A century and a half of beer
Louis Moritz made the first beer in a factory in Barcelona in the Raval neighbourhood, at a time when beer was not so popular as it is today. Barcelona was vibrant, the city walls were coming down and work had begun on the Eixample district. Taking advantage of the success in sales and the start of the Cerdà Plan, Moritz acquired a site on Ronda Sant Antoni where it would build a new factory that opened in 1864, and which for years would be the largest of its kind in Catalonia. In 1897, the entrepreneur acquired premises on the corner of Sepúlveda and Muntaner in which the Cerveseria Moritz was opened (commonly known as Can Moritz) for the beer produced only metres away and which was for a time FC Barcelona's HQ. The founder died in 1920 and his heirs regained the factory, which had left the family's hands, and went on to renovate and modernise it. The brand's good reputation was established during this decade and sales went up: in 1930 the firm controlled 34% of the Catalan market.
Until the Spanish Civil War broke out. Moritz was collectivised -as happened to many other companies- and in 1938 stopped producing beer in the Catalan capital. With the start of the Franco regime and despite regaining control of the factory, the company's production came under state control and exports were prohibited. The company would not function as it had before the war until the end of the 1940s.
Sales recovered with the stabilisation of the economy and the boom in tourism. By the beginning of the 1960s, the factory on Ronda Sant Antoni had become too small and stopped production in 1967. Moritz then merged with Lamot to create Cerveses Barcelona and production was moved to Parets del Vallès. During this time, Moritz had sports teams, it created La Pubilla Catalana competition, composed the Sardana Moritz and sponsored concerts and festivals.
Nevertheless, the oil crisis and growing competition in the industry during the 1970s seriously affected the company. Cerveses Barcelona disappeared in 1978 and went into liquidation.
In the 1980s, the Roehrichs -Moritz's descendents- recovered the brand in order to relaunch it on the market at some point, and that moment came in 2004. Moritz was reborn from the ashes. "The brand's relaunch was a risky business project but one with a significant emotional component," says Martínez.
Shaking up the market
Moritz reappeared as an avantgarde beer, labelled in Catalan, with a surprising communication strategy and going into areas where other brands were absent. And with a strong focus on building the brand: "We can sell litres if we have a good brand," the marketing director says about the beer.
For this reason, Moritz's strategy has been to attack those areas in which the industry's large companies are not so active. The objective has been to find new consumers while appealing to the nostalgia of older ones. Thus, Moritz has infiltrated the areas of high cuisine, social media and has taken great care over its communication, local festivals and bars, and has introduced innovative products into supermarket lines.
Moritz is a small -but uncomfortable- thorn in the side of a limited market dominated by Heineken, Mahou-San Miguel and Damm. And they can be proud that "we have shaken up the establishment."
Gastronomy as a breakwater
The breakwater of the brand is the renovated Fàbrica Moritz, a work by French architect Jean Nouvel, who had already built the Torre Agbar in Barcelona. This 30-million-euro renovation was one of Nouvel's projects that took him the longest to complete, due to the quantity of details that were preserved, which bring past and future together: old beer vats, Catalan arches, decorative hop buds and gilded ears of barley, original tiled floors and even an air raid shelter, which today is part of the Louis 1856 restaurant. This 4,500 square metre venue is a complex for leisure, food and culture where "we want things to happen and that has become one of the city's hotspots," says Martínez.
Gastronomy helps branding and that is why, apart from Louis 1856, which opened last year, Moritz also now has the Velódromo -the mythical literary café hangout on Muntaner that was taken over in 2009- and the Bistrot de Vins, which opened this year.
Innovation
Over 160 years, Moritz has never stopped innovating: in 1923 it introduced black beer to the Catalan market, in 2007 it began producing Aigua de Moritz -their alcohol-free beer made with water from Montseny's Font d'Or-, in 2009 they relaunched Epidor, and in 2013, Barcelona Born 17.14. Apart from fresh beers and other varieties produced and consumed in the Fàbrica.
Moreover, the company has a good relationship with the country's craft beer makers. "It is a community that is doing things well and we identify with them, as we are small like them," says the marketing director. In fact, Moritz has collaborated with other craft beer brands in the Artafans project or in the meeting of the craft beer makers' association.
Fans on social media
From the first moment the brand knew it had to find a place on social media. "It was an area in which the other brands were not strong and could not react so quickly," says Martínez. Today, Moritz has a strong community of followers on the net that "has been very active and who are fans of the brand."
"Tentatively into new markets"
Cerveses Moritz forecasts growth of 10% or 11% this year compared with 2015, when turnover was 42 million euros with numbers in the red amounting to 2.5 million euros, although the company predicts it will go into profit before 2020. According to the firm, this growth has been based on the consolidation of the brand both in Spain and in foreign markets, which account for 5% of turnover and expected to rise to over 15% in the next four years.
Today, Catalonia accounts for 80% of beer sales, with a market share of 2.5% in the food sector and 8% in the country's hostelry sector, providing work for more than 300 people. The remaining 20% of turnover is accounted for by the 21 countries in which the brand is sold. The company has focused on European markets and the countries in which the brand is growing most are the United Kingdom and Germany, but also Australia and South Korea.
Mortiz is also sold in the Basque Country and Castelló, where the company is now ready to grow further, and also the Balearic Islands, "where the brand and the product are working really well and, as we share a culture, we are beginning to think about them in terms of marketing." The company has two distributors in Catalonia, located in Barcelona and Girona (Distribucions 972), while it supplies the rest of the markets through independent distributors. "We always go tentatively when opening new markets, because we want the distributors to understand the product," says Martínez.
The brewery always goes into new areas through the hostelry channel, which accounts for 75% of business volume, compared with 25% in the food sector, although they are thinking about how to balance these percentages. For the moment in Catalonia, Moritz has grown 14% in the food sector.
The company's production of 13 million litres a year will be maintained in Zaragoza to ensure its viability.
Another 160 years
For Martínez, "this project is not a sprint, Moritz is a marathon." According to what he says, "relaunching a beer brand involves savage investment and the balance can regress if you stop investing. But we believe a lot in this project." That is so much the case that "often when you want to improve results you cut back on marketing, and I am happy to say that not only will we not cut it back but will make it fly."
Moritz knows that the beer sector is a war and it understands its segment: "Whoever lives by the price, dies by the price. We have a long way to go, but not at any cost." Martínez believes that the future is rosy for Moritz: "There is room in the market for anyone who does things well and the proof is that, for example, craft beers are not exactly cheap."
Now it is about consolidating "healthy growth, in the best sense of the word," because according to the brewery's marketing director, "there are still a lot of people to get to know us and to come into the world of Moritz, the final aim is for Moritz to last another 160 years."