The F.L. Emmert Company was founded more than a century ago as one of the nation's first recycling businesses. In 1881, two Cincinnati saloon owners spotted an opportunity to capitalize on the city's booming brewery industry. Savior Maier and his son-in-law, Ohio Civil War veteran Frederick Louis Emmert Sr. (-1889), ran a saloon at the corner of Vine Street and Clifton Avenue just outside downtown Cincinnati.

Cincinnati's brewery industry enjoyed great success during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries because of the superior quality of grain used in processing. German brewers from the surrounding neighborhood made frequent visits to Maier and Emmert's saloon. They often complained that local farmers were unreliable when it came to picking up spent grain to use for livestock feed. Emmert arranged contracts with the breweries and agreed to take the spent grain off their hands and sell it to farmers, milk producers, and feed dealers. The abundance of breweries nearby assured the young company of constant supplies.

After several decades of simply reselling wet grain, The F.L. Emmert Company decided to expand. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, it began drying the grain. Now the finished product could easily be shipped across the country and stored for long periods of time. At the time, The F.L. Emmert Company was one of only a handful of businesses nationwide who used this drying process for spent brewers grain.

Prohibition and the Volstead Act of 1919 were mentioned repeatedly in company correspondence during the 1920s and 1930s. The Volstead Act prohibited the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcoholic beverages. Prohibition impacted The F.L. Emmert Company because brewers' waste products were the mainstay of its business. One of the company's largest suppliers, the Moerlein Company, closed in 1919 amid Prohibition and anti-German hysteria that accompanied World War I. Except for Buckmann's brewery, which produced a diluted "near beer," most breweries in the area closed by 1933.

Written correspondence between F.L. Emmert Jr. and his father during the early 1930s shows how the company survived. On January 26, 1933, Fred Jr. wrote to his father asking for a personal loan of $20,000 to help the company. He said the company must have the money to make up for severe losses in 1932. He ended the letter by saying, "To save the business now will mean to save it for a long time and that is my one concern."

In the late 1930s, the company began to experiment with the dry grain in hopes of making its own products. The F.L. Emmert Company soon developed a proprietary process for adding a large amount of wet cane molasses to brewers grain. Before this process was invented, adding molasses to brewers grain yielded a product that hardened and was difficult to handle. Molasso-Malt, as the new product was named, was introduced to the feed market in the 1930s. It allowed dairy farmers to add highly nutritious brewers grain and the palatability of molasses to a feed ration in an easy-to-handle, inexpensive manner. Molasso-Malt was The F.L. Emmert Company's first value-added product. It soon became an indispensable ingredient for dairy rations throughout the Midwest and was the company's best-selling product for the next 20 years.

Supported by a growing reputation in the feed industry, The F.L. Emmert Company forged ahead. It spent the 1950s refining its drying process and was soon ready to build a more extensive product line. Around 1960, the company began experimenting with spent yeast. A few years later it introduced BGY35 as a specially dried brewers yeast product. This opened the door to new markets and increased the company's sales and geographic reach. BGY35 quickly became the preferred source of brewers yeast for livestock feed and pet food manufacturers in the eastern United States.

The development of BGY35 was a breakthrough for The F.L. Emmert Company. During the 1970s, the company successfully developed and marketed supplements based on the nutritional benefits of brewers yeast. These included livestock feed, pet foods, and organic fertilizer. Most of the company's sales came from Molasso-Malt, which was also marketed under the names Pal-O-Blend and Lasso-Mix. The F.L. Emmert Company also sold BGY35 and bag dried brewers grain.

In the 1980s, The F.L. Emmert Company introduced two revolutionary products: showbloom! for livestock, and Edge for cats and dogs. These products made brewers yeast available to consumers in a species-specific, convenient, and economical form. Both showbloom! and Edge are respected as high-quality nutritional supplements in their respective markets.

In 1985, the company also introduced Sow Bulk Plus. This product was a natural fiber laxative source and appetite enhancer for sows during farrowing and lactation.

With several well respected products on the market, The F.L. Emmert Company continued its steady progress during the 1990s. Research in the feed industry was beginning to prove what the company had known all along - that yeast is an excellent addition to animal feed. As yeast grew in popularity, The F.L. Emmert Company began a series of field trials. These trials, along with the success of BGY35, led to the development of BGY28. Today BGY28 and BGY35 anchor the company's product line and continue to produce results in the livestock feed and pet food industries.

For more than a century, The F.L. Emmert Company has been a leader in the livestock feed and pet food industries. Our products are backed by decades of success and continue to stand the test of time.

Additional information is available at the
Cincinnati Museum Center's Historical Society Library
1301 Western Avenue
Cincinnati, Ohio 45203
(513) 278-7030