EP054 | The Modern Beer Game

The Flemish city of Turnhout is the playing card capital of the world.

Turnhout is to playing cards what Kobe is to Japanese Wagyu beef; what Parma is to Italian Prosciutto; what Fez is to leather. The biggest card-producing company in the world, Cartamundi, is headquartered in Turnhout. 1.3 million decks of cards are produced there every single day. If you have ever played poker, performed a magic trick with cards, traded Pokémon cards, or played Monopoly, Risk, Clue, or Catan, then you’ve touched something that comes from Turnhout.

The beers of Brouwerij Het Nest of Turnhout are all branded according to a playing card theme. Their most famous beer is their Tripel—the Schuppenboer—Jack of Spades. They started out as a homebrewing collective in 2000 and then in 2015 set up their own brewery.

This podcast is about how a regional brewery in Belgium goes about navigating the pitfalls of the modern beer game: Bart Cuypers of Het Nest and his colleagues would suffer legal headaches due to their playing card branding; there would be COVID closures and a war in Ukraine that would send brewery energy costs through the roof across Europe; export markets on which they relied would collapse like a house of cards; and Belgium’s attitude to alcohol—especially amongst its young—would shift more quickly than they could ever have imagined. 

So—in the face of mounting industry challenges, how should a brewery play the modern beer game? 

The owners of Brouwerij Het Nest of Turnhout—the world capital of playing cards—gambled on the brewery’s future with strategy, ambition, and a little bit of luck.

Listen in to find out how.