Family flavor

The first of the endeavors opened in 1962 when Ed Stoudt bought a diner-like restaurant at the northeastern end of Lancaster County.

Fifty years later, the businesses now include an antiques mall, bread and cheese shop, beer garden, microbrewery, banquet facilities and the original restaurant with a pub, bar and formal dining room. The family’s five children all have participated in building the enterprises, and most maintain some involvement today, they said.

But the driving force behind the success and creativity of the collection of businesses is Ed Stoudt, entrepreneur, bread-maker, steak-trimmer and regular searcher for new business ideas, said his wife, Carol.

The first year his family ran the restaurant, then called Stoudt’s Kountry Kitchen, it served breakfast, lunch and dinner, Ed Stoudt said. However, the restaurant didn’t do so well, so he took the summer profits and closed for a month in the winter to revamp.

He noticed people were ordering a lot of steaks, and there weren’t any steak house chains in the area so he took the idea and ran with it, Carol Stoudt said.

“I reopened as the Black Angus Steak House, worked 100 hours a week and slept in the basement,” Ed Stoudt said.

He also headed to the local outdoor antiques market regularly at Shupp’s Grove, opening his own food stand there.

Because of its outdoor nature, Shupp’s was only open part of the year, and some dealers wanted to run their business year-round, Carol Stoudt said. The basement of the restaurant was opened to about 10 dealers, and in 1972 Ed Stoudt built a pole barn behind the steak house with 90 antique dealers. The restaurant was open for dinner Monday through Saturday, and the antiques area opened on Sunday.

The business of renting out space to antiques dealers was so successful that today the Black Angus Antique Mall has about 70,000 square feet of space for more than 300 vendors.

The family traveled to Germany regularly, and in looking for ways to keep expanding business, they were inspired to open the Bier Garden in 1979 and hold regular beer festivals.

The beer garden, combined with the restaurant and the antiques shops, was making the Stoudt family businesses a well-known destination, Carol Stoudt said.

“I would help hostess at the restaurant in an evening dress, and Ed wore a tuxedo,” she said. “The Bier Garden brought customers in that weren’t so formal, so we created a pub side to the restaurant.”

Before long, the family was looking for a new project. The idea of brewing beer was attractive, mainly because the European beers he loved so much didn’t taste the same after being shipped overseas, Ed Stoudt said.

Their youngest child was entering kindergarten in the mid-1980s, and Carol Stoudt said she was deciding whether to become more involved in the family business or go back to teaching.

“We went to an association of homebrewers’ conference on the West Coast and visited breweries and malt plants and tasted,” she said. “I loved the energy.”

However, in Pennsylvania, it was illegal for a business to both manufacture beer and sell it in a restaurant. So the family found another way, just like Ed Stoudt did with his restaurant earlier, Carol Stoudt said.

“I separated my finances from my husband’s, raised my own money,” and became a separate business entity, she said.

She said she hired a brewmaster consultant, took courses and learned both about brewing beer and running operations and sales. In 1987, the Stoudt Brewing Co. opened with 500 barrels, and it’s been adding brews and growing production ever since.

Now running five businesses, the family also used available space for banquets and weddings, she said.

On a visit to New York City in the 1990s, the couple visited a bakery named Amy’s Breads, which inspired them to take courses taught by the owner at a culinary institute, Carol Stoudt said.

In 1998, Eddie’s Breads opened next to the Adamstown restaurant, which had been renamed Stoudt’s Black Angus Restaurant & Pub. The bakery moved to a location behind the antiques mall as a part of the Wonderful Good Market, which opened in 2010.

Today, eldest daughter Elizabeth manages the antiques mall and market. Son Eddie is vice president of the brewery, overseeing sales. Daughters Carey and Gretel work on the website and provide writing and graphic design for the businesses.

“It gives them their own identity; they’re not just stepping into their parents’ shoes,” Carol Stoudt said.

The companies have been successful because of the family’s ability to “stay hands-on, never pulling out of one project while another was being built,” Elizabeth Stoudt said.

Ed Stoudt still hand-cuts the steaks in the restaurant every day, she said. Elizabeth Stoudt maintains relationships with the antiques vendors while working with other providers who sell products at the market such as homemade soap or use the kitchen for their own baking business. Carol Stoudt is president of the brewery and helps out wherever needed in the other businesses.

“We love small business and nurturing something,” Carol Stoudt said.

The family also loves flavors and fermentation, putting beer in their breads and making cheese on-site at the market, Elizabeth Stoudt said.

“With each project (we do), we see how it marries and evolves with the others,” she said.