San Antonio's Pearl District Taps Austin-Based Bakery as It Embarks on Its Next 100 Years

More than 100 years ago, a mile-and-a-half north of the Alamo, the Pearl brewery established itself as a defining feature of San Antonio. Now a bustling shopping, food and cultural district on 16 square blocks just north of downtown, Pearl is mapping out plans for its next century. To do that, it has enlisted the help of Austin-based independent agency Bakery, which was chosen as its new agency of record following a formal review. In the past two decades, it's transformed from an old brewery site into 22 acres of shops, restaurants, apartments and one of the country's top boutique hotels. This next chapter will help the community and its visitors understand "the meaning of Pearl," CMO Michael Joergensen told Adweek. Are Experiences the Future of Retail? Area15 in Las Vegas Will Put the Trend to the Test That means celebrating everything San Antonio has to offer while addressing some of the challenges the city's facing. For example, more than a quarter of San Antonio families are food insecure, according to one 2020 survey by the University of Texas at San Antonio. Pearl is currently working on a plan to divert food waste generated by its more than two dozen restaurants as part of its strategy to address hunger in the city. "It's not just a marketing or advertising message," Joergensen said. "How can [Pearl] really show up in the community?" The story of Pearl's makeover In 2001, beer production ended at Pearl, and a local private equity firm called Silver Ventures bought the historic brewery grounds. That firm is owned by Christopher Goldsbury, who made his fortune when he sold salsa company Pace Foods to Campbell's in 1994 for $1.1 billion. At the time, Joergensen recounted, people thought Goldsbury was "nuts" for buying up the brewery grounds. "It was literally an industrial complex," Joergensen said. "There wasn't a single tree anywhere down here. And you could make the argument that it was relatively unsafe." Now, it's a piece of the city that San Antonians feel truly proud of, according to Jacqueline Thompson, svp of accounts at Bakery. Thompson, who was born and raised in Alamo City, said Joergensen's plans for Pearl "really invigorated for me" the potential of San Antonio. Bakery's winning recipe From the beginning, a central goal of Pearl was to be a welcoming community space for the residents of San Antonio. With that in mind, Bakery did extensive interviews with community members and small business owners to understand how they conceptualize Pearl and what it would mean to have a shop within the district. "People are talking about their hopes and dreams," Joergensen said. "It's goosebump material. That's how you make it last 100 years—when real people are that invested in it." Those interviews made Bakery stand out during the pitch process. Among the six other independent agencies that participated in the review, "nobody else did anything close to [that]," he said. To start, Bakery's main focus will be working with Pearl on building its brand communications, storytelling and programming to support its shift to a more purpose-driven presence within the city. The shop will run all creative advertising for Pearl, effective immediately, using its new Ken Media arm to run media planning and buying. In terms of spend, Joergensen expects to start out Pearl's media buy "somewhere on the lower end—a couple of million bucks—up to five to seven within the next year or two," he said. Shiner Beer’s First New Brand Platform in 5 Years Aims to Capture the ‘Best of the Texas Experience’ Scaling sustainably As the district continues to grow, Joergensen said it's also working to move environmental sustainability higher up on its list of priorities. To start, that means expanding renewable energy generation through solar panels, diverting food waste from landfill and transitioning away from single-use plastics within the next 18 months or so—projects that Bakery will support the brand in developing and communicating. "The programs that we recommended are how to provide education [to the community] and how to really leverage all of the initiatives that Pearl is doing to be more widespread outside of the Pearl borders and really affect San Antonio as a whole," Thompson said.