Meet Distilling & Craft Sales Manager for KY, OH & TN: Rick Barney, Relationship Builder

About Malteurop Malting Company (MMC)

We are a collective of craftsmen devoted to making exceptional malt. We are innovators, designers, scientists, farmers, brewers and artists. We are your link from farm to beer, and we want you to know us as a vital part of the craft beer community.

Our business is craft. Our craft is malt. Our malt is your business.

Meet Rick Barney

Many companies talk about their employees as family. But in the case of Malteurop’s Rick Barney, family truly is embedded in his work.

Rick is actually Rick Barney Jr. He follows both his father and grandfather in the malting, brewing, and distilling industries.

Rick’s dad, Rick Barney Sr., spent nearly 50 years in malting and recently retired from MMC at the end of 2020. Rick Sr. transitioned from Krause Milling Co. to Froedtert Malt in 1972. He navigated a few corporate mergers and acquisitions before finishing the last 12 years of his career with MMC, which purchased Froedtert in 2008.

While Rick’s father retired from an illustrious career in sales, his grandfather was a brewing chemist, a master brewer, and a brewery owner throughout his lifetime, making Rick a third generation of the family in the industry.

Though he’s inherited a fierce passion for what he does from his father, Rick remembers back to his grandfather’s stories. Those are what ignited the spark that would become a lifelong journey.

“My grandfather worked as a brewer at Anheuser Busch in St. Louis in the 1930s. He went into the army and in World War II in Algiers, Africa; Casablanca; Naples, Italy; he was ordered to repair damaged breweries there and brew American beer for the troops,” Rick recounts.

“I remember him telling me stories as a young boy, and I think that started my interest and passion for the industry.”

His grandfather’s tales and being on the sidelines as his father and grandfather swapped stories about their shared passion for the industry left an enormous impression on Rick. The relationship he saw between them and the folks that they worked with helped him realize the essence of what makes him good at his job.

“If you focus on relationships first, the rest will come in time. Customer service is becoming a lost art, and if you honestly care about your customers and are engaged, you will succeed.”

What is your background before MMC?

Rick’s family background easily points him directly at the malting industry, but his educational background and early career was actually in media and marketing. A good portion of that career was spent working with distilleries and actually flowed quite naturally into his MMC position in distilling and craft sales.

“I’m a customer guy. I’m here to please the customer and make them happy with what we’re all about: our products, our service, our attention, how we jump on issues, how we solve things quickly. Customer relations has been a part of my entire career even before working with MMC.”

So how did you decide to make the move to MMC?

Believe it or not, it was always Rick’s dream to take over his father’s role at Malteurop.

Rick had a successful marketing firm for about 20 years, where much of his time was spent with clients in the distilling industry. That’s not at all surprising considering that he was entrenched in Louisville, Kentucky, the land of Bourbon.

Having been close to the industry from his family life to his career in marketing, Rick always felt like he could be the successor to his father in the distilling industry. He had almost given up any hope that it might happen. His father simply enjoyed what he was doing so much that he worked well beyond the traditional age of retirement.

That is until last year, when Rick Barney Sr. retired from MMC as a spry 81-year-old.

“I thought I was out of luck because Dad kept going on, but when MMC decided to get into craft a few years back and became an option for all sizes of breweries, I stepped up and was very vocal and said ‘look no further,’” said Rick.

“I was always in distilleries every chance I could get. And I’d visit craft breweries when those came into the forefront. But I had long given up to follow in my dad’s footsteps because he was going to work to the end of his life,” he laughed.

What are some of your career accomplishments?

Though Rick has accolades from playing basketball through college and awards from his career in marketing and the like, he doesn’t really like to talk about them all that much. While it’s always comforting to be recognized for such accomplishments, they’re not really what he focuses on as being important when it comes to how he would hope that others see him.

“I’m try to have a positive influence in a world that needs it desperately,” Rick said.

As for what he brings to the table at MMC, he’s of course glad to be following in his father’s footsteps, but also believes he has a lot to offer as the company works hard to build partners in the craft industry.

“At 58 years old now, I’d like to think I bring a lot of business experience and wisdom to our craft team,” Rick said. “I’m very excited to be in this industry and enjoy taking care of customers, many of whom are also dear friends.”

Why does a brewer need a malting sales representative? What are the benefits?

From the outside looking in, it may appear that all a brewer needs from his or her supplier is a bag of malt showing up on time. Jump online. Place an order. Get the goods.

It can be that way, if that’s all you want. But what happens when things go sideways in your brewery? Who do you turn to for help when you run into the proverbial brick wall?

A lot of brewers and distillers around Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee turn to Rick. It’s not because Rick is a master brewer or master distiller, it’s because Rick is the guy that wants to help you succeed. Whatever it is you need, he’s there to do whatever he can to help you out.

“I can offer you a lot more than just quality malts. The educational resources that are behind me in our technical and quality services area are immense. The events we hold, especially for these young brewers honing their craft, keeping their breweries sustainable, all while running the business: handling the marketing, the taproom, and everything that goes along with a business. I can help there, too,” Rick said with confidence.

“It’s the intangibles that create a great partnership. You can get a lot more out of a true partnership other than just having the malts showing up on a pallet.”

How do you work with the brewers to give them what they need?

For Rick, working with brewers isn’t about the shiny new object or adding a new blade to the Swiss army knife. He truly wants to know his customers and be a partner in their business.

“If they’re not glad to see me when I walk into their brewery, then I’ve not built that relationship appropriately. Partnership is the true word.”

Just like if you had a business partner who was a co-owner in your brewery or distillery, Rick wants you to rely on him to help you through your struggles… or even for a friendly word to turn a dark day into a sun-filled delight.

Where do you see the future of malting heading?

Navigating the future is always tricky, but Rick and the team at MMC have a pretty good lead on the general direction.

Like any industry reliant on Mother Nature, sustainability is more than just a catch phrase that sells a few more bags of malt. No matter the root cause of change, things in fact, do change. It’s up to us to make sure we do our best to navigate that change.

That’s something that Rick is keenly aware of, and something that Malteurop, which was founded by farmers, has long focused on.

“Folks are becoming more interested in sustainability practices. Then you get into the science of the barley varieties and the barley growing footprint in North America has been changing. Mother Nature is Mother Nature and everyone bows to Mother Nature, so sustainability is a big issue.”

From its industry groundbreaking barley breeding program to processes in the malthouse and beyond, MMC has long embraced sustainability. Folks like Rick also have the MMC team and their technology backing them to help their brewing and distilling partners. Whether it be instilling confidence that MMC malts are produced with sustainability in mind or even if a brewer or distiller wants some help with their own sustainability efforts.

What’s your favorite style of beer and why?

When you think malt, most of us think beer. But remember, Rick has also been entrenched in life along the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.

Knowing that Rick has a love of Bourbon instilled in his bloodline, he’s also a lover of craft beer. So it should come as no surprise that the big notes of caramel, vanilla, and oak that rule the world of Bourbon heavily influence his taste for beer.

“It doesn’t matter the time of year. I like browns, ambers, reds, bocks; the fall style beers. It takes me back to fall and winter at home and just the invitation to be indoors; to be closer with friends and family,” Rick regales.

“I love sitting in a pub in the middle of winter, find a nice warm booth with friends and enjoy some beers when it’s freezing outside. Enjoying fellowship, camaraderie, stories. It’s relationship building time again.”

How can you not be happy when Rick walks through the door?

What beer is currently in your fridge?

If you’ve been in the industry for long, you know how fellow brewers and distillers love to share their wares. After all, brewing and distilling are creative endeavors, the results of which are meant to be savored with family and friends.

Rick… and his friends… certainly embrace that fringe benefit of the industry.

“Normally, I have no fewer than 20 different beers available at my abode. When I come home from being on the road, I feel like the ice cream man because all my friends are running out the door, ‘What did you bring this time?’”

If you were a beer, what beer would you be and why?

When Rick answered, he didn’t waiver.

“I would be a Bock. I’m determined, driven, aggressive, bold, and flavorful; and I think a dark beer matches that personality and that matches my personality in the bold flavor that I like.”

There are people behind the product. So what three words or phrases define you, Rick, outside of work?

Driven – Sometimes I wish I was not so driven. I don’t take vacations. I don’t see needing to be off. This is what I love. This is what I do.

Passionate – My wife says I’m the woman of the relationship because I’m the sentimental, emotional one.

Fun-Loving – I play as hard as I work. If the Lord blesses me, I’ll do this until I’m 80 years old like my father did. But, I better change some lifestyle habits if I’m gonna make it till then.

Rick’s words to live by

“Being one who loves what they do for a living, I wish everyone could experience not caring what day it is. Before you mature as a professional, you hate Mondays, but once you are a mature professional, Fridays come too soon.

“At the end of the day, I love what I do. It’s important to me. This is not a job. This is who I am.”

Cheers. To the farmers. The maltsters. The brewers. The Innovators.