MillerCoors Launches Craft & Import Division

August 13, 2010 By Jay Brooks

tenth-blake
While MillerCoors had already announced their intention to start up a new division dedicated to its smaller brands and imports, today they announced that Tenth and Blake Brewing Co. was open for business. There’s no website yet, but there is a Facebook page.

Here’s the press release:

Tenth and Blake Beer Company Opens for Business
Earlier this summer, MillerCoors announced plans for a new company focused on craft and import beers, aimed at strengthening relationships within the beer industry and enhancing the overall segment’s volume and growth. Today, to reflect the passion, great brewing tradition and entrepreneurial spirit of its beer brands, the company announced its new moniker. Tenth and Blake Beer Company is now officially open for business.
“This is a unique and exciting period in the beer business,” said Tom Cardella, the company’s CEO and President. “With the added focus on our craft and import brands and the talent within our brewing network, Tenth and Blake Beer Company has the opportunity to make an impact and continue to help grow this segment. We’re made up of passionate brewers and merchants of the world’s finest specialty brews, and we look forward to celebrating the joy of beer with beer drinkers throughout the U.S.”
The organization wanted a name that reflects its great beer heritage from MillerCoors, while highlighting its unique and differentiated position in the industry. The 10th Street Brewery in Milwaukee brews Leinenkugel’s and various specialty beers. And Blake Street in Denver is home to the Blue Moon Brewing Company at the Sandlot. These facilities will be primary sources of many of the company’s brews, while serving as incubators of ideas and future beers.
The company’s network of brewing expertise extends beyond Denver and Milwaukee, with the Leinenkugel’s Brewery in Chippewa Falls, Wis. and the AC Golden brewery in Golden, Colo. In addition to craft brews like Blue Moon, Leinenkugel’s, and Colorado Native, Tenth and Blake Beer Company features top imports, such as Peroni Nastro Azzurro, Pilsner Urquell and Grolsch.
“Employees of Tenth and Blake Beer Company will take beer passion, education and capabilities to the next level,” Cardella said. “All team members will participate in training at one of our breweries, take part in beer merchant sessions and go through sales training to better understand and serve our customers.”
As an independent yet connected company, Tenth and Blake will own the strategic business drivers — marketing, trade marketing and an independent sales organization dedicated to the craft and imports business. The company will in-source other capabilities from MillerCoors, including legal, communications, HR, marketing services and consumer insights.

Hmm, I’m not sure what to make of that. Is it an admission that such a large, global company is too big to think small in the way one needs to for promoting and successfully selling smaller, niche brands? Or is it simply easier to parse out the tasks to two independent groups, one that has to think big picture, freeing the other to think small and more local? On the other hand, with sales of core brands flat or soft, perhaps it makes sense to give more focus to the smaller brands that actually are doing well.

Harry Schuhmacher from Beer Business Daily, reports that “Tom, in a letter to distributors obtained by BBD, writes that they have built a team of ‘brewers and merchants of the world’s finest specialty brews, celebrating the joy of beer with our customers and consumers’ to build a ‘deeper relationship’ with customers.” That sounds a little too rah-rah for my tastes, but then that was probably its intention.

Schuhmacher spoke to Tenth and Blake head honcho Tom Cardella, and he told him the following:

Tom says that their “entire team will participate in specially designed on-boarding programs that will include spending several weeks working inside our breweries and being certified in our beer merchant training. And everyone from the janitor to the CEO will go through sales training to better understand and serve our distributor and retailer customers. We will be an organization of merchants sharing our love of our great beers and creating value in the market.”
The new unit will have a “dedicated new sales organization” that will bring “focus” and they will provide a “dedicated supply chain function to ensure coordination of the fine motor skills needed to service smaller specialty brands” while still providing the services of a big corporation with regards to “legal, communications, HR, marketing services and consumer insights.”
The new unit will develop “distributor beer merchants (DBMs) in a whole lot of markets working side-by-side with you, our distributor partners.” DBMs will be “soley” dedicated to their import and craft brands with dedicated brewery “managers” who will “own and execute the craft and import portfolio for each of their respective management units, delivering wins to our general managers.”

And the Milwaukee Business Journal added:

MillerCoors’ 10th Street Brewery in Milwaukee brews Leinenkugel’s and various specialty beers, and Blake Street in Denver is home to the Blue Moon Brewing Co. at the Sandlot. The facilities will be primary sources of many of the company’s brews, while serving as incubators of ideas and future beers, the Chicago-based brewer said.
MillerCoors also operates the Jacob Leinenkugel’s Brewing Co. in Chippewa Falls and the AC Golden brewery in Golden, Colo. In addition to craft brews like Blue Moon, Leinenkugel’s and Colorado Native, Tenth and Blake Beer Company will be responsible for imports such as Peroni Nastro Azzurro, Pilsner Urquell and Grolsch.

Actually, according to the Facebook page, here’s the list of beers Tenth & Blake will be responsible for:

AC Golden brands (see below)
Aguila
Batch 19
Blue Moon
Colorado Native (AC Golden)
Cristal
Cusquena
Grolsch
Henry Weinhard’s
Herman Joseph’s (AC Golden)
Kasteel Cru
Killian’s
Lech
Leinenkugel’s
Peroni
Pilsner Urquell
Sandlot brands (Brewmaster’s Special, Ski Brews, Barmen, Championship Amber Ale, Right Field Red, Slugger Stout, Power Alley ESB)
Tyskie
Winterfest (AC Golden)

That should keep them busy.

tenth-and-blake

Local Union Blasts BevMo Over Employee Treatment

August 12, 2010 By Jay Brooks

Wow, this is certainly an interesting development. BevMo, the company where I was the beer buyer for nearly five years in the late 1990s, is coming under fire by the United Food & Commercial Workers Union, Local 5, for their treatment of employees. They were never exactly great to their employees. Like almost every big or growing American company, they squeezed a lot out of their workers, expected long hours from salaried employees. Don’t get me wrong, I liked a lot of things about the job, and met a great many good people — though a fair number are no longer there — but it was demanding in a way that was beneficial to the company, but necessarily to the well-being of the people doing all the actual work. I know that’s a fairly common scenario, but it must have grown even worse, because for a Union to step in and go after BevMo the way they are suggests a level of poor treatment above and beyond the average company.

According to the BevMo Can Afford to Do Better website set up by UFCW-5, they launched a campaign last week against BevMo “[o]n the heels of the company’s August 1 announcement eliminating full time jobs across the chain and under [the subsequent] BevMo rules resulting in the loss of health benefits for the new part time employees, the workers are fighting back.”

BevMo Can Afford to Do Better

BevMo! currently operates 104 superstores, located in California & Arizona. In March 2007, TowerBrook formally announced its acquisition of BevMo! TowerBrook is a private equity firm with $2.5 billion under management. TowerBrook pursues control-oriented private equity investments in large and middle market companies and has committed to making BevMo even more successful. According to BevMo’s CEO, Alan Johnson, sales in 2000 were around $100 million and in 2009 reached well over $500 million. Since Towerbrook’s acquisition of the company, BevMo has opened 40 new stores with plans to open 100 more over the next few years. Clearly, BevMo CAN AFFORD TO DO BETTER.

bevmo-devil

A press conference was held earlier today at Embarcadero and Clay streets in Oakland to explain the campaign to the public. The demands of the workers were laid out, as follows:

Restore Full Time Positions
Restore Health Benefits
Initiate a Wage Increase Immediately
Restore the 401(K)
Union Recognition by BevMo

They’ve also set up a Facebook page about the campaign. And they’ve released a video outlining it, as well.

Hmm, I wonder if they’ll start calling for a boycott?

A Rose Is A Rose Is A Rose

August 4, 2010 By Jay Brooks

As Gertrude Stein — who was born in Oakland — famously said, “A rose is a rose is a rose.” On the other side of that coin, an alcohol tax masquerading as a fee is a tax, and a terrible idea, no matter what you call it. Today’s San Francisco Examiner, in their Under the Dome section on City Hall Politics, is reporting that Avalos hopes renaming alcohol fee makes it more potable to business. Apparently small businesses don’t like the newly proposed alcohol tax, but supervisor Avalos has the solution. Forget addressing their concerns, admitting it’s a bad idea or even conceding he was duped by the Marin Institute, no. His answer is to change the name of the “alcohol mitigation fee” to “alcohol cost recovery fee” so that — and I quote — “businesses might find the proposal a bit more refreshing.” How stupid does he think people are? You have to wonder.

EU Rules ABI Cannot Trademark Budweiser

July 29, 2010 By Jay Brooks

budvar
Reuters is reporting that the EU equivalent of Europe’s supreme court ruled today that Anheuser-Busch InBev (ABI) “may not register ‘Budweiser’ as a trademark in the bloc, ending a 14-year legal battle over the name with a Czech brewer.” The battle over the naming rights from the town in the Czech Republic has been raging for more than a hundred years and may now finally be over. ABI’s response, predictable from a multi-national company used to getting its own way, “said the ruling would have no effect on its business,” and continued to refer to the trademark as one they “continue to believe [is] rightfully [theirs].”

Action Alert: SF Alcohol Fee Vote Fast Tracked

July 27, 2010 By Jay Brooks

san-francisco
Well we thought the vote was going to be delayed on the proposed ordinance in San Francisco to impose a fee on all alcohol sold in the city, but it turns out that’s no longer the case, which is a blow to fair play and common sense. Apparently the ordinance’s sponsor, supervisor John Avalos, recently realized that if Prop. 26 passes this November then a vote on the fee will be moot, because that proposition ends the practice of taxes masquerading as fees and all taxes, whether they pretend they’re fees or not, will be subject to a 2/3 margin instead of a simple majority. The proposition is sponsored by the group Stop Hidden Taxes.

To avoid that possibility, supervisor Avalos is instead fast tracking the ordinance and, according to the Small Business Commission, will present it “at the Budget and Finance committee meeting of the Board of Supervisors on August 4 — this is BEFORE the Small Business Commission will be able to make its recommendation (due to happen on August 9) and before he said he would be presenting the ordinance during the last Small Business Commission meeting. He is not sticking to his promises. He is changing the game.”

What Can You Do?

August 2:

If you own a small business in San Francisco, please consider attending the Small Business Commission meeting on Monday August 2 and most important at the Supervisor’s Budget and Finance Committee meeting at 1:00 pm on August 4 (though some earlier sources say the meeting is at 11:00 a.m., so check to be sure). There is expected to be a major rally at 11:00 in front of City Hall by proponents of the tax (firefighters union, healthcare union, etc.). At this hearing, the committee will take public comment.

August 10:

The ordinance will then go to the Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday, August 10th at 2:00 pm. If you’re a San Francisco consumer of alcoholic beverages, please consider attending this meeting and telling the board of supervisors that you drink responsibly and do not burden the city’s services and should therefore not be punished by having this tax imposed.

September 7:

On this day, the ordinance will go to the Board of Supervisors again for a second vote. There is no public comment or discussion — this is a formality vote.

September 8:

It then goes to the Mayor, who has 10 days to veto or sign. If he vetoes it, there will be a major effort by the Marin Institute to get the Supervisors to override the veto with a 2/3 vote.

The Two Most Important Things You Can Do

Write or e-mail your supervisor and urge him or her to vote no against the Alcohol Mitigation Fee Ordinance. There is information to assist you in letter-writing or e-mailing at the California Alliance for Hospitality Jobs website.
Attend the August 10th, 2:00 pm, Board of Supervisors meeting.

MADD Charity Rating Downgraded To “D”

July 27, 2010 By Jay Brooks

mad
The American Beverage Institute (ABI), a trade organization representing restaurants and specifically on-premise alcohol issues, is one of the few groups to confront MADD’s deceptive practices and neo-prohibitionist tendencies head on. Yesterday they released the following press release:

The American Institute of Philanthropy’s (AIP) Charity Rating Guide & Watchdog Report has downgraded Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) to a “D” rating on a A-F scale in its August 2010 report.
“Under the leadership of CEO Chuck Hurley, MADD further diminished its focus on victim services and educating Americans about the dangers of drunk driving, instead pushing anti-drinking, anti-alcohol public policies,” said American Beverage Institute (ABI) Managing Director Sarah Longwell. “The public needs to realize that MADD isn’t the same group it was 20 years ago.”
MADD has consistently received low ratings from the Charity Rating Guide due to its poor fundraising and spending practices.
According to the AIP, it should cost most charities $35 or less to raise $100. In some years, MADD has spent nearly double that amount. The AIP also says most highly efficient charities are able to spend 75 percent or more of total expenses on charitable programs. In some years, MADD has spent as little as 57 percent on programs. In 2008, MADD spent almost $30 million on salaries and fundraising, leaving just 1/3 of its budget available for charitable work and victim services.
Another charitable giving guide, Charity Navigator, gives MADD an overall rating of 1 out of 4 stars. Charity Navigator reserves this embarrassing basement-level for a charity that “fails to meet industry standards.”
During Hurley’s tenure at MADD, the organization’s revenue declined while Hurley and other officers and directors saw their salaries increase — a whopping 56 percent. In contrast, MADD’s revenue declined nearly one-quarter over the same period. And MADD’s spending on community programs—what a charity should be about—dropped by 17 percent. In 2009, MADD had to lay off 50 employees nationwide—15 percent of its workforce—a move that cut much of the organization’s victim advocacy work.
These financial changes reveal a shift in MADD’s mission. In the words of its own founder Candy Lightner: MADD “has become far more neo-prohibitionist than I had ever wanted or envisioned … I didn’t start MADD to deal with alcohol. I started MADD to deal with the issue of drunk driving.”
Longwell continued: “MADD’s anti-alcohol agenda includes advocating for alcohol detectors in all cars, sobriety checkpoints and sky-high alcohol taxes. By spending on these new priorities, MADD has diverted money from programs created to help the victims of drunk driving and get dangerous drunk drivers off the roads.”

Hilarious, it’s great to see someone else holding their feet to the fire. You may recall back in August of last year, after the ABI had the temerity to criticize MADD, that MADD called the ABI “The Angry Arm of Alcohol.” At that time, I observed that we should be angry, and suggested someone make up “Angry Arm of Alcohol” T-shirts. So far, no one’s taken me up on it.

Lovin’ The Ladies: Beer Ads

July 24, 2010 By Jay Brooks

women
My wife pointed this one out to me, and it’s pretty funny despite highlighting some fairly ugly trends in beer advertising by the big breweries and imports towards women. From the Current TV show InfoMania, the clip is introduced as follows:

Everybody loves beer — men, women, children with fake IDs. But beer companies don’t want one of these groups to enjoy their beer: women. Modern Lady Erin Gibson is on the case of how beer companies like Miller, Budweiser, and Heineken have gone from depicting women in commercials as eye candy hanging out with Spuds MacKenzie to the target of aggression and humiliation.

Alcohol Consumption On The Rise

July 22, 2010 By Jay Brooks

ethyl-alcohol
A new study was just published online, and will be in print in next month’s journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research with the nearly impenetrable title Sociodemographic Predictors of Pattern and Volume of Alcohol Consumption Across Hispanics, Blacks, and Whites: 10-Year Trend (1992–2002). CNN simplified the story’s title, originally from Health.com, to More Americans Drinking Alcohol. To me the most interesting thing about this is that it’s really two stories, one positive and one sort of negative, and it’s all in the way it’s framed.

As presented on CNN, the story begins with mainly the positive aspects of the story. More Americans Drinking (Alcohol) summarizes the study like this:

Between 1992 and 2002, the percentage of men and women who drank alcohol increased, as did the percentage of whites, blacks, and Hispanics, the study found.
Americans don’t seem to be drinking more, however, as the average number of drinks consumed per month remained steady.
“More people are drinking, but they seem to not be drinking heavily as frequently,” says Rhonda Jones-Webb, an epidemiologist and alcohol expert at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, in Minneapolis.

So that’s good news, especially considering that moderate drinking is healthier for you than abstaining or over-indulging. So if more people are hitting the sweet spot, so to speak, that should be good news, eh?

Oh, but wait, here comes the other shoe:

Yet the study revealed an important exception to that trend: an uptick in the number of people who binge drink at least once a month. Binge drinking is defined as consuming five or more drinks in one day.
“We need to address this increase, which may be associated with alcohol abuse,” says Dr. Deborah Dawson, Ph.D., a staff scientist at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, in Bethesda, Maryland. “We may need focus our attention on preventive measures that target binge drinking.”

Of course the main problem with all that alarm over binge drinking is the definition itself. Five drinks in one day is an absurd way to define binge drinking. Originally it was essentially a bender with no limits. Little by little the definition has been whittled down by organizations and our government keen to have a number they could use in compiling statistics. But that also means a five-course beer dinner creates an event where every single diner is a binge drinker. Even the new Dietary Guidelines just released have changed the standard from daily to weekly allowable amounts and changed the daily standard to four drinks for a male, so long as the weekly limit is not reached. So that means four drinks in one day is fine, but one more and you’re a dangerous binge drinker. It’s this sort of nonsense that allows neo-prohibitionist groups to use suspect statistics with the government imprimatur to give them more credibility than they rightly deserve.

Then there’s this chestnut:

The rise in the proportion of drinkers and in binge drinking could be a sign that society is more accepting of alcohol consumption (and overconsumption), says Dr. Stephen Bahr, Ph.D., a professor of sociology at Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah.
“There has been much emphasis on drug education and treatment but not as much emphasis on alcohol misuse, which could signal a change in norms and explain the increase in the prevalence of drinkers,” he says.

I don’t know what planet Bahr lives on, but when my kindergartner is lectured to with MADD propaganda that alcohol is a drug and he comes home with the notion that his parents are drug users because they have a beer with dinner, I’d say there’s plenty emphasis on alcohol misuse. It’s absurd in light of all the anti-alcohol propaganda for anyone to suggest people are drinking more because they haven’t heard it might be bad for them. If anything, they’re preached to death.

The original Health.com piece, Survey: More Americans Drinking Alcohol, is under the section heading Alcoholism, subtly framing the story as if it’s about alcoholism, which of course it’s not. More people drinking does not automatically mean there are more alcoholics or even more people at risk of becoming alcoholics. But framed the way it is, that’s what it seems to presuppose.

Some of the other findings, as reported by Health.com:

The percentage of men who drank increased by about 5% to 7% across all ethnic groups. The increases were slightly higher among women, between 8% to 9%.
Roughly 64% of white men drank alcohol in 2002, compared to 60% of Hispanic men and 53% of black men. Among women, 47% of whites, 32% of Hispanics, and 30% of blacks drank any alcohol.
For all three ethnic groups, the average number of drinks consumed per month remained level between 1992 and 2002.
White men drank about 22 drinks per month in 2002, on average, compared to about 19 for blacks and 18 for Hispanics. By contrast, white, black, and Hispanic women consumed just 6, 5, and 3.5 drinks per month, respectively.
Binge drinking increased across the board, but especially among men. The percentage of white men who had five drinks in a day at least once a week increased from 9% to 14%, and there was a similar increase among Hispanic men.
Whites are more likely than blacks and Hispanics to get drunk. Twenty percent of white men drank to intoxication at least once a month, compared to just 13% of black men.

The study itself only concluded the following, at least in the abstract:

The only common trend between 1992 and 2002 across both genders and 3 ethnic groups was a rise in the proportion of drinkers. There was also a rise in drinking 5 or more drinks in a day (Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics) and drinking to intoxication (Whites and Blacks), but this was limited to those reporting such drinking at least once a month. The reasons for these changes are many and may involve complex sociodemographic changes in the population.

I’m sorry, having five drinks on a given day once a month, or even once a week, is hardly a sign of the fall of civilization, even if a few more are now than they were ten years ago. I’m not even sure it’s all that newsworthy. But for reasons passing understanding — perhaps it’s simply the 24/7 news cycle — it became news and even got picked up by CNN.

Who’s Behind The Booze Tax

July 22, 2010 By Jay Brooks

James Spencer at Public CEO, a California government-focused blog, has an interesting read today about an e-mail he received from the Marin Institute and what he found when he looked closer at it. It’s entitled Who’s Really Behind the Booze Tax and Why? and it’s certainly great to see more people taking a critical look at San Francisco’s proposed new tax on alcohol and exposing it for what it really is.

His conclusion?

They hate alcohol and don’t want it around. Fair enough, but why weren’t they open from the start? The email should have read: “We are against alcohol and we don’t want you to drink it.” The Marin Institute isn’t looking out for the best interest of the city of San Francisco or its economy. It has its own interests. And if their true goal is to stop us from drinking alcohol, then they must understand that this tax is going to have a dramatic effect on reducing sales, right? Sounds like they are making the argument for why this additional alcohol fee would be a terrible idea.

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