Schlafly Beer and the Renaissance in St. Louis
Innovations Case Narrative: Schlafly Beer
by Tom Schlafly
T. S. Eliot, the St. Louis native who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948, wrote in The Dry Salvages:
I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god — sullen, untamed and intractable . . .
His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom.
Eliot’s nursery bedroom was located on Locust Street in the City of St. Louis, three blocks west of where The Schlafly Tap Room sits today. Although he wrote these lines while living in London, we know from his allusion to his nursery bedroom that he was referring to the Mississippi, not the Thames.
These words are especially appropriate for the story of Schlafly Beer for several reasons. First, the Mississippi River is the reason St. Louis was founded more than 250 years ago and one of the reasons it grew to become the city it is today. Second, the journey of any entrepreneur is as unpredictable as the flow of a mighty, untamed river. Finally, this is a story about beer . . . a strong brown god that has its own deities in the religions of ancient Sumeria and Egypt.
Beer also has the status of a strong brown god in St. Louis, where it has been crucial to the city’s identity since the first half of the 19th century. While the first brewery in St. Louis opened in 1809, the story really began 20 years later…[click here to read the full open access case narrative in MIT Press Innovations journal for free.]
Tom Schlafly is the Chairman and Cofounder of The Saint Louis Brewery, LLC, which has brewed Schlafly Beer since 1991 and is now the largest American-owned brewery in Missouri. Tom is also a partner at the St. Louis law firm Thompson Coburn LLP. He received his undergraduate and law degrees from Georgetown University. Tom is a St. Louis native and lives in the Central West End neighborhood in St. Louis with his wife, Ulrike, a native of Cologne, Germany.
