When Jack’s Abby Craft Lagers launched in 2011, brewer friends told Founder and Co-owner Jack Hendler that he was out of his mind for opening a craft brewery dedicated exclusively to lagers. “Why would you do that?” they asked. “Craft beer is all about ales. That’s what consumers know and expect.”
Hendler, however, saw opportunity in lager. He considers Jack’s Abby to be part of a “new wave” of breweries that launched around that time, when brewery openings were picking up pace and start-ups were coming to market with a narrower, more niche-based focus to their business plans.
“It’s funny looking back six years later. We thought the market was near saturation in 2011 and, in our opinion, we couldn’t just brew a pale ale, an IPA, and a stout and succeed,” Hendler says. “We saw a lack of craft lagers in the market, and that was our opening to differentiate what we were doing.”