verticalfocus
keeping the
beer flowing
Like Tinker to Evans to Chance, beer
distribution is a multi-play proposition
in the United States. Here’s how one
distributor sharpened his relay.
taverns, restaurants, and the like—and 500 off-premis
IN WHAT HAS BECOME CONSIDERED A CLASSIC
piece of sports writing, Washington Post columnist
Thomas Boswell in 1987 listed 99 reasons why he
thought baseball was better than football. At number
20: “Eighty degrees, a cold beer and a short-sleeve shirt
is better than 30 degrees, a hip flask and six layers of
clothes under a lap blanket.”
Beer and baseball are natural companions—and
nowhere perhaps is that more apparent than in the area
around Fort Myers, Fla., where major league teams like
the Boston Red Sox and the Minnesota Twins travel for
spring training, attracting legions of thirsty fans.
The task of ensuring that those fans—not to mention
other vacationers and year-round residents—have their
suds falls to distributors like Suncoast Beverage Sales
Ltd., a Fort Myers-based wholesaler. In the United States,
virtually all beer sales pass through distributors, which
serve as middlemen in a three-tier system that takes beer
from brewer to distributor to the tap or store shelf.
“There aren’t any direct-to-consumer strategies as in
other industries,” says Kevin Brady, president of Satellite
Logistics Group, which provides third-party logistics
and supply chain services to the beverage industry.
Suncoast, which handles Anheuser Busch beer and
other beverages, services more than 1,200 accounts
across a 2,500-square-mile territory in southwest
Florida. Its customers include, in the nomenclature of
the beverage industry, 700 on-premise accounts—bars,
e customers—grocers, convenience stores, and other stores.
Suncoast serves those customers from a single 56,000-square-foot distribution center, says Tim Mitchell, the
company’s general manager. The temperature-controlled DC, which houses an 18- to 19-day supply of product, is
divided into a bulk storage area, forward pick area, and draft beer storage area. Because beer is perishable, inven-
