The 3 Things Cape May Brewing Discovered During Re-Branding

Starting with a simple website design, New Jersey’s Cape May Brewing realized that wasn’t going to be enough.

“In order to put together a website that exemplified who we are and where we are going as a company, we first needed to take a step back and truly define ourselves,” said Cape May co-founder and president Ryan Krill. The website went live on May 26 while the new bottle designs will be phased in throughout the summer.

“For the past six years, each of our bottles had a radically different look,” said vice president and co-founder Bob Krill. “Aside from our logo, the designs don’t otherwise communicate CMBC. They were all one-off designs with no real connection to one another or to CMBC. This is a departure from our previous design philosophy, but once our fans get used to the new design, our special and seasonal releases will be instantly recognizable on the shelf as CMBC products.”

The six-year-old brewery discovered three things it had been missing and wrote out them out during its re-branding: it’s core values, a mission statement and a statement of purpose: ‘To build a brewery that makes us proud.’

“This year, we’re poised to break the 10,000 barrel mark,” said COO and co-founder Chris Henke. The brewery produced 6,300 barrels in 2016, up 66 percent from its 2015 output. “We currently brew as much beer in one week as we did in our entire first year of business. We’ve grown up. Our new look needed to reflect that.”

The previous design showcased the entire state of New Jersey on the logo with a star where the brewery was located on the southern tip. Now, after its debut on May 26, the new Cape May logo is in a script that can be a cohesive look across multiple platforms. It has helped align all the Cape May products across the board.

Henke said the new design creates an expectation and the beer inside exceeds that expectation.

“The beer speaks for itself,” he said. “but we think that new fans will be able to judge us by our packaging.”

In keeping with the new design, Cape May introduced a full line of new merchandise, including apparel, accessories, and glassware, and new growlers as well.