Distributors: a factor in your drinking?

Of course. Whenever I walk into a beer store the first question I always ask is "who is your distributor".

 

Similar story here. Been at an AB house for 7 years now and with the rapidly changing beer market in our part of the country, the company I work for has gone all out on picking up craft beers. Southern tier, rumors of o'dells and FW along with all the major local brands and several of the smaller companies.

At this point there is so much profit to be made in the craft segment, it would take something unheard of for ABI to pry these brands from our company I would imagine.

It certainly is a benefit to both the brewer and the distro. Our relationships with accounts, frequency of service, and overall presence in the market makes it much more possible to get craft beer in bars, restaraunts, and convinience stores rather than say a small Indy brewer that may deliver once a month to slower craft accounts.

 

Owned? No notable ones that I can think of offhand. I'd be on their corporate site - ABInBev

 

It's mostly lip service to shareholders and sabre rattling between business partners. Suppliers cannot own wholesalers in my state and we have strong franchise laws. Of course it's smart to pick your battles from a wholesaler standpoint, and ABI has actually done small things that make it more expensive for us to operate, but it's mostly slap-on-the-wrist type stuff. It's not surprising that ABI doesn't like it that wholesalers are diversifying, the only reason you hear those things and see those articles is because they have the loudest mouth at the table. During the 90's campaign ABI offered incentives for exclusivity. Those eventually dried up and wholesalers started branching out. ABI isn't doing much to encourage "alignment" (they really do call it alignment, btw) today, but they're not really doing anything to discourage it. Every AB house in my state is doing the same thing.

 

I was thinking in the context of bigger craft brewers like NBB (since that was the example OP used), but you're right that smaller breweries are usually more concerned with getting good representation, quick sell-through, and not getting lost in a giant portfolio. That said, it is definitely a prime concern once the brewery grows to the level where they're selling the majority of their beer at grocery and chain stores.

There's one distributor here in Portland that isn't aligned with any of the majors, and they are almost always the choice for new, small breweries looking to get their beer out to specialty shops and beer bars. However, I've watched them grow several of these brands only to have the brewery switch to one of the two big houses in town. Almost every time, the reason given for the switch (other than $$$$) is that they wanted more data about where there beer was going and how it was selling, as well as the fact that the 2 big guys have the reach to make sure their products are in every single store in the state, no matter how out of the way it is.

 

One major reason NB uses mainly Coors distributors is because they have the refrigerated warehouse space to be able to store all of NBs products, which is something they require and that not every smaller specialty distributor can offer. They also offer access to more accounts (gas stations, major grocery chains etc) that some small distributors do very little or no business with.

 

Sorry for the slow response. There's a clause in our employee handbook about social networking and internet sites, and not disclosing any information over the internet without direct consent from the company. Kinda weird I know, but idk, their rules, not mine lol, wanna keep my job. I mean, i can tell you about all the beers i love, but, cant talk about what our company has, youd have to go to their site, or talk to one of our sales reps.

 

It's one thing to be talking about it in an "official" capacity - at tastings, events and so on, but another to be talking about it in "private" time, like on this forum.

 

I will agree with this with the caveat that as long as the distributor takes care of the product on the shelves as well as in their facility. I've seen brands through distros that will leave the same bottle of IPA on the shelf for nearly a year. I understand that it also has to do with the store personell watching their stock, but a distro needs to also be aware of what is and is not selling in that store and keep an eye on stock levels.

 

Living in PA, the entire distribution system is a clusterf**K of monumental proportions. You have no idea how many beers that many of you consider standard shelf never make an appearance in most of this state. In large part this is due to the fact that six-pack and bomber sales are limited exclusively to establishments with "tavern licenses" which basically means bars/restaurants that sell a pre-ordained quantity of prepared food for consumption on the premises (that makes sense, right). Consider that many of these places cater to a crowd that doesn't expect to see anything but 30-packs of Coors Light in the coolers, and it means you have a VERY small retail distribution market. As a result, it doesn't make a lot of sense for reps and jobbers to spend a lot of time soliciting business in the state (or at least outside of Phila and Pittsburgh). Basically, if a business owner wants to stock and sell a wide selection of craft beer, the onus is pretty much on him to track down someone to buy it from. I would love to have a selection of retail options no matter what flag the distributor that services them flies. It would have to be better than what we have now.

 

In North NJ we get most of our craft selections from Hunterdon as wellas certain few from Nash, Kohler and Peerless carries (Miller-Coors) SN, BBC, Ommegang, Harpoon and a couple others. Jersey distributing InBev is the only one that's really exclusive to Busch products.

So no, doesn't matter to me.