Chairman of the Board / Co-owner, Rodinný pivovar BERNARD a.s.
1. Stanislav Bernard - Show Jana Krause 23. 5. 2014
Stanislav Bernard, Veronika Vieweghová, Jan Borovička. TV premiéra 23.05.2014 – 21. epizoda V. řady (S5, E21) Datum a místo ...
Transcript (17 segments)
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Interviewer0:02
There is Mr. Odvárka, I see him. Good, we can start. Ladies and gentlemen, our first guest is Stanislav Bernard. Stanislav Bernard, in case you didn't know, is the owner of the brewery and producer of beer that bears his name. You may have seen him on highway billboards, right Stando? He is also my friend and colleague on the board of the Anti-Corruption Foundation. Now you are about to publish a book that I got to preview, I quickly skimmed it. It's called 'The Stubborn Man'. When you publish a book, are you preparing to take stock and retire or what?
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Stanislav Bernard1:05
They approached me and asked if I wouldn't do it. But when they ask, I think it's always weird. Sometimes I look in the mirror and feel it's time, but this time it wasn't entirely that. I thought there might be something to write about.
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Interviewer1:28
But wait, when they asked you, did you think about it? Sometimes people ask if you're writing memoirs. It's always weird when someone asks. I looked through your book quickly to see if there were any slanders about me, but it passed. However, I thought a lot about it. Your story is a privatization fairy tale. You went to auction and bought one of the worst breweries in the country, and now it's excellent. You paid quite a lot of money.
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Stanislav Bernard2:07
Yes, the book value was 9.5 million CZK, and we won the auction for 45 million CZK plus 7 million in inventory that was mostly unusable, including old beer that was unpalatable. But that's not true—Humpolec used to brew good beer, but the state enterprise had neglected it.
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Interviewer3:05
I later became friends with the former director of the state enterprise, a brewing Nestor and great expert. He told me after many years that he was tasked with closing one of the breweries, and Humpolec was in the worst shape, so it was the obvious candidate. But what struck me is that you didn't understand beer at all.
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Stanislav Bernard3:38
I don't understand anything at all! But my partner, the brewer Jozef Vávra, wanted to brew beer and was excellent. We've been together ever since. We traveled to Poland together. At that time, I was director of a company that published a newspaper. After the revolution, I had idealistic ideas that newspapers should be independent, so I sought a source of funding. I met Vávra, who was working at the Ostrava brewery, and we decided to sell beer for a commission to finance the newspaper.
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Interviewer4:54
I always thought you were from Humpolec, but you're not even from Opava.
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Stanislav Bernard4:56
I'm originally from Háj u Opavy, now Háj ve Slezku. I moved to Humpolec only after the purchase. I made a trip to Humpolec to buy the brewery. I went home and told my wife Helena, who was teaching math and physics. She just said, 'You bought a brewery? Let's move.' That says everything about her support.
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Interviewer6:47
I want to hear about the first day. You bought the brewery with a loan at the last minute. You walk in, you've never managed a brewery before. What did you do?
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Stanislav Bernard7:00
I sat in the office, and after five or ten minutes, a guy about retirement age burst in holding a vial with purple liquid. He was the cooling mechanic. He said, 'Boss, there's ammonia in the water. What are you going to do?' I didn't say I didn't know; I said, 'Let's go look at it.' Then I started looking for someone who understood. Later we realized it was a test from the staff to see how dumb the new owner was. But the guy was honest; he stayed until retirement and did a good job.
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Interviewer8:25
It must have been a huge burden for your wife and children, moving because Dad bought a brewery.
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Stanislav Bernard8:47
Helena was teaching at the time. I made the trip to Humpolec, bought the brewery, came home and told her. She said, 'You bought a brewery? Let's move.' I've always valued that more than anything. No drama, life just goes on.
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Interviewer10:09
That's beautiful, almost unbelievable. You're making me think I wasted my life.
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Stanislav Bernard10:25
I think about that every day.
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Interviewer10:39
Now the trend is small breweries, unpasteurized, unfiltered beer with floating yeast. That used to be a sign of spoiled beer. But these beers are good, I can't deny it. Still, the bits floating make me nervous. How do you know when it's spoiled?
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Stanislav Bernard11:15
Before 1989, if something floated, you threw it out. It happens that someone says they don't want your beer anymore. You can only say, 'It's your choice.' But luckily the trend is the opposite. However, there will always be an idiot who doesn't understand quality. The biggest problem in pubs is the kitchen. I met a chef who said only 2 out of 30 hotel school graduates work in the field. That applies to any profession. So we decided to go against the stream: don't do things as cheaply as possible, do them honestly. And recent years show it works.
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Interviewer14:02
Stanislav Bernard.