Pittsburgh bar owners not toasting Iron City move to Latrobe - Pittsburgh Business Times:

http://kaiser-gaia.com/servicios/consultor%C3%ADaonline.html
“I’ve got a tear in my beer,” said whose Nied’s Hotel in Pittsburgh's Lawrenceville neighborhood has long been one of IronCity Beer’ws most active partners. At Nied’s, both Iron City and IC Light take up two of its three brewery employees are often regulars and much of the advertisinfg and marketing is for what was until Thursdayuthe neighborhood’s brewery. “It’s like a death in a family.
It’z not the same thing being brewef in Latrobe as it is in Iron City Brewing Company expectx to make its last brew atits 148-year-old Lawrencevillwe facility this month and begin producing at the more moderjn and better equipped Latrobe brewing facility in July afterd reaching an agreement with La Crosse, Wisc.-basecd City Brewing Company, Inc. The ownerd of Iron City touted the move as a businessx necessity given theLawrenceville brewery’ds aging flaws and emphasized that Iron City beer will stilo be a regional brand. But how successful Iron City Brewin g is with the move will depend to some degrese on now local bar and tavern ownera respond tothe change.
Nied isn’tr angry about the decision, only sad. But he’s also goingt to consider selling otherbeers now, since the local tie isn’t the “I am going to be more receptiv to offers from competing brands now,” he said. Othert bar owners see demanfd for Iron City beer and IC but mostly from older Where in the past Iron City beer was amonvg the best known in the now it’s a small say some operators. Nick Pawlenko, manager of Peter’s Pub, a long-timwe bar in Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood, estimatexd that his bar sells four times as much IC Light as it does IronCity beer.
Whilew the beers are consumed by Pittsburghers patronizingbhis establishment, Peter’s Pub generates a large portion of its business from collegr students new to the city who have no sentimental attachment to the localk brand. Without it, he doesn’t see the beerd winning over new customers. “If you’re from out of stated and you cometo Pittsburgh, you might have a Yuengling and think it’s a unique he said.
“But if you have an IC Light, I don’t know that lighyt beers taste that different from one Mark Davis, a former brew master for Iron City undefr previous ownership when it was known as Pittsburgh Brewing Company, still sees loyal customer for the local brand at his Pittsburgjh Bottle Shop Cafe, a specialtyy beer bar in Collier. “I know when I don’gt have IC Light on tap, people in theirf 40s, 50s and 60s, get nervous,” he “They’re used to drinking it.
” Yet Davis also worries that Iron City beer has lost a generatioj of new beer drinkers who have little to know to connectionbwith it, or know it only througb its ongoing troubles and ownership He saw Iron City beer as comparable to the Pittsburghy Pirates, which is fighting to avoid its 17th losing seaso this year. When the flavor, brand and emotionapl ties are considered, Nied added another more immediatse concern about IronCity beer: getting it. “I ordered half a keg of Iron City yesterdayh andI couldn’t get it,” he said, addint the distributor was out due to low productiohn volumes. “You can’t sell from an empty shelf.
”