I felt like I should talk about distribution for a minute. When we got started contract brewing I spoke at great lengths with our brewer about getting our product out there and what the options were. His initial advice was to go it alone. Get a type 17 license from the ABC and be your own distributor. He said this because in his experience he had had too many outside distributors damage his reputation as a good brewer and that is obviously not what we need as we are getting started.
Some of his stories included the fact that most distributors don't take your product as seriously as you do. They will leave it on the loading dock in the hot summer sun, they may miss deliveries and they may even tell the retail account that they are either out of stock, when they are not, or they may blame their carelessness of handling your product straight back on you and tell the retailer that you had a bad batch and that's why the keg is ultra foamy.
These horrors settled in with me and I moved forward with obtaining the appropriate type 17 license from the ABC until the Sacramento office said that you have to store your product in an approved warehouse. Well, being that we are on a tight budget and could not afford a $5000/month rent right now I settled and obtained the type 10 license which is for importers and thus needed to have a distributor on my team.
I did quite a lot of searching, talking to many distributors only to find that being a new product on the scene they did not want to store the product unless it was set to move quickly in and then out of their warehouse. I finally settled on one that placed many rules and stipulations on me but I was in a panic and needed a distributor yesterday.
At first I felt that it was going well. I made a few sales right off the bat and they delivered. I made a few more sales and they delivered. But then I started getting angry phone calls from my retail accounts that had so graciously given us the opportunity to get on tap at their bar/restaurant. Not even 3 months in and I found myself doing serious damage control just to stay on tap. The main comment I got was, "The beer is great! Everyone loved it and it went very fast. We need more but find that we have no support from your distributor.", "We ordered product but it has not come in two weeks.", "We were told you are out of stock.", "Where is the tap handle?" These were all starting to sound like the horror stories my brewer talked to me about. The one about us being out of stock was shocking because we still have kegs waiting to go out. Why would someone tell our retail accounts these lies?
Why? well, first off, this is not their product, it is mine. They don't care about it as much as I do. I am not one of the huge breweries that has 1000's of accounts, yet! We are small and have a good handful of great retail accounts and the best way to service them is to do it yourself. This is the conclusion that I finally landed on. The old adage, If you want something done right then do it yourself. So we have now finally obtained our own type 17 distributors license and we are moving forward with our own distribution.
There is something there about doing it yourself, at least when getting started. When I walk into an account and see the owner or the bartenders they know me, they are happy to see me, they know that I'll take care of their needs and that I'll make sure the lines are clean and that my beer tastes perfect when poured. They also see how devoted you are to making this happen.
So my advice is to listen to your brewer when he says, get the type 17 and distribute for yourself! Oh and by the way, seriously question the rules of the ABC because each time you may speak to them you may get a different response. For now, we don't need that $5000/month warehouse and we are moving forward with leaps and bounds!
