re: Bell's Brewing Hates LSU

Gonna take a group effort of "HIDE THE TURDS".....

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I wonder how much business CCD gets from craft beers? No doubt mostly what they are worried about is Coors.

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They should be concerned, because this trendy craft beer market share is growing, and the BMC market share is declining. The distributors make the most money off their primary sponsor, which is either Coors or Budweiser. However, they make more money selling a six pack of THA, than they do of a sixer of Coors Light. Having said that, they still make the lion's share of their money of the volume sales from Coors/Bud, and have to keep them happy first and foremost. But they should still be worried about keeping the small breweries happy.

This appears to be a function of Bells being so large, that they are selecting a distributor for reasons of their own.

I spoke to the sales manager of a small brewery here in Oregon that is likely going to sign on with a distributor, because they are getting too large to continue to self distribute, like they currently are. Being a small brewery, the distributor is very important to them in growing their brand. They are looking for a distributor who will have their beer in Portland within a couple of days of canning.

A large brewer will likely not care as much, and tell you that their beer is good for 6 months, or some shite, so don't worry about it. A small brewery uses the fresh beer as a selling point.

One of the problems they are having is that they want an "out" clause in the contract if the distributor is not delivering their beer in a timely manner to the retailers. As I understand it, it is nearly impossible to break a contract with some distributors, because they have a lot of leeway on how soon the beer has to reach the retailers. So breweries have to figure out whether they should go with a small distributor who may not give them as much coverage, but will meet the breweries stringent requirements, or a larger distributor who has more accounts and a wider distribution area, but will probably deliver a lower level of service.

The smaller brewery will probably put an emphasis on service, since they probably don't make enough beer to put their product in every gas station in the region, and the larger brewery will want the bigger distributor, to get more beer out there.

Some states probably restrict the choices even more by limiting the number of distributors by limiting the number of licenses, and other states may have a limited number of distributors because the number of small breweries just doesn't justify having more distributors.

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The same manager also tells me that their Crescent Crown delivery came in today. Of course, it was missing the Great Raft At Arms Length that was ordered. That beer was delivered to Baton Rouge's Crescent Crown warehouse last Friday. So in 5 days, they still couldn't manage to get it on a delivery truck. A call was placed to the CCD rep, but there was no response yet.

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This is why I'm so glad mockler handles the most important special releases. If CCD had goose island, we might get bourbon county by Christmas. On some random Tuesday.