{"id":1595,"date":"2014-03-11T06:30:28","date_gmt":"2014-03-11T11:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=1595"},"modified":"2014-03-10T08:51:15","modified_gmt":"2014-03-10T13:51:15","slug":"in-search-of-hans-brinker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=1595","title":{"rendered":"In search of Hans Brinker"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Craft<\/a>A couple of years after\u00a0the expansion of Coors in south Texas, their market share had settled in to around 13%.\u00a0 Schlitz remained a strong number one.\u00a0\u00a0Coors had a difficult time developing the on premise so when I arrived in Wichita in 1978, I felt I had landed in heaven.\u00a0 Coors market share was over 60% and you could go into any bar and every single beer drinker had a Coors in their hand.\u00a0 Coors owned<\/i> the on premise.\u00a0 In general, whoever controlled the on premise was the market leader in sales.<\/p>\n

Since the recession started, beer sales in the on premise have declined at an alarming rate.\u00a0 Total beer volume was down -4%.\u00a0 In 2013, premium lights are down -10.9%, premium regular beers are down -7.4%, followed by imports at -6.1%.\u00a0 Crafts, however, are +3.8% in volume and +7.0% in dollars!\u00a0 In fact, crafts are now at an on premise share of 28.5% verses premium lights share of 26.8%!<\/p>\n

I recently visited two small local craft breweries, Peticolas and Grapevine.\u00a0 Peticolas began brewing three years ago and Grapevine just started brewing around Thanksgiving.\u00a0 Both breweries have state-of-the-art equipment, having invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in their operations.\u00a0 Currently, both only sell kegs and no packages, however, they have the square footage to expand when ready to install the equipment.\u00a0 Both Peticolas and Grapevine self-distribute.<\/p>\n

In the DFW area, Peticolas now has over 300 draft accounts and Grapevine over 70.\u00a0 Grapevine also self distributes in Austin, where they have 20 draft accounts.\u00a0 Going back to over three years ago, before either of these breweries existed,\u00a0it is highly\u00a0likely that these 400 handles were pouring either an AB or MC product and serviced by either Ben. E. Keith or Andrews.<\/p>\n

These wholesalers now have to sell against these craft breweries when they used to have<\/i> this business.\u00a0 Both their brands and this business are gone.\u00a0 Given the current trends in craft sales, unless the distributors \u00a0can get distribution rights to these brands, these 400+ handles are not coming back to them.\u00a0 Both BEK and Andrews have made presentations to both companies and want to distribute them.<\/p>\n

The question becomes, what will happen in the off premise when breweries such as Peticolas and Grapevine start to produce packages?\u00a0 The market share for crafts is much higher on premise than off premise, but is that misleading?\u00a0 What happens if these two breweries decide to merge their distribution function into a JV?\u00a0 What if out of state crafts join them and a business model such as Chicago\u2019s Windy City is created?<\/p>\n

The state franchise laws supported by wholesalers, and designed to protect them from vendors, are now prohibiting these wholesalers from adding crafts brands like Peticolas and Grapevine.\u00a0 Craft brewers want options and franchise laws limit or eliminate\u00a0those options.<\/p>\n

These are just two of the many craft breweries now producing beer and a number of these breweries self-distribute.\u00a0 Traditional brands carried by wholesalers are losing share and handles, especially in the on premise.\u00a0 Soon it will happen in the off premise.<\/p>\n

The dam is\u00a0leaking for the AB and MC brands and the hole is getting larger.\u00a0 The traditional wholesalers see it and feel it, but they cannot stop it. \u00a0In fact, they are in search of the proverbially famous young Dutch boy who heroically put his finger in the hole in the dyke to save his town\u2026Hans Brinker.\u00a0 But is it too late?<\/p>\n

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A couple of years after\u00a0the expansion of Coors in south Texas, their market share had settled in to around 13%.\u00a0 Schlitz remained a strong number one.\u00a0\u00a0Coors had a difficult time developing the on premise so when I arrived in Wichita in 1978, I felt I had landed in heaven.\u00a0 Coors market share was over 60% […]<\/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-pJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1595"}],"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=1595"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1622,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1595\/revisions\/1622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}