PEORIA, Ill. — Members of the formerly known Peoria Innovation Hub held a virtual meeting to present the new name of the organization, Distillery Labs.
Chris Setti, CEO of the Greater Peoria Economic Development Council, said Peoria’s past with distilleries inspired the name.
“You can’t really think of Peoria without thinking of our distilling past. We were once the whiskey capital of the world,” Setti said.
People created the distillery industry by what was already here, grain and water.
“And put those things together and added value and made products that made people happy throughout the world. That really is what the process of what innovation is,” Setti said.
Jake Hamann, Executive Director of the Peoria Innovation Alliance, said distillery is a nod to the past, while labs nods to the future.
“After much deliberation, and discussion, and some reviews of some different logos and things like that, this will be the new brand moving forward for the Peoria Innovation Hub,” Hamann said.
There are six core values with Distillery Labs, according to Hamann.
“Those are welcoming, accessable, inclusive, inquisitive, community minded, and celebratory,” Hamann said.
Setti said that small and medium companies to whether the cycles of an economy.
“And, that’s really what Distillery Labs is all about, is about creating those smaller businesses that can grow here and become the next business that really helps support the economy overall,” Setti said.
