{"id":3894,"date":"2017-04-18T06:00:09","date_gmt":"2017-04-18T11:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=3894"},"modified":"2017-04-14T11:56:42","modified_gmt":"2017-04-14T16:56:42","slug":"we-are-all-born-ignorant-but-one-must-work-hard-to-remain-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=3894","title":{"rendered":"We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"i-see-beer-2\"<\/a>When Coors Brewery expanded their Texas footprint in the mid 1960s, the brewery approached each major market looking only for one distributor. \u00a0Prior to the 1960s expansion, Coors was only sold in El Paso and Amarillo. \u00a0Coors appointed a few distributors in small markets, Mineral Wells being one of them, but the company had only one distributor in Ft. Worth and one in Dallas. \u00a0Within 10 years, however, Coors was the number one volume beer in all these markets.<\/p>\n

Ten years later, Coor\u2019s second expansion in Texas, saw the Dallas distributor, Willowbrook, now close to five percent of Coors Brewing Cos. total volume. \u00a0 Willowbrook’s large Coors volume made the brewer uncomfortable in that one distributor could represent such a high percentage of volume. \u00a0Given Coors plan not to have large distributors again, Coors appointed four distributors in San Antonio and four in Houston.<\/p>\n

This plan was diametrically opposite of AB’s plan, which operated under the belief that larger wholesalers were better equipped to dominate their market, which was a strategy that worked for AB. \u00a0Four Coors wholesalers were too small to compete against the larger AB and Schlitz houses and Coors paid the price, as none of the four operations survived.<\/p>\n

The AB model helped Budweiser grow, as both the brewery and their wholesalers dominated the US market. \u00a0In one sense, their size simply wore down AB’s competition. \u00a0In Texas alone, Silver Eagle in Houston and San Antonio; and Ben E. Keith and L&F in Dallas, were in the top five volume AB wholesalers in the U.S. \u00a0All of these AB distributors now have brands outside of the AB offering which have taken advantage of their market domination too.<\/p>\n

When InBev took over AB, in reality the big asset was not just the brands, but also the AB wholesale network, which is considered the best in the country. \u00a0InBev quickly learned that they needed to work with their wholesalers, however, InBev had another agenda. \u00a0After 10 years, it is safe to assume that ABI is changing their tune.<\/p>\n

The industry is watching how ABI handles the proposed merger of the three large mult-state AB houses in North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. \u00a0Just in the past several days. AB announced it will not approve this merger citing a number of concerns.<\/p>\n

So the real question is: are AB\u2019s concerns legitimate or is there another reason? \u00a0If the merger is approved, a real concern for AB could be what would happen if this new super AB house joined several other large AB houses, (perhaps BEK, Silver Eagle or L&F) and created an AB wholesaler group! \u00a0The volume these wholesalers would represent for AB would put AB on the defensive and give this proposed new group enough power to negotiate from true position of strength.<\/p>\n

Many of the current AB houses were already in place when InBev took over AB, however, some houses, with ABI’s approval, have been created. This scenario, however, now seems now to be coming to an end. \u00a0These JV’s could be a serious threat to ABI, especially if current sales trends continue.<\/p>\n

We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid….<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Coors Brewery expanded their Texas footprint in the mid 1960s, the brewery approached each major market looking only for one distributor. \u00a0Prior to the 1960s expansion, Coors was only sold in El Paso and Amarillo. \u00a0Coors appointed a few distributors in small markets, Mineral Wells being one of them, but the company had only […]<\/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-10O","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3894"}],"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=3894"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4087,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3894\/revisions\/4087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}