Chicago's Revolution Brewing took a circuitous route to success

Aamer Madhani | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Revolutionary vision, Revolutionary Brewing Josh Deth is the founder of Revolution Brewing, Illinois largest craft brewery and one of the fastest growing breweries in the country. Deth is one of USA TODAY's 2015 Small Business Innovator of the Year nominees.

CHICAGO — In a few years, Revolution Brewing has become, at least to this city’s beer drinkers, as ubiquitous a brand as Vienna Beef and Garrett Popcorn.

Now, Revolution looks to impress beer drinkers beyond the Windy City.

One of the fastest growing craft brewers in the USA, Revolution began selling cans and kegs in Massachusetts this month. The brewery is set to complete the first phase of an expansion of its 90,000-square-foot facility on the northwest side of Chicago by the end of the year.

Revolution sells its brews in a third state, Ohio, and co-founder Josh Deth and his wife, Revolution CFO Krista Sahakian, are looking to increase their presence in the years ahead.

When the next phase of their expansion is completed in the first half of 2016, Revolution says it will have the capacity to brew more than 180,000 barrels a year and become more than just Chicago’s beloved brewery.

“We’ve grown in no time into being a regional type brewery,” says Deth, whose brewery has about 180 employees. “It’s been a really steep learning curve, with a lot of change and investment in the brewery. Customers are certainly driving it.”

Revolution is one of 10 finalists for USA TODAY's Small Business Innovator of the Year award. More nominee profiles will run in the coming weeks, and a winner will be announced in December.

The company’s growth is impressive even in comparison with the rest of the high-flying craft beer industry, which continues to expand rapidly as thirsty American beer drinkers seek more complex flavors and are willing to pay a premium for them.

The American craft beer segment saw 18% growth last year on $19.6 billion in sales, according to the Brewers Association. More than 22 million barrels of craft beer were produced last year, compared with 8.5 million barrels in 2008.

The privately owned Revolution, which produced 1,300 barrels out of its brewpub in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood in 2010, is on pace to sell 65,000 barrels in 2015. Deth (rhymes with teeth) projects he will brew more than 100,000 barrels in 2016.

The beer company is best known for its India Pale Ale, Anti-Hero IPA, which accounts for more than 50% of its sales. The brewer makes dozens of other beers, including the award-winning Cross of Gold (a golden ale), Bottom Up Wit (a Belgian-style white ale) and Eugene Porter (named after the American union leader and perennial Socialist Party candidate Eugene V. Debs).

In the pre-Bernie Sanders era, “I used to have to explain what a market socialist was,” Deth joked during an interview at the Revolution brewery in Chicago’s Avondale neighborhood. “Socialist running for president? People would think that’s crazy.”

For all the success that Revolution and Deth have had in a relatively short period of time, the 41-year-old beermaker says he had more than his share of fits and starts along the way.

His dream of launching a craft brewery dates back to his days as a college student at the University of Michigan, where he took up home brewing. He later finagled jobs at Chicago’s now-defunct Golden Prairie and at Goose Island, the Chicago brewery that was bought by mega-beermaker Anheuser-Busch InBev in 2011 and brews most of its beer out-of-state.

In 2000, Deth quit his job at Goose Island — where he had been elevated to brewer — and set out to launch Revolution. A couple of efforts to land a space fell through the cracks.

His dream would take him on a nearly decade-long detour in which he worked for a non-profit group on affordable housing issues, earned a graduate degree in urban planning, opened a vegetarian restaurant with friends and served as executive director of a neighborhood chamber of commerce. A dozen banks would turn him and his investors down as the on-and-off effort to revive the Revolution project continued.

“Revolution could have died some horrible death so many times along the way, but Josh never gave up,” Sahakian says.

Finally, in 2008, the stars began aligning. Deth found an enormous space with a tin ceiling to open his brewpub on a yet-to-gentrify block in Chicago’s trendy Logan Square neighborhood. A bank finally approved his loan.

It would take nearly two more years of dealing with construction and zoning issues, but the brewpub — which has drawn a big crowd from Day One — opened early in 2010. Two years later, he opened the brewery in Avondale.

What advice does Deth offer budding entrepreneurs? He emphasizes that it's essential to be willing to adjust, often frequently, to reach your goal. As banks were turning him down, Deth and his investors paid close attention to what concerned the lenders and massaged their business plan accordingly.

He advises entrepreneurs to value their employees and keep in mind what it would be like "if they are gone tomorrow."

"You spend a lot on training people, growing people in an organization. You want to build a family essentially, and that’s what our philosophy is."

Deth says at times it appeared that Revolution — which is a play on how the surge of interest in craft beer has upended the industry and an homage to Chicago’s long history of labor and community organizing — wasn’t going to happen. In retrospect, he says the circuitous route may have something to do with his company’s early success.

“When you’re just working in a brewery, you can’t soak up all the skills and knowledge that are needed,” Deth says “I was able to do a little bit of everything. I was a dabbler. For a while, it seemed like I was doing all these crazy different things in life that didn’t make a lot of sense. It just seemed to be all over the place, but every little job and experience I had I can point to how it affected our success over time.”