{"id":513,"date":"2013-02-12T08:37:23","date_gmt":"2013-02-12T13:37:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=513"},"modified":"2013-02-12T08:37:23","modified_gmt":"2013-02-12T13:37:23","slug":"a-small-act-of-kindness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=513","title":{"rendered":"A small act of kindness….."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pearl<\/a><\/p>\n

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Almost every small south Texas town annually hosts a local event which helps foster community in that town. \u00a0Most events\u00a0are either rodeos or festivals which emphasize what the town is known for,\u00a0like the Watermelon Festival in Luling, Texas or the Poteet Strawberry Festival in Poteet, Texas.\u00a0 The three largest rodeos\u00a0in Texas are the Ft. Worth Stock Show and Rodeo, the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo, and the largest in the world, The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.\u00a0 Because these events attracted thousands of people from across the state and nation, the local beer companies would compete to buy the grand champion livestock.\u00a0 Schlitz, the largest selling brand\u00a0for years,\u00a0 always bought the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo champion, and at the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo, either Lone Star or Pearl purchased the champion livestock since these breweries were headquartered there.\u00a0 The animals typically were raised by local high school kids who used the money earned from the sale to pay for college tuition. \u00a0The animal was typically donated to an orphanage.<\/p>\n

The Rio Grande Valley Livestock show was the biggest event in my area, and annually, in conjunction with the Pearl Brewing Co., we purchased the Grand Champion pig and would donate it to the boys\u2019 home in the Valley.\u00a0 Every year I’d get a letter from the young owner of the Grand Champion pig thanking me and Pearl for helping finance his\/her college education.<\/p>\n

I never sponsored any of these events with the thought of “selling” more beer, I did it because it was the right thing to do for the community that we embodied.\u00a0 I believe that almost all distributors feel this way when sponsoring an event of this nature.\u00a0 It is the right thing to do when we can help people in the community we serve.<\/p>\n

The three-tier system provides many services for our industry.\u00a0 As we know, the three-tier system is under attack from many critics either directly involved in the industry, politicians or the media.\u00a0 In defending the three-tier system, the industry has emphasized such benefits as: \u00a0quality control for fresher beer; efforts to eliminate under age drinking and DUI enforcement, and, of course; effective service to the retail trade.\u00a0 While all of these planks support the three-tier system, perhaps the community support distributors provide is the most important platform for the three-tier argument.<\/p>\n

I once knew a Miller distributor who had, for the second time become the dominate distributor. He first success was with Falstaff.\u00a0 This gentleman refused to support anything in the community.\u00a0 In his opinion, supporting community events was not important.\u00a0 He assumed Miller would die, as had Falstaff and why waste the time and money.\u00a0 He has been long gone from the business.\u00a0 It’s funny how those who support the market are ones usually doing very well.<\/p>\n

Whether it’s a rodeo or a festival, or even a German Oktoberfest (best kind of special event),\u00a0the local distributor involvement makes it special.\u00a0 I look back with great fondness on those letters from the young future farmers who thanked me for buying their livestock.\u00a0 \u00a0Those letters are really a small\u00a0act of kindness!<\/p>\n

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  Almost every small south Texas town annually hosts a local event which helps foster community in that town. \u00a0Most events\u00a0are either rodeos or festivals which emphasize what the town is known for,\u00a0like the Watermelon Festival in Luling, Texas or the Poteet Strawberry Festival in Poteet, Texas.\u00a0 The three largest rodeos\u00a0in Texas are the Ft. […]<\/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-8h","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513"}],"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=513"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":600,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513\/revisions\/600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}