Category: Uncategorized

In December of 2005, over breakfast in New York, the than CEO of Warsteiner made it perfectly clear that he expected the US operations to start making money.  After 25 years in the US, Warsteiner had never made a profit, even when the exchange rate was favorable.  The upside of the favorable exchange rate did, […]

    At the recent Craft Brewers Conference in Portland much of the discussions were centered on the growing interest in Private Equity firms that are interested in investing in craft breweries.  A number of industry pundits and consultants commented that with ABI kicking tires and all the PE interest, prices may be peaking for […]

The market where I was fortunate to own a beer distributorship was located in far south Texas along the Mexican border.  The demographics of the marketing area, was as you might expect, was over 95% Hispanic. Even with such high Hispanic demographics, Cinco de Mayo was not consider a major holiday.  There were no special […]

Full Sail Brewing Co. of Hood River, Oregon was one of Oregon’s first craft brewers and had been employee owned for years.  Like many craft brewers who have been around that length of time, Full Sail has had many ups and downs.  Just recently, the 78 employee-owners voted to cash out and sell to Encore […]

The trailer for the new upcoming Star Wars movie has just been released and within the first 24 hours there have been over 30 million views on YouTube.  No doubt it will win multiple movie records when it opens in December.  The excitement is building and everyone is talking about this upcoming super movie. This […]

  When Miller introduced Lite in the early 1970s, no one in the industry had any idea how big the light segment would end up being.  Miller Lite took off, followed by Budweiser Light, Coors Light, and Schlitz Light, followed by the regionals with their own version of light beer. A few years later, the light […]

It goes without saying that arguably two of the largest global sporting events are the World Cup and the Olympics.  Annually, however, the largest sporting event has to be the Super Bowl.  Right behind the Super Bowl, the Masters Golf Tournament could easily be the second largest annual event. This is Masters Week. The tournament, […]

The Schlitz operation that I purchased was located in far South Texas along the Rio Grande River bordering the country of Mexico.  This area, known as the Rio Grande Valley, was economically booming at the time due predominantly to Mexico. The exchange rate of the peso versus the dollar was 22 to 1, which created […]

In the NFL there are 32 franchised teams.  The value of each team is not the same, but if one were to be for sale, it is safe to assume the final price would be in the billions. There is no competition for the NFL, or as they say, they are the only game in […]

Tequila brings to mind thoughts of Mexico, just as champagne and whisky conjure thoughts of France and Scotland, respectively.  Along those same lines, when one thinks of beer, the country of Germany often comes to mind as the premier beer producing country.  Obviously, certain types of alcohol are associated with the countries of their origin. […]