Category: Uncategorized

  • Public opinion in this country is everything.

    For a number of years the only publicity the beer industry received was either Forbes or Fortune magazines.  These highly respected business publications wrote mostly about AB and Miller (part of Philip Morris) and how they were dominating the industry. Other beer topics that were included in these publications were Stroh Brewing buying out Schlitz, […]

  • The silent minority…

    When imports started to come to the US market in a big way around 1980, and expand as distributors picked them up, distributors only carried a hand full of cases.  Truck loads were usually one case of these and two cases of those.  In fact, you could not sell a layer of Corona in a month, much less a […]

  • There is no victory at bargain basement prices.

    By the late 1960s, beer marketing was limited to brewery reps and wholesaler supervisors calling on bars and buying rounds of beer.  Add in hanging p-o-s and you have marketing covered.  Outside of AB, no one really advertised much on TV.  In fact, even price promotions were rare and Coors did not even do them […]

  • Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right thing..

    My first action as President of Warsteiner Importers Agency was to request an internal audit of the brewery.  This request was well received by the brewery, and as a result, their accounting firm proceeded to conduct an audit.  Given that I inherited a company which was millions in debt, and my charge was to make […]

  • The time is coming…

    When the opportunity to buy the Schlitz distributorship was first presented to me, I immediately started with future sales projections.  This was in 1980, and while the brand was declining, its market share was still around 40%.  My original projects included sales that first had growth, than if they went flat and finally,  I did what […]

  • You can’t strike oil without first getting dirty!

    During the time I spent at Coors Brewing Co., the brewery was buying distributorships to resell as part as certain covenants made to increase the number of minority ownership of Coors operations.  Once purchased, the brewery ran it for a short time than sold it.  My first assignment was to run the most recent distributorship […]

  • LOL….

    Like most young people, my first memories of beer took place with my father and grandfather.  As a young boy I remember my father opening a Miller beer can in the kitchen one day with a church key opener and he let me smell the hops escape.  I had a sip and can still vividly […]

  • It’s all real estate on the shelf…..

    Last year, one of my former national account managers had an interview with a small, but successful importer.  The national account manager had been unemployed for almost a year even though he had years of chain experience.  He was in his mid-fifties. The interview took place in Washington DC, and as it turned out, he […]

  • Incentives are not a strategy, they are tactics…..

    In the early 70s, I was a route supervisor at Schepps Distributing.  The company brought in the first unique package of beer I had ever seen.  It was called Barrel of Beer, from the Jos. Huber Brewing Co.  The glass bottle was shaped as a barrel with a ring pull top.  It arrived in a […]

  • No matter where I go, there I am…..

    Chico, California is a small college town just north of Sacramento.  It is the home of Sierra Nevada originated in the 1980s.  Outside of Sacramento, the closest major market is San Francisco, thus it is no surprise that Sierra Nevada initially targeted that market.  As Sierra developed northern California, they focused on their flagship product, […]