Home Delivery Became a Lifeline for Breweries During Lockdown. Von Ebert Was One of the First to Perfect the System.

Way back when many of us assumed that vigorous hand-washing was enough to keep COVID at bay, Von Ebert founder Tom S. Cook began noticing that a few of his colleagues were establishing home-delivery services—Baerlic Brewing and Reverend Nat’s Hard Cider among them. At that point, he wondered whether his brewery should do the same.

So Cook phoned a friend who worked at Oregon Health & Science University, wanting to hear from an expert what we might be in for.

“There was talk about this lasting for two to three weeks,” he says, “and I remember not wanting to start up a delivery service.”

Then his friend gave him a grim diagnosis: “Based on historical pandemics, anything less than 18 months will be a medical miracle,” Cook remembers hearing. “My jaw dropped. ‘I thought you were going to say four or five weeks.’”

Von Ebert’s next chapter was set: “After that call,” he recounts, “I said, ‘Time for delivery.’”

When Gov. Kate Brown ordered all restaurants and bars to halt on-premises consumption last March, Cook was forced to furlough his hourly staff. So a barebones crew quickly got to work setting up the dispatch service—taking photos of the inventory, building a website, figuring out delivery logistics and teaching themselves how to use the online payment system.

On April 1—just 15 days after the lockdown—the brewery’s fleet of disco dance light-colored vans branded with its boar mascot hit the streets hauling four-packs of tallboys to a high-strung population stuck at home and ready to find ways to take the edge off. Cook and his remaining staffers were happy to provide some form relief because that also meant the business could stay afloat.

“The team was solely focused on ‘How do we keep going?’” Cook says. “‘How do we keep building? How do we survive?’”

The service was enough to keep employees busy for up to 10 hours a day—picking orders and creating routes on Google Maps each morning, then making deliveries until dinnertime. Despite customer enthusiasm surrounding brewery-to-doorstep drops, challenges were numerous.

Once, the Von Ebert team accidentally programmed the website in a way that made its most popular beers appear to be extremely limited, or out of stock altogether. Then, in an effort to save money on beer labels, Cook resorted to Avery stickers—the kind you’d slap on an envelope or use as a name tag—in lieu of full-color designs. And even after a full day of delivery, the business was pulling in roughly as much revenue as a single hour of in-house service before a typical Portland Timbers match at the Pearl pub.

But small victories were everywhere in those early months. Cook was particularly buoyed by the eager response to Von Ebert’s New American Pils, released just days after the spring lockdown. Even without the buzz normally achieved with draft distribution and butts on barstools, that beer became a hot seller and was the first in the brewery’s series of Pilsners to showcase hops from around the world. Cook also hoped that dosing batches with Citra hops post-boil would distinguish New American from other Pilsners and provide a subtle infusion of citrus flavors.

“This idea of folks who like certain aspects of hoppy beer but are willing to dip their toes in the water of craft lager,” he explains, “I think we were able to bridge the gap for them.”

Other wins were less obvious to satisfied beer drinkers, but no less important to the fate of Von Ebert. The success of the shuttle service throughout April, May and June allowed Cook to retain staff, and the community support touched him in a way that went beyond dollars and cents.

“There was no money going into getting delivery off the ground, other than word of mouth, email blasts and social media,” he says. “That was cool to see that people cared about Von Ebert.”

Get It Here: Pearl Pub, 131 NW 13th Ave., 503-820-7721, vonebertbrewing.com. 11:30am-9pm Sunday-Thursday, 11:30am-10pm, Friday-Saturday. Glendoveer Pub, 14021 NE Glisan St., 503-878-8708. 3-9pm Monday-Tuesday, 11:30am-9pm Wednesday-Thursday, 11:30am-10pm Friday-Saturday, 11:30am-8pm Sunday.