Month: November 2013
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The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest…..
After World War II, Van Munching, the US importer for Heineken, used wine and spirit houses for their distributor of choice. Since imports were not very big at the time, this strategy of using wine and spirits houses made sense. The model worked because beer was sold mostly through package stores. Coupled with the fact that […]
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The risk of doing nothing is the greatest risk of all….
My first four and a half years in the beer business were spent on delivery trucks, first as a helper, then as a salesman, and finally as a route supervisor. Remember, during this time beer was sold DSD and both the salesmen and helpers were paid with a base and commission established on what they sold. […]
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If you don’t know where you’re going, you might end up some place else
In the early 1990s, Warsteiner’s President, Diane Fall, asked me to help them find and implement a new accounting system at Warsteiner’s Denver headquarters. While in Denver on this assignment, Diane knowing that I had just recently left Coast Distributors in Oregon asked me if I would open a distributorship in San Diego. Warsteiner did not […]
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If you see a bandwagon, it’s too late……
In my efforts to build the beer portfolio for Glazer’s, during my time there as the Corporate Director of Malts, I contacted Dogfish Head in Delaware. As this was over 10 years ago, Dogfish had not achieved the status it now holds in the craft world. I flew to the brewery and met with Sam […]