Few can imagine the topic of yeast as entertaining, powerful or motivating. Yet the story of this microscopic organism in the life of Pearse Lyons’ Alltech empire is one for the business books: a tale of a single-celled organism that turned an immigrant Irish chemist into a Bourbon Country billionaire through the sales of saccharomyces for whiskeys, beers and animal feeds.
The short version of the story is that yeast propagation is exceptionally profi table. With the April acquisition of Canadian animal nutrition firm Ridley Inc., Alltech’s value is expected to jump more than 50 percent, to $1.6 billion. (The privately held, Nicholasville-based firm does not release detailed financial information.)
The long version is Lyons’ preferred account, one of the entrepreneur who recognized the huge need for reliable and hearty yeast strains in Kentucky’s agriculture and alcohol industries back in 1980, when he founded the company in his garage. Whether sharing his climb from microbe peddler to international mass producer one-on-one or speaking to a crowd of thousands at May’s Alltech REBELation conference in downtown Lexington, Lyons wants to inspire others to follow their own bent and bliss to self-betterment.
“My passion is for telling stories and just sometimes ones with a scientific bent,” says Lyons. Regularly sporting a bowtie and blazer, the balding 70-year-old even looks appropriately professorial. “But you can’t teach it if you don’t know it. You can’t get up there and engage people.”
“Up there” is on stage and in front of about 3,000 REBELation attendees. The 31-year-old
convention draws people from 72 countries for inspiration and deeper knowledge about starting and running businesses — some of which happen to use yeast, of course.
REBELation began in 1984 as the Alltech Symposium, a modest gathering Lyons says initially attracted “an audience of our mothers and brothers.” Centered mostly on brewing and distilling seminars, its knowledge contribution broadened to include information for many businesses. An impressive lineup of keynoters have been added as well, including former Secretary of State and U.S. Army Gen. Colin Powell and University of Kentucky men’s basketball head coach John Calipari.
The Lexington Convention & Visitors Bureau estimated in 2012 that, over its five-day run, REBELation pours at least $7.2 million into the city’s economy. Alltech estimates the event’s three-decade impact in the $150 million range.
Portofino managing partner Robert Carter says the event brings solid traffic to his downtown restaurant during a stretch of springtime when sales dip after the end of the racing season and the passing of Mother’s Day.
“The conference always has a huge impact on us,” Carter says. “The extra business it brings in comes at the perfect time for us. It’s a wonderful thing that happens to us and other restaurants downtown.”
Yet while it’s one of Lexington’s largest single events in terms of economic impact, Lyons has bigger dreams for REBELation.
“About 11,000 people turned up for a craft brewing and distilling weekend in Portland, Oregon, so why can’t we achieve that?” Lyons says. REBELation’s own Craft Brews and Food Fest, which opened the conference, drew 4,000 drinkers this year. “So even though I have our team asking how we can get to 11,000, what I’m really thinking is this: Why not think of 50,000 or even 100,000? It would no longer be a Lexington-centric event, it would be a Kentucky-centric event. … And I’d lie happy in my grave if we could get it to 100,000 people.”
An international company with a home-state loyalty
A hole in the ground at 745 Hambley Blvd. in Pikeville, Kentucky, marks the spot where a funeral home was razed this year to make room for Alltech’s Dueling Barrels Brewing & Distilling Co. Expected to open in 2016, the business eventually will produce 45,000 barrels of Kentucky Ale beer each year and an undetermined number of barrels of Town Branch whiskies.
Pikeville, a tidy town of about 7,000, is not a convenient drive from Lexington, though it’s quickly reached by Lyons’ jet, a Bombardier Challenger 604 he purchased after earning the dubious distinction of Delta Airlines’ No. 1 traveler. (Lyons travels nearly 300 days a year and shares the aircraft with wife, Dierdre, an accomplished architect responsible for the design of Dueling Barrels and other Alltech facilities.)
After becoming friends with former Kentucky Gov. Paul Patton, who is now president of the University of Pikeville, Lyons saw an opportunity to help that town and surrounding coal communities with new business opportunities. Teaming up with groups such as SOAR (Shaping Our Appalachian Region), he sees opportunities to use Alltech’s knowledge to assist in developing the area’s burgeoning agribusinesses.
He acknowledges that his fondness for the mountainous land is tied to memories of his hometown of Dundolk, Ireland.
“The culture there … it’s so Irish, the dancing, the songs, the music, it’s all Irish-Scottish extraction,” says Lyons. “I looked and thought, ‘We can do something here. I want to do something there.’”
Host Communications’ chairman Jim Host has experienced Lyons’ love of music fi rsthand at home and abroad. Friends since 1977, the two connect regularly inside and outside the boardroom.
“He loves to sing, and he brings songbooks wherever he goes,” says Host. While traveling by motor coach in Normandy, France, for the 2014 World Equestrian Games, Host says, Lyons would entertain riders on the bus by “handing out songbooks and leading everyone in singing. He’ll do it at dinner, too. He’s one of the most fun guys I’ve ever been around.”
Yet Lyons didn’t become successful by being fun, says former Kentucky Gov. John Y. Brown Jr. Lyons’ achievements are the product of incredible discipline, imagination and drive.
“Pearse is a visionary, a salesman and a motivator,” says Brown, who routinely speaks at Alltech events. Brown also credits Dierdre Lyons with bolstering her husband’s success. “They are both tireless workers who’ve developed a hell of a company.”
Brown, the former president of Kentucky Fried Chicken, and who also has toured Alltech operations in the Far East, says it’s a rare case that one man leads a billion-dollar company to such heights over three decades. Making that happen, he adds, stems from Lyons’ ability to marshal and motivate his troops personally and through weekly video conferences broadcast to 128 countries.
“He does a great job of keeping them fired up, like the coach of a football team,” Brown
says. “But even for its size, it’s a very entrepreneurial company that’s run more like a family business than a typical corporation. It works well for them.”
Rufus Friday, president and publisher of the Lexington Herald-Leader, says the benefi ts of Lyons’ work radiate far beyond Lexington and central Kentucky. By being a global company, he says, Alltech provides the Commonwealth a measure of international prestige as home to an industry leader. In the Bluegrass, he sees Lyons invest locally through economic and charitable activities.
“Having an event like REBELation at Lexington’s convention center is huge … because he’s showcasing Kentucky to people from around the world,” Friday says. “And then you talk about being a community steward: He’s involved with SOAR, the University of Pikeville and [Kentucky State University] a historically black college. That’s exactly what you want to see from a person of his stature.”