Arty’s Premium Beverages, Inc

Timothy Pappin, left, and Ryan Mijal started Arty’s Premium Beverages in 2012 with a 20-gallon batch of Old Fashioneds.

18-6th St., Clintonville | 920-527-1092

A newspaper story in 2013 told Timothy Pappin and Ryan Mijal they had found their niche with Arty’s Premium Beverages, a business they created in 2012.
“A reporter from the Milwaukee Journal saw our products on a store shelf and contacted us about doing a story, Pappin said. “At the time, we assumed it would probably be a small mention somewhere in the business section. Instead, it turned into a full feature story and a front-page headline. For a company that had only been around about a year and was still operating on a very small scale, that was a pretty surreal moment. It was probably one of the first times we realized that people outside our immediate circle were starting to notice what we were building.”
Operating on a small scale meant they started the business with a batch of 20 gallons of Old Fashioneds in a small building, a place Pappin calls the “shack,” at Cloverleaf Lakes.
“We were essentially figuring out beverage manufacturing as we went because we could not find a co-packer willing to produce the small volumes we needed. We purchased a couple of small pieces of equipment off the Internet to meter the alcohol content and produced one Old Fashioned at a time.”
Neither Pappin, who had a background in supply chain and project management, nor Mijal, who had recently graduated from college with a degree in supply chain, had any traditional beverage-manufacturing experience.
“A lot of what we built at Arty’s came from applying supply chain, operations, and project-management thinking to a business we were learning from the ground up,” Pappin said.
“After a couple months, we knew the “shack” wasn’t going to work, so we rented half of a building at about 5,000-square-feet in Clintonville,” he said. “At the time, it was ample for what we needed.  Today, we own the building and have about 12,000 square feet of manufacturing space. We also utilize an additional offsite warehouse where we store about 2,000 pallets of inventory.”
Pappin said Arty’s was started with an idea for a ready-to-drink Wisconsin Old Fashioned. “The Old Fashioned is such a big part of Wisconsin culture, and knowing how popular the drink was, it seemed like there should be a convenient, ready-to-drink version of it,” he said. “That was really the beginning of Arty’s.”
Unable to find anyone willing to manufacture it at the scale they needed, they decided to do it themselves.
“Ryan and I did everything that needed to be done,” Pappin said. “We made the product, packaged it, sourced ingredients and materials, worked on equipment, handled sales and deliveries, and figured out the regulatory and manufacturing side of the business as we went.  My background in supply chain and project management naturally pushed me more toward the business, planning, customer and organizational side, while Ryan gravitated more toward operations and manufacturing. Over time, those responsibilities became much more defined as the company grew.”
As they developed the manufacturing process for Arty’s, they also became a contract manufacturer for other beverage companies.
According to Pappin, Arty’s produces roughly six-million units per year for their brand and other brands combined. Last year, he said, they manufactured products for more than 90 different beverage brands. Those customers range from entrepreneurs doing their first commercial production run to established beverage companies looking for additional manufacturing capacity.
“Today, hundreds of companies from all over the country come to Clintonville looking for exactly the kind of manufacturing partner we could not find ourselves,” Pappin said. “Our niche has always been helping smaller and growing beverage brands that may not fit the minimum production requirements of large manufacturers. That is a great opportunity, but it also means we have to be extremely efficient.”
A large part of their business is made up of growing regional and emerging brands.  None of its contract brands distribute nationally.
Our mantra is “the next big brand, isn’t big yet, that’s why they call Arty’s,” Pappin said. “We specifically support small and emerging brands. We source ingredients and packaging from a wide range of suppliers depending on the product and the customer’s needs. In some cases, the customer supplies ingredients; in others, Arty’s handles some or all of the procurement.”
Arty’s-owned products produced at their Clintonville facility include Old Fashioneds, Bloody Mary products — both ready to drink and non-alcohol mixes — along with Summer Hummers and Vodka Strawberry Lemonades. Recently, Arty’s expanded its product portfolio by adding its Tavern Series lineup including the Tavern Series Crème Collection that includes Grasshoppers and Brandy Alexanders. Coffee-based cream cocktails will be coming soon.
According to Pappin, Arty’s Brandy Old Fashioned and Bloody Mary run neck and neck as the most popular. One of their newest creations, though, is the drink he likes best.
“I’d say our new Grasshopper is probably my personal favorite right now,” he said. “I like it because it is smooth, rich and different from most ready-to-drink products on the market. It feels a little more like a true after-dinner cocktail than a typical canned drink, but I’d also put our Bloody Mary up against any of the competition. I think it has a great balance of flavor and spice and is one of the strongest products we make.”
Mijal, he said, is a fan of the Brandy Alexander, another one of the company’s new creations.
“He likes the traditional Wisconsin supper club drink vibe, and the Brandy Alexander really fits that category,” Pappin said. “It has that classic after-dinner feel, but in a convenient ready-to-drink format.”
Arty’s, which has 21 full-time employees and up to an additional 15 part-timers during the peak summer season, may soon be looking to expand.
“Growth has reached the point where our current facility limits what we can do,” Pappin said. “We are evaluating additional investment in equipment and facility capacity so we can continue growing the contract-manufacturing side of the business while also supporting our own brands. We have grown from a tiny startup operation to a business capable of producing approximately six-million units annually, and the next phase is making sure our facility and equipment can support the next level of growth.”
One of biggest challenges for Arty’s now, he said, is managing growth while maintaining the flexibility that made Arty’s successful in the first place.
Giving back to the community where they build their successful business is important to Pappin and Mijal.
“We make donations throughout the year to local organizations, events and causes whenever we can,” Pappin said. “We also host a summer party that is open to the public as well as a community Christmas party that is completely free for anyone who attends. Those events are our way of bringing people together and giving something back to the community.”
Looking back at those 20 gallons of Old Fashioneds made in a “shack” at Cloverleaf Lakes in 2012 and comparing that with what the company has become today is “pretty remarkable,” Pappin said. “That product really connects back to why Arty’s exists in the first place.”