USA, OH: Blank Slate Brewing Co. owner explains sudden closure

Blank Slate Brewing Co., housed in Cincinnati's East End, abruptly closed on Aug. 7. Now its founder is talking about why he decided to shutter the long-running brewery, Cincinnati Business Courier reported on August 10.

Scott LaFollette wrote in the Blank Slate blog that the brewery had run out of money.

"There is no big conspiracy, no secret takeover, no legal troubles or personal issues," he wrote. "We simply don’t have enough cash to keep going."

LaFollette wrote that Blank Slate was built and funded by himself on a shoestring budget. He said he went without a salary and never personally made a dime.

"There have been at least a half-dozen times through the years that I thought we were going to have to go out of business but I always managed to cobble together enough money to pay the bills," he wrote. "I was determined that we would succeed doing things 'the right way”' by putting the product above all else and growing business honestly and organically, on our own, by our rules, and without outside influences."

That being said, he realized the need to expand and took on funders in 2015 to grow the brewery's capacity. But by the time that was in place in late 2016, the brewing landscape in Cincinnati had changed.

"A dozen more breweries had opened, all better funded than us with nicer taprooms and slicker marketing," he wrote. "Instead of our volume growing as expected it stagnated and in some areas actually decreased. We simply did not have the means to keep up with the ever increasing costs of trying to stand out in a crowd when compared to the next shiny new thing coming down the pike."

LaFollette wrote that he appreciates everyone who supported the brewery over the years, and compared shutting down the brewery and letting go of employees to breaking up a family. He also said he was proud of everything the brewery had accomplished.

"Everything we brewed was for the love of the craft above all else," he said. "Maybe it wasn’t to the extent that I had hoped but I’d like to believe that we helped educate and evolve the palate of beer drinkers in this town at least a little bit."

Blank Slate was the 10th-largest brewery in Greater Cincinnati, based on 860 local barrels brewed in 2015, according to Business Courier research.

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