Prost Profiles: Rob Richenberg from BrewBuddies

Rob is the new curator for the Rochester Real Beer Expo. So learn a bit more about him and his craft journey.

Rob Richenberg is never shy to share an opinion. He’s not afraid to tell you what he thinks and he doesn’t cower away from ruffling some feathers after sharing those thoughts.

That’s why talking about beer with Rob is always such an interesting experience. For the past decade, Rob has been one of the most outspoken and interesting people in the western New York beer scene. First in his role as beverage manager/beer selector at the Beer Market in Rochester’s College Town development and then during the last three years as a beer distributor/interrupter at BrewBuddies.

Rob started BrewBuddies (which we will explain further and explore more later in this newsletter) after he left his post at the Beer Market (now known as Beerhead Bar and Eatery). And now he has eagerly and anxiously taken up my mantle as beer curator for the Rochester Real Beer Expo, which takes places on Saturday, June 7, at Rochester’s Innovative Field.

Tickets are on sale now. (A reminder: Those 600 VIP tickets always sell out well in advance of the event, so don’t delay there.) Participant announcements are slowly trickling out now via the Expo’s social media pages. Already, they’ve announced Saratoga Spring’s Whitman Brewing and NYC’s Gun Hill Brewing as newcomers. Plus, the local participant vote wrapped up last month. Rob said he expects to welcome about 70 beverage producers to the event.

So with Rob taking over the curator gig, I thought it would be educational to get to know him a little bit better. What follows is a condensed and slightly edited transcript of our recent conversation. (Yes, I had to edit and trim it quite a bit, because Rob can talk – anyone who has ever crossed paths with him can attest to that. But it’s also what makes him good at what he does, that passion.)

Cleveland Prost: What does your resume look like and what are some of the steps on your craft beer journey that got us to this point?

Rob Richenberg: Weirdly, of all places, it started at Sunoco. So back in the early 2010s, Sunoco had the Craft Beer Exchange, which was their initiative where they were selling craft beer by the growler. It was a very lofty initiative at the time and one of the things they wanted to do was they wanted all full- and part-time employees to be level one Cicerone certified. It’s definitely cool. So they sent two employees from every store and through happenstance, our store manager had some other obligation, so my best friend went and he shared the packet of information with me. I knew a little bit about beer, but I didn’t know that there were a 100-plus beer styles. That lit the spark. Up until that point, Bud, Miller, Coors was beer to me.

Coincidentally, a friend of my dad’s (Rob’s dad worked at Constellation for 31 years, he provided for context) had started a craft beer bar chain. They were looking at western New York as a potential location because of the beer scene here. They opened a spot in Rochester and my dad got me an interview. So I drove down to Pittsburgh, interviewed for this job, and I just blew them away with a lot of beer facts that I now know to be untrue. Like the old story about how extra hops were needed in IPAs for preservation during the journey to India. He was really impressed by my charisma. And at this point, I only had retail beer experience. I did nine weeks of training in Chicago and then moved back to Rochester and waited a year for Beer Market to open back in 2015.

CP: Wow, it has been a decade, holy shit.

RR: I didn’t could use profanity, hell yeah. So Beer Market, 2015 started there and right out of the gate, I wanted to do as much as I could to set us apart. We had 50 draft lines. I went out of my way to make relationships with every craft brewery I could. We did a lot of house beers. The Neapolitan Scotch Ale that Rohrbach releases occasionally, that was a pitch we gave to Rohrbach’s. That beer turned out to be an awesome hit. They canned the second batch and put the Beer Market logo on it, that was pretty cool. In my seven years at Beer Market, I think we did 62 different house beers with different breweries. I rode that for a long time. And then during the pandemic, I did a home beer delivery thing at Beer Market. Corporate didn’t think that was going to work. But then I sold 50 cases of beer out of my car, directly from the store’s inventory. We transitioned that into a subscription program. Over that period, it came about that corporate and I weren’t really getting along. I think there is something inherently anti-corporate about craft beer. It doesn’t really mesh well with me.

Note: And before I could even ask the next question, Rob launched into a tirade about the traditional three-tier distribution model and how, he believes, it inhibits brewery growth and creativity.

RR, continued: And I was also seeing with some of these house beers that the traditional distributor system wasn’t really doing what was best for anybody but themselves. We had some times – I don’t want to name names or talk trash about anyone – but we had some situations where the distributor would tell us we aren’t going to bring that in. Right around the time I left Beer Market in 2021, I thought, ‘There has to be a better way to do this.’ I realized it would just have to be me. Early 2022, when I was still working at Sager, I pitched this idea to (Sager co-founder/head brewer) Paul (Guarracini), ‘What if someone did, essentially, beer distribution on a contract basis?’ It’s kind of like a craft distributor and New York has these laws that let us do this. It will allow breweries to combine their resources in a way that is like a co-op situation, instead of the traditional wholesale model. Why get contracts involved in these situations (with traditional distributors)? I know from some local breweries who I won’t name, but distributors are around to keep these breweries in line and control their growth basically. We have a lot of examples where the brewery would be better off selling their own beer but they don’t have the money to fight a giant multi-billion dollar company. So they’re just stuck in the system and that’s where BrewBuddies comes in.

Another note: This isn’t paid or sponsored content. It’s a conversation between two dudes with more than a decade of experience each in the local craft beer scene and intended to amplify a different perspective.

RR, continued: At this point, including the meaderies and cideries, I sell for 26 brands. (His list of clients includes Spencerport’s Brindle Haus Brewing, Syracuse’s Bullfinch Brewing, Lancaster’s Brazen Brewing, Batavia’s Eli Fish Brewing, and Rochester-based Iron Tug Brewing.) It extends all the way out to Long Island. I have a brand that I sell down there. And I am just starting off with another brand in New York City. It has been an undertaking. I am still pretty much a one-man operation. I’ve got some help on the accounting and marketing side of things. Day-to-day operations, sales, deliveries, it’s all me.

CP: So you’re in the car a lot. Let’s talk about the transition of the Beer Expo. What made you want to jump at that opportunity to fill my gigantic shoes?

RR: You left some big shoes for me to fill.

CP: Oh, bullshit, lol.

RR: I’ve always weirdly had a passion for stupid, thankless logistics projects. I like dealing with the minutiae of stuff. Coming from the Beer Market where I was controlling 50 draft lines and 500 bottles, there was always a lot of back and forth and balancing. It was wrangling cats as we tried to figure out what was going to be available and when. This project of organizing 70 breweries, a winery, a bunch of cideries, and some other vendors, it just sounds really fun to me. No disrespect to what you did or what Joe (McBane, the original curator for a decade) did, but it’s like one of those things where I feel like I can do a good job. I enjoy a challenge. I’ve had a mostly enjoyable time dealing with the minutiae of getting stuff for the Expo. We’re doing some stuff that BASWA (the Business Association of the South Wedge Area, the group that organizes and benefits from the event) have never done. It’s a stupid, thankless job, but I’m excited. I was also able to attract a lot of out-of-town breweries.

CP: Hit me with a few of the highlights. What breweries are you really excited about?

RR: I am really excited for Twin Elephant (from New Jersey). I am really excited for some of the New York state brands that have been slowly creeping up in distro in this area but haven’t seen wider distro. Brands like Whitman, they’re making really phenomenal lagers. Round Table is coming up.

Note: Rob goes on another rant about what he feels is the insanity of the traditional distributor model here. There’s no need to rehash that bit, because everyone knows where he stands. And if you want to know more, all you have to do is ask him and he’ll gladly share his unfiltered views.

RR, continued: I am really excited for Round Table and Whitman. Gun Hill is coming back up.

Note: More will be revealed in the coming weeks.

RR, continued: The Expo has always been about showcasing weird and rare and off-the-wall stuff. We’re not trying to have these be a showcase of all the beers you can find at Wegmans. No disrespect to Wegmans, but that’s why, in a lot of cases, we’re going directly to the brewery, instead of dealing with the distributor. The distributors don’t have a vested interest in bringing in anything weird that they’re not gonna sell more of outside the event. That’s what is going to make the event good. I am not trying to get everyone’s 15-month barrel-aged milkshake stout. But hey, maybe bring your California common that doesn’t normally leave the taproom. Bring something interesting, even if it’s not the hyped release. We want to have a variety of options. I’ve been joking that I’m basically curating a 240-tap lineup.

A final note: It’s pretty wild to think I’ve been working on this independent publication for over two years now. In that time, I’ve published nearly 250 newsletters, highlighted some of my favorite people in the industry, curated two beers festivals (that featured 150 participants and 4,600 attendees), and continued to break all the biggest news in the region (closures, consolidations, openings, etc.).

The Cleveland Prost remains the preeminent source for regional beer news. If you own a brewery, bar, or beer-adjacent business, this is the best place to reach the nerds you wanna be in front of. So I remain open to sponsorships, advertisements, and sponsored content. Feel free to reach out to me at clevelandprost@gmail.com for more. And more than anything, thanks for all the support. None of this would be possible without the devoted (and thirsty) audience.