{"id":99,"date":"2013-01-15T08:37:30","date_gmt":"2013-01-15T13:37:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=99"},"modified":"2013-01-15T08:37:30","modified_gmt":"2013-01-15T13:37:30","slug":"everybody-wants-to-get-to-heaven-but-nobody-wants-to-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=99","title":{"rendered":"Everybody wants to get to heaven but nobody wants to die!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

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By the mid 90’s, Glazer’s corporate office had decided to\u00a0expand their beer\u00a0portfolio and to purchase beer distributorships.\u00a0 In retrospect, this decision should have been well received by the industry, however, the affect was just the opposite.\u00a0 For many years, Glazer’s had been the statewide distributor for Heineken in Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana.\u00a0 In addition, they had some\u00a0other quality\u00a0imports, including the Modelo portfolio in West Texas. But since beer was a secondary focus for Glazer\u2019s, the industry wanted them to divest these products instead of expanding.\u00a0 Initially, Glazer\u2019s efforts to expand were rebuffed.\u00a0Through years of \u00a0litigation, Heineken was able to change to a beer network in Louisiana and Texas, but not in Arkansas.<\/p>\n

In the late 90’s, Glazer’s purchased two small distributorships, Mid-State in Waco and Maxwell in Longview.\u00a0 The vendors reluctantly approved the purchase after receiving assurances regarding structure and performance, along with Glazer’s agreement to add senior management with beer backgrounds.\u00a0 It was the suppliers\u2019 only option as Glazer’s had paid a high premium for both operations.\u00a0 Obviously, \u00a0this was Glazer\u2019s way to get into the beer distributing industry\u2026 a high cost of entry, but one they were willing to make.<\/p>\n

As we all know, Glazer’s is one of the ten largest distributors in the country, having acquired a number of operation \u00a0since their initial purchases.\u00a0 They have chosen this path, selling off a number of imports and crafts to other distributors where they didn’t have any beer operations to service the market.<\/p>\n

Reyes, on the other hand, has been successful in buying and consolidating Miller\/Coors operations across the country, in spite of the wishes of many imports and crafts.\u00a0 Some of these vendors have even gone out of their way when expanding into a Reyes-market to not<\/i> appoint them.\u00a0 Even pulling out of a particular state just so they didn’t have to deal with Reyes. Bell’s, in Chicago, did this some years ago when Union Distributors sold.<\/p>\n

When Two Brothers Brewing Co. in Chicago started, they couldn’t find a distributor to handle their brands so they self-distributed.\u00a0 This eventually led to the creation of Windy City.\u00a0 Soon other crafts, who also couldn’t find a distributor, asked\u00a0WC to take them on.\u00a0 In an effort to grow Windy City, Bob Collins joined the distributor when Union dissolved.\u00a0 With a unique business model, Windy City, which serves all eight Chicago area counties, has grown to a million cases with only crafts and imports.\u00a0\u00a0The distributor has become a highly respected competitor to the MC and ABI network, including Reyes.<\/p>\n

The recent announcement that Reyes had purchased Windy City comes as no surprise, and neither does the price that Reyes paid!\u00a0 Reyes intends to keep the operation as is, including management, so then the question becomes, why did Reyes even make the purchase?\u00a0 Obviously,\u00a0Chicago Beverage\u2019s\u00a0footprint\u00a0isn’t eight counties, so keeping WC would solve that problem, but from a ROI,\u00a0is it the best option.\u00a0 \u00a0Or could the reason be that, Reyes has a much better chance of keeping all the vendors and brands this way?\u00a0 Illinois has a provision in their franchise laws enabling a vendor to opt (buy)\u00a0out of a house if it’s volume is under 10% of the distributors total volume. \u00a0By keeping WC intact, and not consolidating it with Chicago Beverage,\u00a0Reyes has eliminated the 10% volume\u00a0option, or the “get out of jail” card!<\/p>\n

Whatever the reason, both Glazer’s and Reyes continue\u00a0to acquire operations .\u00a0 Rest assured, they will continue to do so as both\u00a0companies\u00a0are trying\u00a0to “get to heaven, but don’t want to die.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      By the mid 90’s, Glazer’s corporate office had decided to\u00a0expand their beer\u00a0portfolio and to purchase beer distributorships.\u00a0 In retrospect, this decision should have been well received by the industry, however, the affect was just the opposite.\u00a0 For many years, Glazer’s had been the statewide distributor for Heineken in Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana.\u00a0 […]<\/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-1B","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99"}],"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=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":554,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions\/554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=99"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=99"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}