Beijing Boyce

Simon Pendergast (left) sells the first case of Pedigree in Beijing.

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If you frequent bars and restaurants that stock the likes of Brooklyn Lager, James Boag’s, or Dead Guy Ale, you have likely seen Simon Pendergast of Dxcel, the company that imports and distributes these and other “craft” beers in China. I sat down with Pendergast at The Den to ask him a few questions about the beer scene.

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A few years ago, I could count my beer choices in Beijing on the fingers of two hands. Now we have more than one hundred different bottled beers. What the heck happened?

We have seen a beer evolution in China, an increasing need for choice and variety. Certainly part of this is due to expatriates wanting beers they are used to drinking at home, but Chinese are also thirsting for new products and brands from the Western world. This is certainly not limited to clothes, cars, and fashion labels, but also includes beverages and foods.

Where do your beers sell best in Beijing and which ones are the favorites?

For the Australian beers, The Den is a big seller, and The Rickshaw has been a big supporter of both the American and Australian beers. Let’s Burger also sells a lot of Australian beer and, considering it is a small Japanese restaurant, La Sushi sells a lot of James Boag’s. While Acme is not a huge seller in most venues, it has a real following at Eudora Station — perhaps because we did some good staff training there and because the name translates to “beautiful girl.”

Sales have also been very good since we launched our American beers at the Parkson shopping center about a month ago to support a food promotion run by the American Agriultural Trade Office. And Jenny Lou’s also sells a lot of stock.

The biggest seller last summer was Four Points by Sheraton in Haidian with their “best brews program.” They had table cards to promote beers, including some of our brands, and it was RMB100 for as much as you could drink in four hours, and included a BBQ. Finally, if you are going to drink on Thursdays, you should be going to Kro’s Nest, where they have five of our beers for RMB80.

How does Beijing stack up as a beer city?

Beijing is more of a beer city, whereas Shanghai has more of a wine and cocktail culture. Certainly our sales are greater in Beijing. We’re now looking at northeast China, where people are big beer drinkers but also big baijiu drinkers. The effort to capture market share will include pushing our new product, KISS vodka from China. I like to think people will support a locally made vodka.

How did KISS vodka come about?

KISS makes vodka and liqueurs in Ningxi and is the first 100-percent foreign-owned grower and distiller. The main business is growing raspberries and then freezing them for export, but they are also producing their own vodka from corn. Their products include a raspberry vodka, with every bottle using 1.5 kilograms of raspberries, as well as raspberry, apple, and peach liqueurs.

How does the rest of Dxcel’s portfolio shape up?

At the moment, we have twelve American beers, such as Brooklyn, Red Seal, and Sam Adams, seven Australian beers, such as James Boag’s, VB, and Cascade, and two Spanish beers that are new to this market, including a fantastic one called Estrella Inedit that comes in 750 ML bottles and was created under the leadership of a chef from El Bulli restaurant in Spain to pair with food, especially oily foods, salads, asparagus, fish, and so on.

What new products can we expect?

We just received three beers from the UK that we will exculsively distribute in China. Those beers are Marston Pedigree, in 500 ML can, a bitter from Wells & Young called Bombadier that comes in 500 ML and 275 ML bottles, and Cains Export Lager in 375 ML bottles, a beer that hails from Liverpool. I’ve made a distinct choices in picking these beers — an ale, a bitter, and a lager — and already have a very positive response.

We are also hoping to have beers from Morocco and New Zealand in our portfolio after Spring Festival. And we are also sponsoring events– the next one is Whose Line Is It Anyway? on January 25 in Beijing.

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Note: During the interview, Pendergast talked about every one of his clients — from Nola to Blue Frog to Ned’s to Tim’s Texas BBQ. Any omissions here are due to my editing — blame me, not him.