Charles James Koch (/kʊk/KUUK; born May 27, 1949)[1][2][3] is an American entrepreneur, billionaire, and the co-founder and chairman of the Boston Beer Company, the producers of Samuel Adams beer. Koch is widely considered to be a founding father of the American craft brewing movement.[4]
Koch took Boston Beer company public in 1995 and owns a 19.5% stake in the company, giving him a net-worth of over $1 billion. In 2023 he was ranked #1905 in Forbes Billionaires 2023.[4]
In 2016, Koch published Quench Your Own Thirst: Business Lessons Learned Over a Beer or Two, in which he discussed how he left his career as a management consultant to start his own brewery using his great-great-grandfather's recipe.[7]
In August 2018, Koch said the corporate tax cut of 2017 helped to play a major role in making Boston Beer Company more competitive in regard to foreign competitors. Koch stated that "When I started Sam Adams, American beer was a joke, and it pissed me off. And now, American brewers make the best beer in the world. And the tax reform was a very big deal for all of us, because 85 percent of the beer made in the United States is owned by foreign companies."[8][9]
Personal life
Koch's marriage to his first wife, Susan, ended around the time he started the Boston Beer Company.[10][11]
He remarried to entrepreneur Cynthia Fisher in 1994.[12][5] He has two children from his first marriage and two from his second.[13] They live in Newton, Massachusetts.[14][15]
