Krowne Brand Guidelines: The 1948 Newark Metal Shop Turned Bar-Systems Maker

A stainless-steel shop in Newark.

Krowne began in Newark, New Jersey, in the late 1940s. The company dates its founding to 1948, when, it says, Nat Krowne founded Krowne Metal Corp. and started with basic stainless-steel bar equipment; it now uses the line “Engineering Excellence Since 1948.” Trade coverage gives the same broad age: Manufacturing Today wrote in July 2024 that the company had been founded more than 75 years earlier.

The company’s timeline describes the 1950s and 1960s as decades of steady growth for a small, family-run shop making simple equipment for an expanding hospitality trade. Its account of the following years centres on two families. In 1976, it says, Peter Miller and Bob Forman acquired Krowne in Newark, and in 1978 Frank Bastante joined as plant manager, as the company moved to Hamilton Street in the city.

Roger Forman joined in 1984 to lead sales, and the timeline says that in 1986 he and Frank Bastante became equal partners, acquired the company and moved it to a 20,000-square-foot building on Verona Avenue in Newark, later adding neighbouring buildings. A company announcement published in October 2020 puts it slightly differently, saying Roger Forman took over from his uncle, Peter Miller, in 1984. In a 2024 interview with Manufacturing Today, Kyle Forman described his grandfather buying “a small regional operation” focused on basic bar equipment and ice bins, and his father and Frank Bastante later buying them out.

The 2020 announcement says that under Roger Forman the business grew from a regional, eight-person fabrication shop into a manufacturer with more than 100 employees, and its factory from 30,000 to 200,000 square feet.

From ice bins to faucets and refrigeration.

Krowne’s range widened through the 1990s and 2000s. The company dates its faucet division to 1991, its Royal Series to 1995 and its refrigeration division to 2001, and says it bought a hydraulic draw press in 1993 to make hand sinks, followed by turret punches, laser cutters and CNC press brakes. It unveiled a new logo in 1998 and introduced another in 2017, the year it also launched a gas connector line. In 2007 the main facility moved from Newark to Wayne, New Jersey, where the company is still based.

Stadium work raised its profile. The company counts the Yankee Stadium contract of 2009 as one of its biggest projects of the time, and its 2020 announcement lists bars at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas and several Major League Soccer grounds, as well as the custom bars of the Guitar Hotel at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida. Its timeline calls Allegiant Stadium, won in 2021, its largest project to that date.

The catalogue now covers underbar equipment, back-bar refrigeration, beverage dispensing, plumbing, gas connectors, sinks and casters. Beverage dispensing is a recent line: the company says it launched MasterTap beverage dispensing systems in 2021, and its range now takes in power packs, trunk lines, gas systems and beer towers. It also makes mobile bars, among them the Bad Birdy Mobile Bar of 2022.

Software has become part of how it sells. The company introduced BarFlex, a bar-system configurator, in 2019, and later FaucetFlex, FridgeFlex, BeerFlex and BarFlexPro. The October 2020 announcement describes its BarFlex3D tool as working with Revit and AutoCAD, and says Kyle Forman also started an ambassador programme bringing working bartenders into product development.

Bars, cellars and trade shows.

Beverage dispensing makers sell to two very different counters. In a pub or bar, the visible parts are the font on the bar top and the tap handles fixed to it, which usually carry the brewer’s branding while the equipment maker’s name sits on the hardware underneath. In a quick-service restaurant, the visible part is the post-mix tower or self-serve dispenser, where drink brands and, more and more, touchscreens take over the front panel.

Most of the machinery is out of sight, so the makers explain it on paper. Catalogues and spec sheets lean on cutaway diagrams of coolers, carbonators and insulated beer lines, on line drawings and wiring diagrams, and on photographs of keg cellars and cold rooms where kegs, gas cylinders and couplers are connected. The literature is written for installers, service technicians and distributors as much as for the owner of the bar.

The trade meets at shows. The National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago gathers foodservice equipment, including fountain dispensers and ice machines; BrauBeviale in Nuremberg covers brewing and the wider beverage supply chain; and the Craft Brewers Conference in the United States brings draught-system suppliers face to face with brewers. Makers also name certifications, audits and sustainability ratings in their own newsrooms, as Lancer does with its ISO certificates.

Ownership often runs through larger groups. Lancer has been part of the Japanese refrigeration maker Hoshizaki since 2006, according to Hoshizaki’s corporate history, and Cornelius went to Berkshire Hathaway when the British engineering group IMI agreed to sell it in 2013, according to English Wikipedia; its website now says it is powered by Marmon Foodservice Technologies. This guide sets out what can be checked about each maker and marks what rests on the company’s own word.

Third generation, in Wayne.

In October 2020 Kyle Forman succeeded his father as president, and the company says he and Paul Bastante, who joined in operations in 1998, formed an equal partnership to lead it. Krowne describes itself as a third-generation, family-owned American manufacturer.

Collaborations with bar people followed. In September 2022 Krowne and the hospitality consultant and television host Jon Taffer announced the Taffer Command Station by Krowne, a workstation first designed for Taffer’s Tavern restaurants and tested in the company’s configurator, according to the announcement. The company also lists a 2025 partnership with the European bar designer Behind Bars, an Alchemy Series launched the same year and, in 2026, an Adaptive Scupper System developed with Death & Co.

Its manufacturing has grown around Wayne. Foodservice Equipment Reports reported in August 2021 that Krowne had bought a third New Jersey building, giving it more than 250,000 square feet in the state, and in May 2024 that it had begun a two-year expansion, the largest in its history, adding two more New Jersey facilities and planning a highly automated “smart factory”; the company said the factory would raise its capacity by more than half. In March 2026 the same publication reported that the smart factory had officially opened in New Jersey. Krowne says it manufactures in the United States.

For a design guide, Krowne shows how a stainless-steel fabricator can present itself through configurators, stadium bars and bartender collaborations rather than one signature product. Compare Perlick, a family-owned Milwaukee maker of bar and beer equipment, and Micro Matic, a draught beer equipment maker. For this guide we use brushed steel, a deep teal and copper with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Krowne’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.