Ferd Heim Brewing Co., Kansas City, MO. 1900 era Serving Tray

I find this particular stock serving tray from the Ferd Heim Brewery somewhat interesting.  I am not sure why, but it appears the small child is playing a flute, perhaps to bring his mom or the leading woman in his life into his view.  This particular tray is widely popular with early antique advertising companies, and in particular, you can find quite a few breweries which used this stock tray image to help them sell their beers.   Stock trays by definition simply mean they are not unique to a single business…Stock trays were used by many companies who simply placed their name over the image when they were printed.

The Ferd Heim Brewery was in Kansas City, Missouri as early as the 1870’s, after having come over from E Saint Louis, Illinois, where both Ferd and his brother Michael founded their first brewery in the town just across from St Louis, MO.   Both breweries were very successful, but maybe due to less competition in the KC marketplace, their brewery there seemed to be much larger, and the Heim family even started an early electricity driven theme park.  This park was a long time entertainment center for K.C. based residents.  Today the park is gone, and there is only one small non-beer producing building left from the original Heim Brewing complex in the bottoms just outside of downtown Kansas City.