When The Motley Fool set out to discover America’s best publicly traded companies, our team combed through more than 1,700 names and examined how well they served four groups of stakeholders: investors, customers, employees, and the world at large. The result was our list of the 25 best companies in America. Of course, picking so few winners leaves quite a few remarkably high-quality companies that deserve an honorable mention. One company that finished in the top 40 was Boston Beer .

In 1984, Jim Koch gave up a consulting career to brew beer in his kitchen from an old family recipe. He named his beer Samuel Adams, and the Boston Beer Company was born. From that first batch in the kitchen, Boston Beer has grown to become a $1.8 billion company.

The popularity of Sam Adams was a big factor in the emergence of small, high-quality craft breweries in recent decades. Today, Sam Adams ships about 3 million barrels of beer annually. That means that while it makes up only about 1% of the overall U.S. beer market, Boston Beer controls nearly a fifth of the fast-growing craft-beer segment. Boston Beer hasn’t let the heady brew of success get to its head, though. The company remains devoted to nurturing other brewers and small entrepreneurs, inspired to help other small businesses overcome the hurdles Jim Koch encountered when he was just starting out.

The case for Boston Beer
Boston Beer certainly helped smaller brewers just by introducing drinkers nationwide to craft beers, and it’s gone a step further through its “Brewing the American Dream” program, which provides loans and business coaching to entrepreneurs in the food, beverage, and hospitality industry. In 2007, Koch and some employees volunteered to paint a community center. Afterwards, Koch realized he’d “just taken about $10,000 worth of management time and talent, and turned it into about $1,000 worth of painting,” and set about to make better use of philanthropic resources.

Partnering with the small-business microlending organization ACCION, Boston Beer invested $250,000 in lending capital that has become $1.4 million in startup financing. Boston Beer‘s executives also take time to coach and counsel loan recipients, making the company’s expertise and resources available to small entrepreneurs who would struggle to get started otherwise.

Far from seeing new craft brewers as competitors, Boston Beer has actively encouraged small brewers through its philanthropy, even going so far as to give out 40,000 pounds of its own hops to struggling brewers during a 2008 global hops shortage. This approach hasn’t just created jobs and spurred community development, but it’s also allowed Boston Beer to maintain a cool image as a real craft brewer even as it has grown to dominate the space.

Boston Beer is undoubtedly a “cool” place to work, what with the company’s entrepreneurial culture and focus on hip craft beers. The Boston Globe also recognized Boston Beer as having the region’s greatest perk: Employees get to take home two …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance