I hope you have been following the dispute between Alliance Beverage and Four Peaks Brewing which has lately\u00a0been the topic of many publications .\u00a0 This issue is much larger than\u00a0whether or not a “commercial agreement” existed between the two companies, it does however, demonstrates just what can happen when two companies are between a rock and a hard place.\u00a0 I have an interest in following this as Glazer’s is an owner of Alliance so I had contact with them when I was at Glazer’s.<\/p>\n
This issue reminds me of two recent situations in which I was directly involved that\u00a0personify how many vendors view wholesalers.\u00a0 First,\u00a0I had\u00a0a large distributor who told\u00a0his vendors, myself included, that he would never hold any vendor hostage if they wanted to leave if the business agreement wasn’t working out for them.\u00a0 Just inform him where the brands would go,\u00a0and he would try to make it happen.\u00a0 When I had the opportunity, and it was appropriate, I requested that we be allowed to find a new distribution network.\u00a0 He leaned back and responded to me,\u00a0“you really think I meant that<\/em>?”<\/p>\n Secondly, another large distributor (same summer) with performance issues, was asked to sell\u00a0our brand.\u00a0 He agreed, but the corporate office did not.\u00a0 They did however, sign a performance based agreement stating that if any metrics (the distributor submitted the goals) were not accomplished over the year,\u00a0they would sell the brand to the proposed buyer.\u00a0 After 11 months the review took place, none of the metrics were made, and the corporate office said they would not honor the signed agreement and would not sell the brand.<\/p>\n Two separate distributors, on two separate occasions, had no intention to honor their statements and or agreements.\u00a0 Understand that the volume of the combined distributors was over 25% of my US business.\u00a0 Two examples of how distributors “hide” behind state franchise laws.<\/p>\n Many of you are saying that it’s a “two-way street” and you’re right!\u00a0 I can also recall numerous times when the vendor came in and either “forced” or tried to force a distributor out, even going so far as to send a team in to do a 90 “blitz” in the market looking for any\u00a0deficiency\u00a0they could find.\u00a0 One which I will discuss at a later post as an example of this is G.Heileman vs. Maletis Beverage in 1991. You might be thinking that these are “isolated instances” but they are not.<\/p>\n Say what you will, franchise laws weren’t designed with this in mind.\u00a0\u00a0If \u00a0a vendor has a performance issue with a distributor, you’d better listen, however, if the distributor wants to DQ a vendor, there isn’t any legal issue, is there?\u00a0 So, a distributor can DQ a vendor, but a vendor can’t DQ a distributor without at least some compensation!\u00a0 Think about it.<\/p>\n The Alliance and Four Peaks conflict is just the tip of the iceberg.\u00a0 With hundreds more craft breweries coming they will need wholesalers and vice a verse.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0So the question then becomes, how do they get along and what is the role of franchise laws in the future?<\/p>\n Just don’t tell me it’s raining down my back when I know it’s not rain……<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I hope you have been following the dispute between Alliance Beverage and Four Peaks Brewing which has lately\u00a0been the topic of many publications .\u00a0 This issue is much larger than\u00a0whether or not a “commercial agreement” existed between the two companies, it does however, demonstrates just what can happen when two companies are between a rock […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2xRTi-1L","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=109"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions\/126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}