Summit Brewing Company Beer Dividend

My dad, for a portion of his career, was a very successful investment banker. He helped companies in their merger and acquisition activities, and also helped to take private companies public. Many times, as a form of compensation, dad received equity in these transactions. At times these became worthless, as the companies didn’t thrive and failed, but sometimes things worked out extremely well. 

One such instance was capitalization of Summit Brewery. The stock of this company is now privately held and employee-owned, and dad maintained his stake in his portfolio ever since the initial transaction. Prior to dad’s passing, this stock was transferred to mom, and she’s held it ever since. 

About a year ago, mom let me know that as a stockholder, she has access to two free cases of beer from them every month, as a “beer dividend.” She wanted to know if I was interested. Uh, free beer? Strike that, free Summit beer? Yeah. I’m interested. 

I asked the details behind the whole situation and found out the history. So for years and years our family had access to this benefit, and I just found out about it. Unbelievable. Dad was never a beer drinker, so I’m sure such a dividend meant nothing to him, thus it was easy to forget. Had it been for brandy, Irish whiskey or something like that, he’d have been all over it. Alas, the dividend was also “use or lose,” so there was no option to recover all of the years that we missed. The only thing I could do was to take advantage of it as much as we possibly could. 

I was recently in the Twin Cities for a research project, and my time happened to coincide with a dividend day, so I paid a trip to my favorite brewery.  As it was President's Day, I called ahead to make sure that it was indeed dividend day (their schedule can change due to holidays.)  The nice receptionist informed me that yes, it was that special day, but unfortunately all they had was Pilsener.  You can read the reviews here. 

Only Pilsener, huh?  It will be hard, but I guess I'll be able to make due.  

Thanks, dad.  While you were a decade or so late (hello - your son likes beer) I appreciate the fruits of your hard work nonetheless.