{"id":3690,"date":"2016-10-11T06:00:55","date_gmt":"2016-10-11T11:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=3690"},"modified":"2016-10-09T16:45:46","modified_gmt":"2016-10-09T21:45:46","slug":"quality-is-not-an-act-it-is-a-habit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=3690","title":{"rendered":"Quality is not an act, it is a habit.."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"pearl-brewery\"<\/a>When Coors expanded into South Texas in the mid-1970s, the brewery required each distributor to refrigerate their warehouse and, at a minimum, insulate or refrigerate every delivery truck. \u00a0Coors was delivered to each warehouse from Colorado on refrigerated trucks or heavily insulated railcars. \u00a0The beer was immediately put into the cold storage warehouse.<\/p>\n

In those days, for Coors, it was all about quality, and nothing less. The beer had to be in a temperature controlled environment and constantly rotated. \u00a0Out of date beer was to be picked up immediately and destroyed. \u00a0No questions asked.<\/p>\n

With the exception of one retailer, this stringent code of quality control was not an issue when we opened the San Antonio operation. \u00a0That retailer, Hipp\u2019s Bubble Room, a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant\/bar located in the shadow of the Pearl Brewery that featured Pearl draft, took exception to Coors QA demands. Hipp\u2019s put his weekly order of five cases in the un-air conditioned metal storage building behind his bar. \u00a0Needless to say during Texas summers, the temperature in that building was excessive. \u00a0Attempts were made by many Coors management visits to convince the owner to store the beer inside<\/em> the bar, but he refused. \u00a0Coors, having no other choice, stopped selling beer to Hipp\u2019s. \u00a0Consumer demand forced the owner to get Coors from the bar next door, Little Hipps, owned by his son. \u00a0Neither Coors nor Hipp\u2019s relented and Coors continued to stand by its quality standards, even if it meant losing a good account.<\/p>\n

Recent visits and discussions with multiple beer distributors have revealed that their number-one issue is with the quality of the new craft beers. \u00a0Without exception, multiple issues have arisen concerning the acquisition of a new brewer, quickly followed by quality issues. \u00a0The story is the same: One batch of beer was good; the next batch was off-taste. \u00a0In almost every case, the wholesaler soon discontinued these brands. \u00a0Like Coors in the mid-1970s, they had no choice.<\/p>\n

Charlie Papazian, former head of the Brewers Association, wrote a commentary last month in the\u00a0New Brewer<\/em>, stated that a major issue for beer is quality. His solution, however, was to create a mandate that all crafts be shipped, stored, and sold cold. \u00a0No more retail warm-shelf placements. \u00a0Papazian, further advocated for reduction of redundancy in major brands, thus providing cold-space openings for crafts. \u00a0By getting the retailer to so, it would enhance the consumer\u2019s experience with fresh craft beer and, thus, in-turn, grow the segment. \u00a0What would a cold box look like if all the Bud Light, Miller Lite, and Coors Light packages were on the warm shelf, replaced by crafts in the cold box? \u00a0Where would imports go?<\/p>\n

Craft brewers continue to make access into the marketplace, and franchise laws are top issues for this middle tier. \u00a0Wholesalers continue to push back with QA issues. \u00a0Perhaps, if crafts put a priority on QA over access to market it would not have become the issue it is today. \u00a0High quality beer is much easier to sell, (e.g. New Belgium or Boston Beer), if the consumer knows the beer they are purchasing is the freshest possible. Fresh beer leads to repeat buyers.<\/p>\n

Charlie Papazian’s ideal retail setting is not going to happen anytime soon, however, increasing quality for crafts should be the industries\u2019 priority if crafts are to continue to grow.<\/p>\n

Quality is not an act; it is a habit.<\/p>\n

Beer Fodder; \u00a0cp-article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Coors expanded into South Texas in the mid-1970s, the brewery required each distributor to refrigerate their warehouse and, at a minimum, insulate or refrigerate every delivery truck. \u00a0Coors was delivered to each warehouse from Colorado on refrigerated trucks or heavily insulated railcars. \u00a0The beer was immediately put into the cold storage warehouse. In those […]<\/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-Xw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3690"}],"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=3690"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3707,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3690\/revisions\/3707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}