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In the mid 70’s, I took the Sales Manager job at Mid State Distributors in Alexandria, Louisiana.  Schlitz, at the time, had a 48% share of the market, and while Mid State was a small house, I had five direct reports, two of whom ran sub warehouses.  Of the five supervisors, one was a tall, […]

  In the spring of 2012, I was in Milwaukee to roll out Krombacher.  While visiting accounts with one of the salesmen, we stopped at the Pabst Brewery, which had closed in 1997.  Developers were in the process of turning the old brewery into a hotel, retail, and residential property.  The hospitality building, executive offices […]

In my professional career, I’ve seen what I consider to be three major shifts in consumer tastes.  The first, was when the consumers moved away from full flavored domestics to light domestics. This shift was led by the marketing of Miller Lite from Philip Morris.  Lite, followed by Coors Light and Bud Light, are now […]

When Diageo was formed after acquiring the Seagram brands, they established a wholesaler network in the US by approaching all the top wine and spirit houses.  Almost every large house was invited to present their RFP.  At the time, I was the Director of Malts for Glazer’s, a Brown Forman house. Republic had most of […]

About a two hour drive from Frankfurt, Germany, one can find themselves in a region that has some of the softest water available used to brew pilsners. And three of the world’s best are from here: Warsteiner, Veltins, and Krombacher.  These breweries are all located close to each other, in fact, it is only about 20 […]

When the Houston Astrodome first opened it quickly became the largest on premise keg account in Texas.  It was the home field for both the Astros and the Oilers, and numerous special events including concerts, motorcycle races, bowl games, etc.  When I was at Lone Star Brewing, the month sales number for the Astrodome was […]

While attending college, I worked on the Coors trucks during the summer.   The training I received was all OJT. It was not until I worked for the Schlitz operation in Louisiana, that I got my first formal beer training, Haire University in Milwaukee.  The training we received was more hands on with draft.  We spent two […]

  As a young District Sales Manager for Lone Star Brewing Co., my district included West Texas with many miles to cover and a multitude of distributors on whom to call.  One was a medium size Miller/Lone Star/Pearl whose owner was in college at the same university, at the same time as I.  During my visits […]

    By the early 1970’s, small regional brands across the US were struggling to survive against the on-sought of the big boys, AB, Schlitz, Pabst, and Coors. Soon Miller, recently acquired by Philip Morris, was also included in this group of key players.  To make matters worse, the small breweries had made a number […]

  Back in the mid 1970’s when Coors entered South Texas, San Antonio was awarded four distributorships.  They as a group, had to compete against one Budweiser house, one Schlitz house, one Pearl house, one Lone Star house and one Falstaff house (true, still around then).  Because Coors had divided up the market into the […]