BEHIND THE BITE
AGAINST THE GRAIN
Jackie O’s Calculated Approach to Northwestern Expansion
I
Story by Justin Thompson and Abby Ludwig | Photos by Meghan Rowe
t’s nearly noon on a Tuesday and a charcoal-colored Toyota is humming west up Route 33. The stretch of road looks much like the last one, and almost identical to the next: flanked on either side by huge rock faces and deep wooded valleys. Inside, Art Oestrike keeps his eye on the road and his mind on business. He makes this roundtrip Athens-to-Columbus weekly, after all. On this day, the Jackie O’s owner recounts how he spearheaded the brewery’s massive growth, and muses about what its future might look like. And with every mile he puts behind him, he’s inching closer to Columbus—the next beer frontier he plans to conquer. “The hustle never stops,” Oestrike says. “It never stops!” And Oestrike knows a thing or two about hustle. In 2005 he bought O’Hooleys Irish Pub in Athens. The next year, Jackie O’s opened in its place. It had character and vigor, and most importantly, the new brewery concocted world class beer. The imprint Jackie O’s has made on Ohio’s beer scene in only 15 years is remarkable, especially given the crowded field. “When we started out, we were one of 23 breweries in the state,” Oestrike says. “Today, we’re three of the 360 breweries in the state.” As Oestrike acknowledges, that number is “crazy,” and it speaks to what really makes Jackie O’s such a singular operation: no move, no development, no pivot is done on a whim. Each decision regarding the brewery’s expansion fits into one of Oestrike’s one-, three-, or five-year plans. “If you look at the series of five-year plans, a couple of them got done in 18 months, and a few of them are still unfinished 10 or 15 years later,” he says. “That’s just the nature of looking at the business from that kind of perspective.”
10 | Summer/Fall 2021
Owner Art Oestrike mans the fermenting vessels at Jackie O’s Taproom & Production Brewery in Athens.
