I will say that this has been 100% fan driven. I am positive that Lucky Bucket and Nebraska Brewing Company love the fact that Werner Park and the Omaha Storm Chasers are in their backyard and that fans will spend money at their establishments as will employees of the Storm Chasers. I know they would love to have their beer served in their hometown park. This movement is not driven by them at all. The movement needs to keep pushing because there are some large hurdles that will need to be broken. I would also like to clarify that I believe there is one Nebraska brewery being served at Werner, Schilling Bridge, at least as far as I know anyway. We should applaud that for sure.
The bottom line is this isn't a beer decision as much as it is a local decision in my opinion. Without further ado, here is Martie's response.
The Omaha Storm Chasers are proud to be a part of the metropolitan area. As we planned and built the new stadium to share with the community we had to make many choices. Among them were choices for the concessions product mix with Ovations, our food service provider, at Werner Park. We have working relationships with Premier Midwest Beverages, Quality Brands of Omaha and Republic National Distributing Company and many of their brands and products make up the adult beverage mix at Werner Park.
We take great pride in having opportunities that most Minor League Baseball teams don’t have a large base of local food and beverage partners to work with. All of the aforementioned companies along with great local brands and products such as Omaha Steaks (hamburgers, phillies), ConAgra (hot dogs, popcorn, seeds, ketchup, mustard), Robert’s Dairy (ice cream, milk), La Mesa (Mexican food), cotton candy, snow cones, funnel cakes and smoothies are all local-based vendors. There are many other regional companies like Wells Blue Bunny (ice cream novelties) and Klement’s (sausage, polish, brat) that our organization works with because they represent the Midwest.
Furthermore, it was imperative to our organization that the design firm and builder of Werner Park to use local or regional contractors in the process. Nearly 90% of all work fell under this request, including the scoreboard which was created and installed by SignCo-EDS from Lincoln, Nebraska.
We take all suggestions and requests under consideration and make business decisions on an ongoing basis. Local is where we look first. It is so important; we worked long and hard to secure a local-based naming rights partner and were successful by working out a partnership with the local company Werner Enterprises.
We are proud to have been the metro areas only Major League affiliated sports team for the past 42 years and take great pride in being very community-minded through a variety of philanthropic and charitable activities. We are fortunate to have individuals on our staff who serve on more than 20 organizations boards or advisory committees and each of our staff members volunteer for at least one organization.
Sincerely,
Martie J. Cordaro
Vice President and General Manager
Omaha Storm Chasers
4 comments:
All I can say is that I am VERY disappointed in this response from Martie! While it is very well written it is a total failure at addressing the issue at hand.
"We have working relationships with Premier Midwest Beverages, Quality Brands of Omaha and Republic National Distributing Company and many of their brands and products make up the adult beverage mix at Werner Park."
Apparently someone is confused, schmoozed, or bamboozled if they think working with a Nebraska distributor is anything like offering Nebraska beers.
You cannot compare working with ConAgra because they are from Nebraska to taking on a small local brand like Lucky Bucket. The bottom line is Budweiser is buying their way in and keeping whoever they want out, just as ConAgra would do with their brands in keeping their competition out. It just so happens that CanAgra is in Omaha and Budweiser isn't even American owned. So, its easy for them to say they are supporting local by working with them. But, they failed to mention that ConAgra is one of the most powerful food suppliers in the world and they can't say no to them no matter where they are from. So, at the end of the day Martie's letter is BS and they have no intention on supporting local. This is a monetary decision and obviously Bud is the highest bidder. Nice work Stormchaser's, you sold out before the season even started. How embarrassing for you.
Working relationship??
It seems to me Martie. You forgot who the customer is and the role of the customer.
Relationship, more like a working dictatorship. the Distributors tell you what they want to sell and throw some money at you and you say...O.K. You're the liaison for the customer. We are the customer.
I agree with Matt. Dealing with a Neb. Multi-Corporate Whore Monger in not the same as Neb based businesses.
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