{"id":1328,"date":"2013-11-26T06:50:40","date_gmt":"2013-11-26T11:50:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=1328"},"modified":"2013-11-25T10:58:08","modified_gmt":"2013-11-25T15:58:08","slug":"the-thankful-receiver-bears-a-plentiful-harvest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=1328","title":{"rendered":"The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest….."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Thanksgiving<\/a>After World War II, Van Munching, the US importer for Heineken, used wine and spirit houses for their distributor of choice.\u00a0 Since imports were not very big at the time, this strategy\u00a0of using wine and spirits houses made sense.\u00a0 The model worked because beer was sold mostly through package stores.\u00a0 Coupled with the fact that Heineken was sold\u00a0primarily in restaurants and bars where liquor and wine were also\u00a0available, made for successful distribution.<\/p>\n

As other importers came into the US, they too started following Heineken\u2019s business model and appointed the wine and spirit houses as their distributors.\u00a0 In almost every case, the wine and spirit house operated on a statewide basis, making pricing and logistics easy for the vendor.\u00a0 In some cases, the vendor only had one call point and from that call handled all distributor communications.\u00a0 Many imports preferred this model.<\/p>\n

Then came craft beers,\u00a0and most saw the\u00a0wine and spirit model as the best distribution option for them.\u00a0 In fact, throughout the 90s New Belgium employed the wine and spirit model.\u00a0 Glazer’s was awarded New Belgium in Texas, Arkansas and Kansas.\u00a0 RNDC had New Belgium for all of Arizona.\u00a0 In 2005, Glazer’s, counting the Chicago JV with Union, represented 22% of Warsteiner’s total US business.\u00a0 Oddly, the commitment to beer varied from state to state by the same wine and spirit company.\u00a0 For example, RNDC had beer in Arizona and Florida, but no beer brands in Texas.\u00a0 Southern Wine and Spirits was strong in some states, like Nevada and South Carolina, but not in California.<\/p>\n

Once Heineken\u00a0created its own importing company, they started to systematically change from wine and spirit houses to beer distributors.\u00a0 The rapid growth of Corona forced Heineken into the beer distributor house because getting the distribution they wanted was only possible through the beer distributors.<\/p>\n

While at Gambrinus in the late 90s, I received a call from the largest c-store chain in El Paso.\u00a0 They had 34 stores and the buyer was upset because he could not get Corona from Glazer’s.\u00a0 I made all 34 stores with the Glazer’s branch manager and found almost no Corona in any stores.\u00a0 Glazer’s did not have the Gallo brands in that market; therefore they did not service the c-stores on a regular basis.\u00a0 When they did, there was no merchandising or rotating.\u00a0 Needless to say, after an intense meeting with Glazer’s management, 10 beer salesmen were hired and sales doubled.<\/p>\n

As the consumer began to discover the craft beers, these craft\u00a0breweries realized that getting their products to the shelf and expanding distribution was necessary for their continued growth.\u00a0 In many cases, the wine and spirit houses either would not, or were unwilling to build the infrastructure needed to service the retail market to the same quality level as the beer distributors.\u00a0 Over time and out of necessity, the craft breweries began leaving the wine and spirit houses for beer houses.\u00a0 Most of these departures were amicable, but in some cases, the courts became involved.\u00a0 Even today, these departures continue.<\/p>\n

Wine and spirit houses are led by wine and spirit professionals while beer houses are run by beer people.\u00a0 By the end of 2015, the craft beer industry\u00a0should be 10% of the US total domestic beer volume.\u00a0 The question is, if the crafts\u2019 continued growth reaches a market share of 35%+ in the US, then this Thanksgiving the beer distributors should have much for which to be thankful.\u00a0\u00a0The MC and ABI distributors\u00a0should thank Southern, RNDC, Glazer’s, Charmer, and others W&S companies for not investing and building the infrastructure needed to grow crafts and imports.\u00a0 They should hope that the CEOs of these\u00a0companies continue to ignore this opportunity.\u00a0 This Thanksgiving, the beer distributors are the thankful receivers that will bear a fruitful harvest!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After World War II, Van Munching, the US importer for Heineken, used wine and spirit houses for their distributor of choice.\u00a0 Since imports were not very big at the time, this strategy\u00a0of using wine and spirits houses made sense.\u00a0 The model worked because beer was sold mostly through package stores.\u00a0 Coupled with the fact that […]<\/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":"yes","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":true,"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-lq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328"}],"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=1328"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1389,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions\/1389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}