Promoting Excellence in Small Business: Yards Brewing Company

One of the eleven winners of the Chamber's 27th annual Excellence Awards Honoring Small Businesses is featured in this issue: Green Business of the Year, Yards Brewing Company. The Green Business of the Year award is sponsored by Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation. Be sure to look for additional winners in upcoming issues.

Tom Kehoe began his career in the brewing industry in college, cleaning kegs and working the bottling line at an English style micro-brewery in Maryland where he decided to make a career out of brewing beer.

Celebrating at the Excellence Awards Dinner: (l to r) Peter Longstreth, president, PIDC, and Tom Kehoe, founder and president, Yards Brewing Company

Returning to the area in 1994, Tom founded Yards Brewing Company. It has grown from a garage-sized brewery in Manayunk that produced 30 kegs a week into its current 26,000 sq. ft. location in Northern Liberties, capable of producing 70,000 kegs a year.

Distributing throughout the tri-state region, Yards created signature ales and a loyal following—with its Philadelphia Pale Ale named one of the best in the country by the New York Times. In 2003, Yards partnered with the historic City Tavern—a favorite bar of our nation’s founding fathers— to make a line of historic beer recreations based on the original recipes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Ben Franklin.

With a commitment to active reuse, Tom has worked with his employees to guide Yards into becoming a model of efficiency and sustainability. Yards is an exemplary example of how urban manufacturing can thrive in today’s economy and incorporate a green-design business model into the actual production process.

Among other features, the brewery integrates natural lighting, recycled concrete floors, wastewater management, water reclamation and heat reclamation. Cardboard and glass are recycled through Pedal Co-Op—taken to the local recycling plant by bicycles with trailers. Even its spent grains are reused as feed for local livestock. And, in January 2009, Yards became the first brewery in Pennsylvania to run entirely on wind-power.

The new tasting room also follows a sustainable model, with a bar top made from old bowling alley lanes, floors treated with a sustainable soy compound, and walls coated with an earthen clay layer that is sustainable and eco-friendly. As expansion plans continue, so will sustainability plans for improving an already very green plant.

Incorporated: 1994 | Philadelphia, PA 19123 | yardsbrewing.com