In\u00a01969, my first summer working on a Coors delivery truck in Dallas, the entire portfolio of the company consisted of: 4\/6 NRs, 24\/12 bottles (same as the 4\/6 bottle), 12\/32 quarts, 1\/4 bbls., 1\/2 bbls.\u00a0 These 5 packages of Coors Banquet is all we had, think about it, only 5 SKU’s of one brand!\u00a0 Of course in those days, the state of Texas only allowed beer packages in 288 ounce eq. except for quarts and kegs.\u00a0 One of the first creative package changes of that time came from Schlitz when they, in response to the 288 ounce law, came out with “Tall Boys,”\u00a0 12\/24 ounce cans which was also 288 ounces.\u00a0 By the mid 70’s the race was on with the introduction of 12\/12 cans\/NRs and the new “light beers” first from Miller and the rest is history.<\/p>\n
During my years as the Corporate Director of Malt Beverages at Glazers, our system had over 12,000 SKU’s listed.\u00a0 This included beer, wine, spirits, N\/As, waters, mixes etc. but like most W\/S operations they had figured out how to logistically manage this number.\u00a0 While traveling the country over the years, I watched with interest the explosion of products, packages, flavors and styles hit the industry to the point every wholesaler I visited had some type of internal system to manage the increase number of products.\u00a0 Most had a “review committee” and had a system in place to monitor velocity based on internal targets.\u00a0 As an example, a standard might be the sale or depletion of at least a pallet a month.\u00a0 This assumes the product had the proper support\u00a0by the vendor and the wholesaler executed as planned.<\/p>\n
It was just reported that since 2008, the number of SKU’s in stores have increased +1,764 with craft beers representing +1,101 of that number.\u00a0 Think about how this has affected the retailer?\u00a0 HEB\u00a0in San Antonio does two “resets” a year called “round tables” where wholesalers work together with HEB\u00a0to add and eliminate various brands and packages.\u00a0 The buyer “ranks” the new products by importance and store type.\u00a0 This past spring the HEB buyer was presented with 300 new products and packages on top of over 200 last fall.\u00a0 Now how do you manage that?\u00a0 In the past, you had about 6 months to create a velocity rate justifying either package expansion or just being able to remain in the sets.\u00a0 Now you’re lucky to have 8 weeks to prove the rate, if not, out you go.\u00a0 One and done!!<\/p>\n
Right now there have been\u00a088,040 COLA’s\u00a0submitted to the TTB\u00a0for approval.\u00a0 That’s in the first half of the year!\u00a0 Now if that doesn’t get you, think about this, there are estimated to be\u00a0hundreds of\u00a0applications for new breweries at the TTB today!!!\u00a0\u00a0Many are brew pubs, but let’s assume 100 get permits, 50 get built, assume (conservative) 4 brands with 3 SKU’s or 12 new ones to sell, that’s at least 600 more coming and as we all know, that is the minimum.<\/p>\n
Now comes the big question, where do they all go???\u00a0 I call it “the coming tsunami!”\u00a0 Are there wholesalers who will take on these new products?\u00a0 Are the retailers going to support them?\u00a0 A vendor told me this week that in his state, ABI has rolled out 13 new SKU’s this year!\u00a0 We are being flood! Is it the way to grow the industry or are we kidding ourselves?\u00a0 You tell me then stay tuned for that editorial…….coming soon!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In\u00a01969, my first summer working on a Coors delivery truck in Dallas, the entire portfolio of the company consisted of: 4\/6 NRs, 24\/12 bottles (same as the 4\/6 bottle), 12\/32 quarts, 1\/4 bbls., 1\/2 bbls.\u00a0 These 5 packages of Coors Banquet is all we had, think about it, only 5 SKU’s of one brand!\u00a0 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":"","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-15","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67"}],"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=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions\/93"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}