By Jackson Schneider
MANHATTAN, Kan. — In 2015, Dan McDonald began a small canning operation out of his garage. Today, he and his team at Bev-Hub celebrated the official ribbon cutting of a brand new facility just outside of Manhattan.
According to McDonald, the operation will bring roughly 37 new jobs to Manhattan at the start, but casually add more positions as the operation grows.
"I've always been a huge fan of Manhattan, the community here, it's a very positive community," said McDonald. "So, when we had the opportunity to look for a new production facility, we were led to this facility here. So we came to Manhattan and did some studies about the logistics and whatnot, around the country, and being right smack in the middle of the U.S. turned out to be a real blessing."
The event saw a large turn out inside of the warehouse floor at Bev-Hub's new home at 5960 Dry Hop Circle in the Manhattan Business Park. The star-studded guest list featured multiple media outlets, city leaders, and even Kansas Governor Laura Kelly.
"Not only is it a new company coming here to Manhattan, but it's also beyond state-of-the-art," said Kelly. "That's what's so exciting about what's happening in Kansas right now, is that we're growing... robustly."
Bev-Hub's fit in Manhattan is one of many levels. The location is a plus, but the availability of Kansas State University for staffing, testing, and the many needs of a facility of this kind, it was just another added bonus for Bev-Hub to select Manhattan for its expansion.
"This is a good thing. It's a real product of our economic development program. We've been running it for years. We've had some failures, but many successes," said Manhattan Mayor Wynn Butler. "What was sad was one of our failures took place here, (Bev-Hub's new location) so it's absolutely fantastic they were able to repurpose the facility and bring in some more jobs, and they'll probably expand in the future."
Bev-Hub's facility cans a variety of products such as water, cold brew coffee, tea, energy drinks, and more, and is an expansion on its current facility in Wichita. According to McDonald, the facility will likely be sold out within the next six months, and is in preliminary stages of looking to add an additional facility or to expand upon the Manhattan facility.
McDonald also added that per shift they currently produce around 125,000-150,000 cans per day.
"Three years ago, we had hoped that we'd be able to fill 100,000 cans our first year. I did that yesterday here," said McDonald.
