Yuengling Beer Billionaire Beats Sam Adams in Craft Craze

As a teenager stacking barrels after school at his family’s brewery in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, Richard L. “Dick” Yuengling, Jr. was encouraged by plant workers to avoid a career in the family business. America’s taste for national brands such as Budweiser, Coors and Miller, they said, was going to put them all out of a job.

Undeterred, Yuengling bought D.G Yuengling & Son Inc. from his father in 1985, and built it into the maker of the country’s best-selling craft beer brand. As the company’s value soared in the past decade amid a surge in demand for craft brews, Yuengling became a billionaire.