Sprecher Brewing CEO Sharad Chadha Triples Sales, Expands Nationally After 2020 Acquisition

Sharad Chadha is president and chief executive officer for Sprecher Brewing Co., the well-known soda and beer maker located in Glendale. 

Chadha led a group of investors who acquired Sprecher in 2020. Since assuming leadership, he has led the company to triple its sales, grow its distribution by 400% and expand its footprint nationally.  

In that same time frame, Sprecher’s workforce has grown from 50 to 160 employees, and the company completed the expansion of its bottling line, introduced a can production line and expanded its warehouse.  

Chadha was one of the guests on “Milwaukee “Made.” The following Q&A is from his chat with show host David Caruso. 

Q: Why did you decide that Sprecher Brewing was right for you to be involved with? 

Chadha: “That was a hard decision. I went back and did a lot of soul searching. I thought in my heart I'd never made beer or soda in my life. I'd never been a small company person, but I wanted to do this entrepreneurial journey, and I saw that the company was doing okay. It wasn't growing, it had sort of flattened, but the brand was amazing. The quality of the product was just unbelievable, and people loved it. I have seen tattoos of the Sprecher logo on people and that's loyalty. And I'm like, what if we could get that sort of following and get it to be national and international. This could be a great brand that people would love to enjoy our beverage and it's a relatively inexpensive treat. It's locally sourced and handcrafted. Why not let everybody in America taste it?” 

Q: Covid was a huge shock right after you purchased the company. I'm sure it was not where your dreams were leading you to, but it seems like something very positive came out of it? 

Chadha: “What I learned during Covid was that it was a big shock to the whole system, supply chain disruption and the impact on human beings. But I also saw the opposite. What I saw was the human spirit and the ingenuity, the adaptation and the enterprising nature. We adapted really fast. We had to figure out how to keep producing what people like to drink. We had an essential product. People were enjoying it in their homes. We kept making made bottles of soda and beer and what we did was we thought, why not grow this brand? And it was a hard change, but we had to adapt and we made it happen.” 

Q: How important is it for you to work with a lot of other Wisconsin businesses in terms of sourcing your ingredients? 

Chadha: “We are a local craft beverage company and our consumers expect us to locally source and make everything by hand in small batches. A fire brew with honey, that's our core. So not just the Honey Crisp apple, we make the Door County cherry soda. We are working on a new one just for Christmas, a sugar cookie. So we keep doing this and we buy almost everything locally and that's what makes us different.” 

Q: So how much of this was a learning experience for you? 

Chadha: “Everything. It was the hard learning at first. It's still almost five years, but it's an uphill battle. It's a great market as it is a soda everybody likes. It's an affordable treat, but it's a tough market now. I heard somewhere that 5,000 new brands of beverages came about in the last few years. But only a 100 to 150 are going to make It. So it's not easy. We luckily have the longevity of almost 40 years, which makes us good, but it's always a challenge. But as long as consumers and all of you in Milwaukee keep supporting us, we are going to do just fine.” 

Q: What are you the most proud of about Sprecher 

Chadha: “When I go and travel anywhere in the country and I find it at a CVS or a Dollar Tree or a Walmart or Costco or Menards, I just feel proud. We got to nurture it and take care of it and keep those values and our passion with it. We cannot lose that. We are one of the few vertically integrated soda companies or beverage companies. We have a brewing team, a production bottling, canning, warehousing, sales. In all. 160 families depend on us. We do it all and we feel very proud of it. It's manufactured right here in Wisconsin, in the Midwest and in the heartland of our country.”