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I think the first time I met George Henricksen was while I was working at Glazer’s.  At the time, George was running Royal Imports out of Cincinnati.  Royal was the US importer of Mackenson and Whitbread beers, both owned by InBev.  Royal had a 10 year agreement to import those two excellent beers. George, who managed […]

While working as a distributor I was often assigned new brewery reps. for our markets.  The majority of these new brewery reps. were young, fresh out of college, and some had MBAs in which the ink has not yet dried.  These young reps had been put through training on distributor economics and how to sell […]

On a recent consulting engagement the following question was posed to me: “How many breweries have I visited in my career?”  I never actually counted the number of breweries I have seen, the question caused me to stop and think. The very first brewery I visited was the Jos. Schlitz Brewery in Milwaukee.  I was […]

After World War II, Van Munching, the US importer for Heineken, used wine and spirit houses for their distributor of choice.  Since imports were not very big at the time, this strategy of using wine and spirits houses made sense.  The model worked because beer was sold mostly through package stores.  Coupled with the fact that […]

My first four and a half years in the beer business were spent on delivery trucks, first as a helper, then as a salesman, and finally as a route supervisor.  Remember, during this time beer was sold DSD and both the salesmen and helpers were paid with a base and commission established on what they sold.  […]

In the early 1990s, Warsteiner’s President, Diane Fall, asked me to help them find and implement a new accounting system at Warsteiner’s Denver headquarters.  While in Denver on this assignment, Diane knowing that I had just recently left Coast Distributors in Oregon asked me if I would open a distributorship in San Diego.  Warsteiner did not […]

In my efforts to build the beer portfolio for Glazer’s, during my time there as the Corporate Director of Malts, I contacted Dogfish Head in Delaware.  As this was over 10 years ago, Dogfish had not achieved the status it now holds in the craft world.  I flew to the brewery and met with Sam […]

One of the platforms I worked on at Glazer’s was to obtain the leading or second best-selling beer of each country in the world.  If I could not acquire said brand, then the goal was to look at other key brands, who owned the brand and what was its future.  During this time, one of the companies that […]

Last month I traveled to Austin to speak about the beer industry to a group of professionals who worked for one of the largest research firms in the US.  In addition to my beer talk, the branch manager asked if I would also spend some time on the importance of having passion for one’s industry. I delivered […]

Dallas County is made up of five precincts, and for many years, beginning in 1957, only Precinct 1 was wet.  This area was composed of downtown Dallas and several miles north.  Because of this politically-created wet area those stores located on the wet/dry line had huge sales.  These stores were not grocery chains, but package and c-stores, which […]