{"id":728,"date":"2013-04-09T07:21:15","date_gmt":"2013-04-09T12:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=728"},"modified":"2013-04-09T07:21:15","modified_gmt":"2013-04-09T12:21:15","slug":"what-they-dont-teach-you-at-harvard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=728","title":{"rendered":"What they don’t teach you at Harvard!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Good<\/a>While attending college, I worked on the Coors trucks during the summer.\u00a0 \u00a0The training I received was all OJT. It was not until I worked for the Schlitz operation in Louisiana, that I got my first formal beer training, Haire University in Milwaukee.\u00a0 The training\u00a0we received was more hands on with draft.\u00a0 We spent two days understanding various draft systems, cleaning the equipment and learning how to solve pouring problems.\u00a0 Remember, these were the days of simple direct draw systems and it was rare to find a remote or forced system.<\/p>\n

Coors also didn’t have much invested in \u00a0training in those days, but they did have a program which enabled employees to handle brewery visits.\u00a0 This was a big event for salesmen, enabling them the opportunity to tour the brewery, observe how Coors was produced and packaged, all while being entertained by the brewery personnel. The brewery allowed employees to reside at the old Pig and Whistle Hotel and Bar, an establishment famous for their steak dinners.\u00a0 When the employee left the training session, they might not have learned how to sell, but they definitely had experienced a great time.<\/p>\n

When I joined the brewery after selling my interest in my distributorship, the only training I got was a day of learning the brewery policies and history.\u00a0 I did have the opportunity later that year, however, to attend and participate in Distributor Economics II.\u00a0 This was an advanced course on how to run a beer operation.\u00a0 The training established a team of several field sales people and gave each team a case study on a beer operation that was losing money.\u00a0 The study was three days in length, each day representing a year of operations.\u00a0 At the end of each day, the teams presented to the class the actions they took to “right” the operation.\u00a0 The goal, of course, was to ensure the beer distributorship became profitable by the end of the week.\u00a0 Interestingly, the facilitator of the class had never owned or run an independent beer operation.\u00a0 The case studies were on actual distributorships, unnamed, in which the brewery had to step in and\u00a0save the operation.\u00a0 The case study was more theory than reality, however, it was a good exercise, especially for young sales people.<\/p>\n

Many of us have had visits from young regional managers from major suppliers who have grandiose ideas on how to improve the distributors\u2019 effectiveness.\u00a0 Usually, these young managers have gone to their companies six – eight week training course and suddenly, they have become experts on running a distributorship.\u00a0 Likewise, the same is true of the craft breweries that I have visited with over the years.\u00a0 They make good beer, but have no idea how to go to market.<\/p>\n

Just last week, Portland State University announced a online\u00a0certificate program entitled\u00a0“The Business of Craft Brewing” from the Professional Development Center.\u00a0 While there are a number of colleges that offer courses on brewing, PSU goes\u00a0deeper into the subject offering such\u00a0classes as Basic Business for Craft Beverages, Craft Business Management, Strategic\u00a0Craft Beverage Marketing and Finance and Accounting for Craft.\u00a0 This certificate program could eventually turn into a degree offering from PSU.<\/p>\n

If the program uses adjunct professors with extensive experience in the beer\u00a0business, the students will be fortunate to have real world teaching. \u00a0That said, \u00a0I bet this degree program is not yet offered at Harvard!<\/p>\n

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

While attending college, I worked on the Coors trucks during the summer.\u00a0 \u00a0The training I received was all OJT. It was not until I worked for the Schlitz operation in Louisiana, that I got my first formal beer training, Haire University in Milwaukee.\u00a0 The training\u00a0we received was more hands on with draft.\u00a0 We spent two […]<\/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":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-bK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728"}],"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=728"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":746,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions\/746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}