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Old City Soda and Platform Beer Co. have partnered on a distribution deal.
(Marc Bona, cleveland.com)
CLEVELAND, Ohio - Platform Beer Co. might have to think about changing its name. In the same week the brewery rolled out its cider program, it also announced it will begin producing and distributing Old City Soda within Ohio.
The arrangement allows for Old City to increase its production on its sodas, which include a variety of flavors: lemon, lime, cinnamon, strawberry-ginger, hibiscus and grapefruit.
Sean Adkins, co-founder of Old City Soda, said the deal will allow for increased distribution "not only in Northeast Ohio but all of Ohio."
"We both have strategic aspirations to grow our businesses," he said. "It's a little more than a 'work for hire' kind of thing."
Platform began as incubator business on Lorain Avenue for up-and-coming brewers and has expanded steadily, adding the old Leisy Brewery plant as a production facility with full canning line. A tasting room is in the works. The self-distributed company also has been working on a tasting room and distribution plant in Columbus.
But Platform has been more than a company simply expanding; it's about diversification. And it's not the first time the craft brewery and two-year Cleveland-based craft-soda company have worked together. The two collaborated on Orange Blossom Gose.
Old City has a heavy restaurant focus with 60-plus accounts, Adkins said, but with limited retail distribution. That retail presence will be growing after the first of the year, he said.
This year, the company also opened Old City Libations on Detroit Avenue in Gordon Square - "a soda bar," Adkins calls it.
"It's essentially a bar-restaurant wrapped around our sodas," said Adkins, who said the location features draft sodas plus cocktails in a "fast-casual concept."