Business Spotlight: Mad about Mead

It’s a bit ironic that a company named after the Kansas City, Clinton and Springfield Railway made its way to Buffalo. While the Leaky Roof Railway never did roll through the city 40 miles northeast of Springfield, a Buffalo meadery that pays homage to the trail line is now a budding business peddling old-fashioned beverages.

“If you know your Buffalo history well enough to know that much, then, that we kept the railway theme is actually kind of funny,” says co-owner and head mead maker Todd Rock.

Fronted by a small taproom filled with train maps and railroad signs, Leaky Roof Meadery LLC owners Rock – the only full-time employee –  Andrew Steiger and Jhett Collins make mead with such brand names as KCC&S Cyser and High, Dry & Dusty. The labels portray steam locomotives, wood buildings and other images of another time, fitting for the honey-based alcohol that largely has lived outside the public consciousness for years.

Existing somewhere between beer and wine, Leaky Roof uses a variety of ingredients, including ginger and berries.

“It’s got a lot of versatility to it,” says Rock, who worked a stint as packaging manager at Mother’s Brewing Co. “With mead, I have even more room to play around with what I do.”

Nearly two full years into production, the company has expanded to four states and is now profitable.

Long road
Leaky Roof Meadery’s road to Buffalo was full of obstacles.

In late 2012, Rock, Steiger and Collins were laid off from Hellbender Meadery LLC, about a week before the Rogersville business planned its first shipment, says Rock, who was Hellbender’s head mead maker. Their employers at Hellbender were charged with synthetic drug distribution, bringing 11 months of planning to a screeching halt.

“Hellbender was a real meadery. It wasn’t just some front. It was a legitimate project that I was involved in and I wanted to see through,” Rock says. “What was holding us up was water disposal, not licensing or anything of that nature.

“We were waiting on those permits. They actually came in a week after it closed.”

After the setback, Rock says building their own venture ultimately was the better option.

The trio incorporated Leaky Roof in early 2013 and started production about a year later on an acre in Buffalo owned by Rock’s parents. Gathering startup capital and working with the federal government were part of the roller-coaster start.

In August 2013, Rock ran a successful Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign that netted $25,000. Two months later, a partial federal government shutdown delayed the company’s opening.

Leaky Roof was days away from receiving its federal license, but Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau officials were furloughed. It took until January 2014 to secure the proper licensing.

Now, Rock says the government is impacting the meadery in another way. With only three federal classifications for alcohol – beer, wine and spirits – Leaky Roof has had difficulty correctly labeling its products.

“Since it’s been so far removed from the American drinking experience, people have no frame of reference for it. They’re always trying to decide: Is it a beer? Is it a liquor? Is it a wine?” he says. “It’s not any of those.”

To satisfy governmental requirements, Rock says the meadery’s cans are labeled with the phrase “honey wine and natural flavors,” which to him sounded better than “other than standard wine.”

Four-state market
Through trade events, such as the recent Ozarks Beerfest at the Springfield Expo Center, Leaky Roof has spread the word about mead and solicited key partnerships with distributors.

The company now ships to four states: most of Missouri and Arkansas, and parts of Oklahoma and Louisiana.

The Louisiana connection happened by chance. While at a trade show in Little Rock, Ark., Rock met officials of Devine Wines & Spirits, a liquor store in small-town Ruston, La. They connected him with New Orleans-based distributor International Wines & Spirits Inc.

“I actually turned them down the first time we talked because I just didn’t think we were ready,” Rock says.

Devine Wines & Spirits owner Carol Dreyfus says the store sells at least eight cases of Leaky Roof a month.

“Meads are a new thing for people in our market, and we have really taken an approach about educating people on what they are,” she says of her client base that includes traveling salespeople and university students from Louisiana Tech and Grambling State. “Leaky Roof has definitely been a good specialty item for us to play with and really hone our skills on.”

Such relationships led to Leaky Roof selling 15,000 gallons in 2014. Rock projects a roughly 66 percent increase to 25,000 gallons this year. Sales, too, are estimated to exceed $300,000 by year’s end from $250,000 in 2014. Expenses are roughly $15,000 a month.

“No one else has tried to mass market mead in southwest Missouri,” Rock says, noting the closest Missouri meadery is in Columbia and whispers of another in Hermann have hit his taproom.

Leaky Roof has contracts with over 10 distributors. Wil Fischer Distributing Co. delivers the company’s mead throughout six southwest Missouri counties.

“On the coasts, mead is just blowing up,” says Jonathan Paulie, Wil Fischer’s specialty brands sales manager, noting Leaky Roof is the only mead the company distributes. “Like everything else, it takes a while to reach the Midwest.”

It’s an uphill battle similar to the craft beer craze of recent years. This year, Paulie says Wil Fischer distributed some 1,800 case equivalents of Leaky Roof’s mead.

“While 2,000 case equivalents isn’t setting the world on fire, it’s one of those products that we believe people’s palates are going to recognize and come around to,” he says.

Up next, Leaky Roof this month plans to sell its first glass-encased beverages. In partnership with Springfield’s White River Brewing Co., a bottled bourbon-aged wild flower mead is in the works. White River owner John “Buz” Hosfield is lending Leaky Roof its bottler in exchange for other machine maintenance work.

“We’ll see how long that kind of relationship can last,” Rock says.