Category: Uncategorized

As a college student working holidays at the Coors distributor in Dallas I began to notice that a certain culture existed in the industry.  Coors, although highly regarding in the business, was still a small regional brewery selling in only 10 states and parts of Texas.  At that time we were merely the fourth largest […]

  The 62nd PGA Merchandise Show was recently held in Orlando.  While the beer industry has two major shows a year, the NBWA and the Craft Brewers Conference, and they both have great attendance, the PGA show has over 10 miles of displays and thousands of attendees. During the show there was an interview with […]

BMI annually publishes a report on beers that people no longer drink.  This year, the report also included the fastest growing category.  Let’s examine the 2008-2013 sales numbers. One hundred and ten year old Miller High Life is down 21.2%.  Miller Lite is down 22.6%, however, the numbers show that this brand is in the […]

My bicycle trip across West Texas as a young District Sales Manager required a visit to Wichita Falls.  George, who was the DM I was replacing, and I visited the distributor and then left to visit our number one on premise account.  We ordered two Lone Stars at the bar and a gentleman next to us […]

Many of the comments that I have gotten from this blog centered on stories written about Schlitz.  Comments have come from not only former employees but also from wholesalers who were at one time associated with the brand. Recently I have gotten more comments about Schlitz than normal; however one comment I received in early […]

In the early 1970s when Miller Brewing Co. was testing their new beer Miller Lite, those of us in the beer industry were not certain about the identify of this new product.  We soon learned it was a lighter beer, but with a higher price.  And the consumer certainly was not yet aware of the […]

Many of the articles written in this blog over the past three years have highlighted true stories of individuals whose self-centeredness or lack of integrity negatively affected the lives of others.  These stories have been episodic in that they included wholesalers, brewery executives, retailers and others in the beer industry.  Many stories focused on the aftermath […]

The four major professional sports: football, basketball, baseball and hockey all have some form of salary cap.  The public idea behind a cap is to ensure all the leagues are on a level playing field.  In essence, the cap provides a team in New York, with potentially has more opportunity to create larger revenue streams, […]

Like most Schlitz distributors in the early 1980s, we were very concerned about our future.  Schlitz was in the early stages of self-destructing and the sale to Stroh was looming nearby.  While Coors had expanded in south Texas, they had achieved a market share of less than 5%; however, most of the Coors distributors were […]

About two months after joining Warsteiner, the brewery invited all the countries that sold their beer to Germany for spring meetings.  During that week, the brewery set aside two days for planning exercises.  As is typical of many corporations, when leaders of the organization are gathered, training or exercises designed to educate, improve moral, or […]