I was in my local pub/restaurant today for some business and asked the owner why he hasn't gotten a certain Nebraska beer back on tap yet. I told him I loved the beer and really would like to see it as opposed to Sam Adams for example. He said he loved it too and it sold quick for him for a craft beer, which in our town of 3500 that really is saying something. This bar has 6 taps and usually 3 are macro and 3 craft, so a pretty good selection for our community. After he told me this he proceeded to tell me that he has tried reordering it for a few weeks from his distributor. The order is placed, the truck arrives without said beer. This happens a couple times at least and now he is absent a tap with beer so he orders something to fill the handle because he has to have beer on tap, I don't blame him. They continue to tell him it is out of stock, he checks continually but is wary of the risk of having an empty handle if he orders it and it doesn't arrive. This also happens with another Nebraska breweries beers that are distributed in bottles, the distributor/sales rep constantly tells him that they are out of said beer but the owner is confused because he can go buy it at the local liquor store.
So as he is telling me this story I am flashing back to watching Beer Wars and thinking how f-ed up this industry is on the small guy and just thinking that here is big distributor playing games with a small town bar owner and it seems to be working. My mind starts moving and I call the owner of one of the breweries, benefit of this blog, and tell him the story. He calls the president of the distributor and the president looks at his inventory levels and physically looks at the beer and tells him that they are stocked and have more arriving soon. Hmm... The president was confused by this and hoped to get to the bottom of it.
The brewery owner calls me back with this information and wanted me to relay it to the bar owner and make sure he places the order again and again. I did.
Man is this system messed up. I don't know if the distributor was purposefully making an error, if there were inventory computer problems, if the delivery driver was not finding the beer when he was loading his truck or if the sales men get better commisions for different beers over others. All I do know is this system is messed up and needs fixed.
Go watch Beer Wars and you will know more what I mean. Man, the struggles of the small guys are unbelievable on the distribution side, it is an insane up hill battle.
I left out the names on this because really, it could be any brewery, any distributor and any bar owner in this entire country that this could be happening too. What is the lesson, what can you do? Tell the owner of the bar repeatedly that you want a beer on tap, don't take no for answer, ask why. Do what you can to help him overcome no. Help those craft brewers out there, they need all the help they can get.
6 comments:
Good article Nate! My 2/100 of a dollar is the commission. That plus some of the distributors have horrible salesmen. I work part time at a liquor store and it isn't uncommon that I'll become aware of a release, mention it the next weekend at work, and the salesman will not even mentioned it to the boss for weeks if ever. And not just the really small guys either, it even happens with something like the Sam Adams Long-shot pack. At the end of the day the salesman's commission is based on how many pallets of ##big company## he sells and not how many cases of Sam Adams.
Welcome to the three-tier system, guardian of consumer choice. Can you imagine the chaos if retailers were allowed to order beer directly from, and have the beer delivered by, the brewers themselves? It's a good thing for us that the law demands that wholesalers are completely independent from brewers.
Seriously, what the hell purpose does the wholesaler tier serve? They add 30% to the cost of the beer, and all they do is drive the truck and screw up orders.
Exactly Rich!! They may have served a purpose back in the day but not anymore. I do think that economies of scale would hurt the small brewers a little if they had to self distribute but I should be able to open a distributorship and distribute whatever the hell I want and I can't because the regions are already established. It is dumb. Or a band of local craft brewers should be able to start a distributor to deliver their beer to help with the costs of distributing. Just crazy.
Actually, it's the other way around: brewers below a certain volume can't afford to give wholesalers their cut, so the beers never have a chance to be distributed. After a brewer reaches a certain volume, it makes economic sense to pay someone else to drive the truck.
There's no reason — other than the fact that it is arbitrarily illegal — that your bar owner shouldn't be able to order beer directly from the brewery and either ask them to deliver it or to pick it up himself. In any other industry, the current situation would be decried as restraint of trade.
Clearly we are treating alcohol differently than other industries which is unfortunate, but not surprising (go ask Utah, after all). Is this perhaps one reason for the growing trend of brew pubs who can sell their product on site, or do we chalk that up to the explosion of craft brews in general?
Jordy, personally I think that is the growing popularity of craft beer that we have seen an uptake in brewpubs. You will see brewpubs as opposed to breweries because the cost to enter is much lower and you have the food aspect to supplement your beer. There is a reason that Lucky Bucket was the first production only brewery in Nebraska in a long time.
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