When Jeff and Lindsay Seifried attended the grand opening of Mother’s Brewing Company on May 3, 2011, they never imagined one day owning what has become one of Springfield’s oldest and largest craft breweries.
Neither did founder and now-retiring owner and CEO Jeff Schrag.
“I thought I was just one of those guys who would just keep working,” Schrag said. “And then one day a switch flips, and it really surprised me that in my life, I thought I could do another chapter.”
With Schrag’s pending retirement, Mother’s, too, is set to enter a new chapter with the Seifrieds at the helm.
Seifrieds hope to take Mother’s ‘onward and upward‘
On May 2, Mother’s Brewing Company announced the Seifrieds would be taking on majority ownership and operations of the brewery located at 215 S. Grant Ave. in Springfield from Jeff Schrag.
On May 3, they gathered in Mother’s Tap Room to further discuss the transition. As the two Jeffs reflected on the history of the brewery, they looked towards its future.
While the beer making industry is new to them, Jeff and Lindsay Seifried are well-known figures in the Springfield business community.
They both worked at the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce, and have backgrounds in sales and marketing in businesses and organizations in the Ozarks. From 2012 to 2015, Jeff Seifried served as Springfield’s Zone 1 city councilman and mayor pro tem.
And in late 2022, Jeff and Lindsay purchased Blackwells, a long-running clothing store.
While the Seifrieds never specifically had their sights set on owning a brewery — or Mother’s in particular — when the opportunity came along, they knew it had what they were looking for.
“I didn’t know it was going to be a brewery, but I always thought it would be something with hopefully as strong a brand as Mother’s and a product as strong as Mother’s,” Jeff Seifried said.
Lindsay Seifried said they hope to build on Mother’s success by taking it to the “next level.”
“I think we’re building on such a strong brand so centric to Springfield,” she said. “When people think about downtown Springfield, they think about the brands that have made downtown Springfield what it is, the companies and people, Jeff Schrag and Mother’s Brewery, Mother’s backyard, experiences people have had here.”
Some of their plans for the brewery include expanding the event space known as the “Barrel Room,” adding outdoor service to the spacious yard and patio, where the vast majority of their seating is, as well as looking into adding food options to the Tap Room.
Jeff Seifried also added that expanding distribution is important to them, as they look to “grow Mother’s across the U.S. and beyond.”
He nodded to the growth Jeff Schrag brought the company, from growing the brand to improving the taste of the beer with the brewery’s recent purchase of a centrifuge, which helps add as much flavor as possible into their beer.
“That's what I love about Mother’s, is Jeff [Schrag] has never been afraid of making investments needed to up the game,” Jeff Seifried said.
Schrag looks to make a ‘positive exit‘
It was about a year ago that the “switch flipped” for Jeff Schrag and he knew it was time to begin another chapter of his life.
Aside from the Seifrieds being regular customers of Mother’s over the years, Jeff Schrag grew close to them during his time as the chairman of the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce. And it was through that relationship that Lindsay introduced Jeff Schrag to his wife, Mary Sheid, whom he married in 2019, and now has grandchildren with.
“Had I not started Mother’s, I wouldn’t have been chairman of the Chamber. Was I not the Chamber chairman, I wouldn’t have met Lindsay. I wouldn’t have met Lindsay, I wouldn’t have got married…so I owe all this to Mother’s,” Jeff Schrag said.
Marriage was perhaps the precursor to that switch eventually flipping, which led Jeff Schrag to want to find an opportunity to make a “positive exit.”
“I wanted to be one of those people that leaves and they're wondering why you're leaving as opposed to wondering why you're staying,” he said.
Schrag said he was approached by several people interested in buying Mother’s, but he found the Seifrieds to be the “right” choice when Jeff Seifried approached him about taking over the company.
While Schrag will maintain ownership of a minority stake in the business, the Seifrieds will become majority owners, and Jeff Seifried will take on the role of CEO.
“I’ll miss being intimately involved in bringing something from an idea to a concept, to a test, to a flavor, to a brand,” Schrag said.
Despite everything he will miss about the craft beer lifestyle, Schrag added that he has had to remind himself that there is a life beyond the brewery.
Schrag to continue assisting with operations at Mother’s amid transition
The Seifrieds enter a much larger craft beer scene than Schrag entered 12 years ago. In those 12 years, Schrag watched the Springfield industry grow and evolve, and will share his experiences and knowledge to the Seifrieds by assisting with operations during a transitional period.
“Back then, beer was very different,” Schrag said. “It was called microbreweries. You had to explain to people why they should try the beer, they wanted to know why they hadn’t heard of you, they wanted to know why it tasted like anything.”
Now, not only have craft breweries grown significantly in the lifespan of Mother’s, but so has Mother’s itself. In its first year, the brewery produced almost 300,000 12-ounce servings of beer. Now, Mother's makes about 3 million 12-ounce beers per year.
Mother's has distributed to every county in Missouri, every “wet” county in Arkansas and five Kansas counties in the Kansas City metro area, according to Schrag.
Between their six year-round staples, seasonal beers and limited editions, Schrag said Mother's has made more than 400 different brews in its lifetime.
Over the next several weeks, Jeff Schrag will help give Jeff Seifried the “lay of the land,” and get him in every market where they sell beer.
While the Seifrieds hope to bring Mother’s to new heights, they say their primary focus remains to continue Schrag’s legacy and keep brewing what their customers love.
Editor’s note: Mother’s Brewing Company is a corporate partner of the Hauxeda, having contributed both financially and in-kind to the organization. Partners do not influence news coverage decisions.
