A major player in the Tampa Bay craft beer business is looking to expand his company elsewhere.
Beer drinkers lined up outside Cigar City Brewing on Saturday morning eager to get their hands on a craft brew.
It’s that kind of passion for the product that has turned Joey Redner’s Tampa Business into a huge success in its first six years.
“People are looking not just at the quality of product where it came from,” said Redner, the founder and CEO of the brewery.
So with all that in mind, what would cause a successful businessman from Florida to want to move somewhere else?
“When we keep seeing legal challenges - and there’s usually rumblings of things that do and don’t happen - it does. in my opinion. create a little bit of a hostile climate,” Redner said.
Redner’s talking about a challenge by the big distributors and liquor companies that could ultimately stop craft brewers from selling beer at their breweries.
It’s something Bay News 9 reported on last week. And now Redner, a fifth-generation Floridian, tells Bay News 9 that is part of the reason he’s looking at opening a new location in the Carolinas, not in his hometown.
“If I had the opportunity to put the brewery somewhere where I could have that experience where it’s interactive between the customer and the brewery, of course that’s just a natural choice.”
Redner said regardless, he’ll always have some footprint in Florida, and even though the tasting room is no longer his main source of revenue, he won’t soon forget what got him here.
“We’re not where we are today without our tasting room, and that’s not even debatable," he said.
There's no word yet on what is going to happen with the challenge.