Two of the countries greatest golf courses are located in Pennsylvania: Oakmont, which is just outside of Pittsburgh hosts the US Open in 2016; the other course, located in Philadelphia, hosts this month’s US Open. While both cities are different in design, both are historic, traditional and highly regarded.
Near Pittsburgh, and not far from Philadelphia, are two of America’s oldest breweries: Iron City Brewing Co. (Pittsburgh Brewing) and Yuengling.
Like many distributors, I once wrote to David Casinelli at Yuengling, hoping to establish an interest level while working at Glazer’s. Dave was kind enough to write back and explained that Yuengling had no plans to expand west. I responded to Dave’s letter informing him that it was the other way around, Glazer’s was expand east and would eventually be buying distributorships in their markets. This, by the way, has transpired.
Later, I was contacted by Tony Ferraro from Pittsburgh Brewing, asking if Glazer’s had any interest in representing their products. We certainly did, and several of us were invited to spend a weekend at the brewery. We took a tour of the facility and learned the history of Pittsburgh Brewing. We had the opportunity to attend the annual “Dapper Dan” dinner honoring a local sports celebrity, and visited with golfing legend Arnold Palmer. Quite a treat for us. At the time of our visit, the brewery was packaging their beer in aluminum bottles. This was exciting as no one else at the time was marketing this package.
Pittsburgh Brewing had been struggling when Allen Bond bought the company in the early 1980’s. Once he purchased G. Heileman, Bond combined the two together. Out of the bankruptcy of G. Heileman, Pittsburgh then was purchased by Michael Carlow, who was eventually convicted of bank fraud and other felonies. When Glazer’s came along, Joe Piccirilli, had control of the brewery. He too, ended up filing for bankruptcy as sales continued to fall. Twenty years ago, Pittsburgh’s volume was around 1 million bbls., by the mid 2000, it was less than 400K bbls.
Recently, an investment company out of New York, United Growth Partners, purchased the Pittsburg Brewing, and moved the production of the beer to Latrobe, home of the old Rolling Rock Brewery now owned by City Brewing. Sales continue to decline. Today the brewery sells less than 100K bbls annually, and given the issues over the last 20 years, it’s local support has mostly disappeared.
Yuengling, family owned and controlled since its founding, is now the fourth largest brewing company in the US. It never put itself in financial trouble, moved to craft-style products years ago, and positioned its price points giving the consumer value and quality. As a beer distributor, Yuengling is one of the countries most desirable brands and it is only in a hand full of states.
Somehow, I expect that if one were attending the US Open at Merion, you would be able to buy a Yuengling, but one wonders, if you go to the 2016 US Open at Oakmont, if Iron City will even be around. A tale of two cities…
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