distribute their own beers and hard ciders to clubs and restaurants as well as at public venues.

"And people are like, wow, where's the beer from? It's from this place in Douglass," said Sanderson. "Now, with the new law going in on July 1st, we can take our beer to take it out to bars, restaurants, places where it will generate more foot traffic in here for us."

Sean Willcott brews beer and offers it for sale in northern Kansas with Willcott Brewing & Taproom of Holton.

"It was very challenging to get our product to market. There's a reason Kansas ranks 49th in the country for beer production," said Willcott on Friday. "This is Kansas Craft Beer Week, so this is a perfect time for such a huge industry win."

Willcott says they can now sell their product, literally, across the street now that a distributor is no longer required by state law to sell Kansas-brewed beers.

He also says this is a big win for small business owners making beer in the state.

"This is a good day because it allows us to go directly tell our story to potential customers instead of having to work through a distributor or a third party who doesn't know as much about us," said Sanderson. "You know the three-tier system harkens back to prohibition. And so Kansas was kind of ground zero for prohibition in a lot of ways, and so we have the most onerous laws in the country in terms of alcohol. This is the first time the distribution law has been changed since 1949, and so it's taken a while to get here, and it took a lot of effort to get this on the books."

At Green Frog, they are having the conversation about expansion now that they can sell beer on their own terms.

"Distributors will still be needed," said Sanderson. "But this is a big win for those of us that brew craft beer people already love across the state."