Samuel Adams, in partnership with Entrepreneur Media, is hosting a ‘Pitch Room Wild Card‘ component to their Brewing The American Dream Competition.  If you aren’t aware, this is a business competition that is only open to food and beverage product companies and the winner gets a $10,000 grant and a year of mentorship from Samuel Adams.  The Wild Card Pitch Room is the virtual part of this contest where entrepreneurs from around the US can send in videos to be considered for the competition.  Sound interesting?  Listen to this podcast with Jennifer Glanville of Samuel Adams today because the deadline for this contest is fast approaching.

 

TRANSCRIPT:

Jennifer L:

We’re talking today with Jennifer Glanville, Director of Brewery Programs for Samuel Adams about the Brewing the American Dream competition. As you’ll hear in this podcast, the Brewing the American Dream competition is a really interesting and unique opportunity for food and beverage entrepreneurs. So I’m really excited to be able to share more about it with you. First of all, thank you, Jennifer, for joining us today.

 

Jennifer G:

Thanks for having me.

 

Jennifer L:

Really appreciate it. We should mention to the listeners, as you and I were talking right before we started recording that you are actually in a real live brewery, there might be some background noise but that is just Samuel Adams at work.

 

Jennifer G:

It is. I’m actually at the Samuel Adams brewery in Boston. We’re actively brewing today, we have some tours going on so you’re going to hear probably a lot of tours and noises going on in the background.

 

Jennifer L:

Sounds like a great work environment, I love it.

 

Jennifer G:

It is good.

 

Jennifer L:

Obviously what we’re here to talk about today is the Brewing the American Dream competition as a whole and also this Wild Card Pitch Room competition. First of all, could you just tell our listeners about the Brewing the American Dream competition in case they haven’t heard about it. How did it come about? What’s the history behind it?

 

Jennifer G:

Sure, the Samuel Adams Brewing the American Dream program began in 2008 and it is a micro lending and coaching and mentoring program. At the end of the day, it’s not just about writing a check, the coaching and mentoring portion of our program really is equally important as getting a loan. Over 30 years ago, Jim Koch, our founder and brewer wanted to start Samuel Adams. He brewed our first beer in his kitchen. He wanted to start a brewery and he had trouble getting access to capital. As it is today, even 30 years later it’s very tough for small businesses to get access to capital no matter how small the loan might be. Also he was really looking for some nuts and bolts business advice. Often people overlook that. It’s kind of like you don’t know what you don’t know so he really wanted to get some advice from people and was struggling trying to find that.

 

 

So in 2008, we founded the Samuel Adams Brewing the American Dream program to again, we partnered with Accion USA, that’s our micro lender and then we do the coaching and mentoring programs. It’s sort of like speed dating, but it’s speed coaching. They’re 20 minute sessions and we have them around different locations in the count...