{"id":5173,"date":"2018-12-04T07:00:38","date_gmt":"2018-12-04T12:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=5173"},"modified":"2018-12-02T18:05:25","modified_gmt":"2018-12-02T23:05:25","slug":"the-future-belongs-to-those-who-prepare-for-it-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=5173","title":{"rendered":"The future belongs to those who prepare for it today."},"content":{"rendered":"

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In the 1960s, Willowbrook Distributing warehouse, used by Coors of Dallas, was considered an upscale building.\u00a0 The facility was large, the trucks were able to load indoors, the warehouse temperature\u00a0was controlled and there were rail sidings.\u00a0 The warehouse also provided multiple offices, a break room, locker rooms, a hospitality room, a check-in area, and of course, executive\u00a0offices.<\/p>\n

Until this time, I had little knowledge of the differences between beer warehouses.\u00a0 While at Lone Star, I had two distributors whose warehouses were actually old barns.\u00a0 Both warehouses were similar with a couple of pallets of beer and a forklift. \u00a0 There was an Oklahoma distributor who operated out of a former railroad station.\u00a0 The trucks would pull up alongside the passenger\u00a0docks and the beer was hand loaded onto the vehicles.\u00a0 Obviously a great deal of manual labor was involved.<\/p>\n

In Chicago, a number of the current beer warehouses still have roots dating back decades with little to no updates.\u00a0 This is difficult to understand considering the onslaught of new brands, flavors, and SKUs.\u00a0 In today’s high tech market, warehouses are computer driven with little that remotely resembles the beer facilities of 50 years ago.\u00a0 Interestingly, the one exception to this rule is the beer pallets, which remain basically unchanged.<\/p>\n

A four year old West Texas AB house is a great illustration of a state-of-the-art beer warehouse.\u00a0 The storage area is computer operated, the temperature is controlled with high tech equipment, and the facility boasted all the bells and whistles one could imagine.\u00a0 And, of course, the warehouse was built with future growth in mind. Interestingly, when taking a tour of the facility we discovered that the sales department was dark and empty. It was also immediately apparent that the modern-designed desks were not in use\u2026there were no computers, no phones, no papers, no p-o-s, no glasses\u2026empty.<\/p>\n

The only people in the building, outside of the warehouse, were the reception and financial staff in the front of the facility.\u00a0 The most heavily used portion of the building; however, was the new gym and workout facility installed by the distributor.\u00a0 The distributor indicated that the gym was most heavily used by the staff during the early mornings, late afternoons and on the weekends.<\/p>\n

The question in today’s beer industry is what will the modern beer facility look like and how will it function?\u00a0 It is obvious that a sales department, now automated, is out selling.\u00a0 There is no need to go into the warehouse, except for meetings.\u00a0 Will such an arrangement be sufficient\u00a0going forward?\u00a0 Should the empty desks be removed and a game room added?\u00a0 Maybe provide a ping pong table, a couple of X Boxes and big flat screen TVs with overstuffed chairs and music.\u00a0 Many of the companies who want to attract younger, educated Millennials\u00a0are modifying their offices to meet this generation\u2019s expectations.<\/p>\n

It is safe to say that parts of the beer industry are slow to change, warehousing, however, is not.\u00a0 Companies have to keep up with industry trends and this should apply to their current and future employees.<\/p>\n

The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.<\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s Note<\/u>. \u00a0Attention all former Schlitz employees and Schlitz Distributors<\/strong>: The family of James Haire is searching for a booklet created by Jim during his tenure at the Schlitz training institute years ago.\u00a0 The booklet is approximately 20 pages in length with a plastic cover complete with Jim\u2019s photo.\u00a0 If you have a copy, or know where one can be located, please let us know.\u00a0 The family would like be most appreciative.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

In the 1960s, Willowbrook Distributing warehouse, used by Coors of Dallas, was considered an upscale building.\u00a0 The facility was large, the trucks were able to load indoors, the warehouse temperature\u00a0was controlled and there were rail sidings.\u00a0 The warehouse also provided multiple offices, a break room, locker rooms, a hospitality room, a check-in area, and of […]<\/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-1lr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5173"}],"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=5173"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5183,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5173\/revisions\/5183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}