Joe Fee, co-owner of Fee Brothers, dies at 55

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A funeral was held Monday for Joseph Fee, co-owner of Fee Brothers, the Rochester-based, fourth-generation maker of bitters, mixes, cordials and other flavorings for cocktails. He was 55.

Mr. Fee, who died on Friday of complications from a respiratory infection, was the son of the late Jack and Margaret Fee. A brother, Francis X. Fee, predeceased him.

Besides his sister and business partner Ellen Fee (Jody), Mr. Fee is survived by five other siblings, John (Carol) Fee, Mary (Jonathan) Spacher, Elizabeth (Bob) Krieg, Peggy Fee, Lucy (James) Vergo; and several nieces and nephews.

Mr. Fee managed sales and administration of the family-owned company and traveled widely on behalf of Fee Brothers, where he worked for 29 years. The Fee siblings assumed ownership of the business from their father in 2012. Their parents died in 2015.

“Everyone knew Joe as the face of Fee Brothers. His combination of business acumen, sales and marketing skills, coupled with a genuine joy for living, made a lasting impression on the people he worked with,” said Ellen Fee. “Joe loved to travel and meet with people in the industry — and they surely loved him in return. He will be missed.”

Indeed, hundreds of tributes on the company’s Facebook page are coming in from far away as Australia, and as close as the heating company that worked on the Portland Avenue business’s heating system. Many are from business colleagues he met in places such as Athens, Kentucky, Indiana and other states and countries.

Many of those offering condolences mentioned Mr. Fee’s trademark Panama hat and the way he generously shared Fee Brothers products with them, told jokes and was genuinely friendly even to people he didn’t know well.  Mr. Fee’s hat was so associated with him that if he stepped out without it, his sister said, his customers and colleagues wouldn’t recognize him.

With the hat and height of 6-foot-4, he cut a distinctive figure, Ellen Fee said. “People saw him coming.”

After three previous generations ran the company, Mr. Fee brought Fee Brothers into the digital age, his sister said. When he graduated from Notre Dame University in 1991 with a degree in finance, he pulled the plastic off the computer his father had rejected three years earlier, replaced the outdated machine and brought the company up to date.

Mr. Fee also brought the company to the world.

“Joe got us onto every continent other than Antarctica, and that was not for lack of trying there,” she said. “He was a force known around the world. He was not a naturally born sales person, but he was such a joker, he figured out how to fit in with people just by being funny.”

Mr. Fee would visit with distributors around the world, then have the distributors take him to the bars and other places Fee Brothers products were being sold in their countries, thus becoming known globally, his sister said.

Mr. Fee enjoyed various water sports, traveling on small cruise ships, and was especially handy. He remade his fixer-upper home in West Irondequoit on his own and lent his skills to friends and customers, his sister said.

While Ellen Fee manages day-to-day operations of the plant, Mr. Fee handled sales, administration and legal aspects of the company. Ellen Fee said she will make some walnut bitters on Tuesday and then start tackling the company’s taxes before starting to learn what her brother’s job entailed.

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