Chris Jones

Stevens Point (Wis.) Journal

Lakemaid Beer began in 2008%2C targeting anglers with a dozen brews

Part of brand inspiration came from freshwater mermaid sculpture on Rainy Lake in Fort Frances%2C Ontario

Minneapolis ad agency Pocket Hercules conceived idea for the fishermen%27s beer%2C owns brand

STEVENS POINT, Wis. — While Amazon talks about delivering packages via drones, one brewery actuallyis doing it.

Or did.

Lakemaid Beer, which is brewed here about 90 miles west of Green Bay, Wis., gained almost instant notoriety Thursday after a YouTube video showed a 12-pack of its Frosty Winter Lager being delivered via unmanned aerial vehicle to a group of ice anglers on Lake Waconia in Minnesota.

That got the attention of the Federal Aviation Administration, which immediately — though perhaps temporarily — grounded the beer drones.

The beer, which went into production in 2008 and is brewed on contract by Stevens Point Brewery, needed a new marketing approach, Lakemaid President Jack Supple said. He's also a partner in Minneapolis ad agency Pocket Hercules, which owns the brand.

"It's the Super Bowl time of year and we're getting run over by Clydesdales, so we thought we needed to do something," he said in a Friday interview with the Stevens Point (Wis.) Journal. "I saw the Amazon video on 60 Minutes and I thought, 'That's not going to happen. You're going to order some new shoes and they're going to fly it to you?' "

Supple swiped online retailer Amazon's idea and applied it to his brew with a twist.

Who likes beer more than ice fishermen? What other place can rival a frozen lake for vast, open space with nothing for a drone to crash into? What better way to gin up some publicity than to offer ice-cold beer, delivered to your ice shack by battery-powered, camera-guided, remote-control airships?

But when FAA officials saw the YouTube video, which has more than 130,000 views, it shot the idea out of the sky.

"(The FAA) sent me a very big, 87-page (document) called the Integration of Civil Unmanned Systems in the National Airspace System Roadmap," which outlines regulations related to the commercial use of drones, he said.

In short, the regulations appear to forbid drone deliveries for the time being. FAA spokesman Les Door said the agency's prime concern with unmanned drones is public safety in the air and on the ground, but a case of beer lowered from the sky by a $15,000 drone, the price of the DJI-S800 model drone seen on YouTube, could happen soon.

"We do expect to put out a proposed rule on small unmanned aircraft later this year and that rule will offer the regulations, policies, training standards and other things that will apply to a wide variety of users of unmanned aircraft under 55 pounds, including commercial operations," he said Friday.

Supple is counting on that change.

"We're going to continue to set up drone ports throughout the upper Midwest with some of our best retailers who are on lake shores," he said.

Lakemade has 12 brews, each with mermaid-themed muses based on fish species in the region's lakes. It is distributed in eight states — Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin — with plans to expand in the future.

The company plans to have drone delivery fully operational by spring 2015 if the FAA gives the green light.