Congratulations to SJL client, Deb Carey For Receiving The WI Tech Council’s “Seize the Day” Award
New Glarus Brewing's Deb Carey honored for seizing Wisconsin beer scene
Barry Adams, WI STate Journal
When New Glarus Brewing Company released its first batch of beer in late 1993, it was far from a household name.
But over the past 30 years, after millions of barrels of beer and an increasingly competitive craft beer market, Deb Carey has guided the company she founded with husband Dan Carey into national prominence, even though its products are only sold in Wisconsin.
Next month, Deb Carey, the company’s president, will be honored during a luncheon at the Wisconsin Entrepreneurs’ Conference presented by the Madison-based Wisconsin Technology Council.
Carey will receive the Ken Hendricks Memorial “Seize the Day” award at the Italian Community Center in Milwaukee on June 1. The award, which celebrates entrepreneurial leaders who have been crucial to Wisconsin’s economic growth, is named in honor of the late Ken Hendricks, co-founder of ABC Supply in Beloit and 2006 “Seize the Day” award winner. Hendricks, a billionaire, died a year later in a fall at his home.
“Daniel and Deb have combined their business management and brewing professionalism with a philosophy based on individuality, cooperation and use of 100% natural ingredients to produce world class, hand-crafted beers such as ‘Spotted Cow,’” the WTC said in a release announcing the award.
Carey is just the latest winner from the Madison area of the “Seize the Day” award. Others include Jan Eddy of software company Wingra Technologies, and Kevin Conroy of Exact Sciences, both in Madison; Bill Linton of Promega and Jim Berbee of Berbee Information Networks Corp., both in Fitchburg; Fred Foster of Electronic Theatre Controls in Middleton, and Craig and Lea Culver of Culver Franchising System in Prairie du Sac.
A Wisconsin native, Deb Carey became the first woman to found and operate a brewery in the country and has helped pave the way for other female brewers who continue to grow in numbers. Carey was first runner-up for the 2011 National Small Business Person of the Year and met with President Barack Obama on small-business issues in late 2012. A few months later, in February 2013, she sat with first lady Michelle Obama during the State of the Union speech.
The Careys started their business with a 10,000-square-foot brewery along the Little Sugar River and in 2007 opened a $21 million, 75,000-square-foot brewing plant on the village’s south side. The sprawling and picturesque facility, on a hill overlooking New Glarus, has undergone multiple expansions over the years and has helped make New Glarus Brewing Company the 12th-largest craft brewer in the country. In 2022, the company produced more than 230,000 barrels of beer.
Spotted Cow, the company’s signature beer, launched in 1997.
“When we came out with it, there was a lot of resistance. I mean serious resistance. I had a wholesaler, somebody who’s important to me in a big market who would not pick up the beer because they said ‘You do not expect us to put something like Spotted Cow on the same sales sheet as Budweiser, do you?,’” Carey told the Wisconsin State Journal in 2007. “My guys in Madison were more used to me so they went along with it but even they were like ‘Do you want to do this? Deb, can you really see a guy walking up to a bar and ordering a Spotted Cow?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah!’ But in my mind I was thinking ‘This is either going to be a huge hit or a total flop.’”
