The Strange Case of Peoples Beer in Nigeria

Theodore Mack had a line he often repeated for reporters. "When the going gets rough, I send me."

Theodore Mack

In 1972, the going for Mack got very rough. Since becoming president of Peoples Brewing in 1970 he had discovered just how brutal the beer business could be. In early 1972, Mack's brewery was faltering. Bills were going unpaid and the brewery’s board of directors was demanding answers. That fall, the downward thrust turned fatal. Peoples Brewing stopped making beer during the third week of October 1972. And that's when things got weird.

On November 2, Peoples Brewing sued the federal government claiming the brewery had been blocked from securing contracts to supply beer to the military. The lawsuit was an act of desperation. Peoples had already defaulted on loans backed by the Small Business Administration. The federal government was threatening to seize the brewery.

While that was playing out, Mack announced that he was considering moving Peoples to Alabama. On Friday, December 1, Mack led Alabama state legislator Fred D. Gray on a tour of his moribund brewery in Oshkosh. The two of them were childhood friends. After the tour, they drove to Milwaukee and held a news conference. Mack told reporters he would visit Alabama within the next 10 days. He said, "I don't run around the country unless I mean business."

The obstacles to this adventure would have been monumental. Considering the position he was in, it’s extremely unlikely that Mack would be able to raise the money or credit needed to move the brewery's operations to Alabama. Then there’s the fact that commercial brewing in Alabama wasn't even legal in 1972. Back in Oshkosh, Mack tempered his bluster. The Daily Northwestern reported on December 4 that Mack now "disclaimed" the stories about moving the brewery to Alabama.

Then came the plans for Africa. On January 8, 1973, Mack left for Nigeria. Four days later, he arrived in Ogbomosho, a city in southwest Nigeria. There, Mack met with a group of potential investors and pitched his idea for building a brewery in the city. In a letter signed by Mack dated January 16, 1973, he affirmed that the Nigerians, “Were very interested in the People’s Brewery Company being established in Ogbomosho.” The plan was to build a 200,000 barrel brewery at a proposed cost of $8 million. “It is believed by both parties that extreme haste is of the utmost essence in this matter,” Mack concluded.

Such high hopes. They may have been farfetched, but the idea itself was sound. The Nigerian beer market was booming and on the verge of another upsurge of growth. Mack’s plan might have worked.

Beer in Nigeria, 1970s.

What a drag it must have been for him to come back to the hopeless mess still waiting in Oshkosh. A couple of weeks after returning from Nigeria, Mack sent out a letter on Peoples Brewing Company stationary. The letter opened with...

Dear Stockholder:
There will be a stockholders meeting Tuesday, February 20, 1973, at 10:00 a.m., at Jabber’s Bar, 1518 South Main Street, Oshkosh. Jabber’s is adjacent to the brewery.

The shuttered brewery and the neighboring Jabbers Bar. The Pabst sign in front of Jabber's replaced a sign for Peoples Beer that had hung there when the brewery was open.

The meeting had to be held at the bar next door because there were no lights in the brewery. The power had been cut off. Mack went on in the letter to tell of the latest woes including the news that the Marshall & Ilsley Bank had informed him that “The Peoples Brewing Company has reverted back to the federal government.” It was a roundabout way of telling the shareholders that their money was lost. On a brighter note, Mack mentioned his recent trip to Nigeria. But he was not currently “in a position to reveal what transpired there.”

Fifteen months later there were wrecking balls knocking down the brewery on South Main in Oshkosh. The plan for the brewery in Nigeria came to nothing. The Peoples Brewing Company was dead. Mack quit the beer business. He remained in Oshkosh and went to work selling insurance for New York Life.