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Re: “This petition against brewery law/distribution revisions is misleading”
I should also note that the contract brewing, and wine sale provisions are not at issue. Only the raising of the barrel limit and the "not counting on-site sales toward barrel count" bits.
Re: “This petition against brewery law/distribution revisions is misleading”
Full disclosure: I work for a distributor.
First, whomever may be behind the website is irrelevant. MillerCoors and ABInbev would not really be affected by these bills in the slightest. In fact, they would benefit in the long term if the three-tier system were slowly dismantled. They are too busy fighting over tenths of percentage points in market share.
Second, there is no such thing as a non-craft distributor in the Charlotte market. All beer and wine distributors have some craft breweries in their portfolios, and some more than others.
Next, as usual there is only one side presented. Ask the people at Red Oak, NoDa, or Olde Mecklenburg, and they'll likely argue that they are being kept out of the market by distributors.*
*Fun Fact: distributors don't have much say in what goes on the shelves anymore.
Now ask the folks at Foothills, Aviator, Old Hickory, or Highland about their experience working with distributors. I'll not speak for them, but I will wager you will get two completely different answers from each group.
Iin truth, these bills would be a great detriment to all distributors in the state, so they would have a major stake in this battle. It would gut most companies' portfolios. Maybe not immediately, but the potential is there.
But why would this be bad for consumers? Most distributors have management-level employees who act as go-betweens for the suppliers (brewers) and the store chains. They work out the weekly deals, make suggestions for new products to go into the cold boxes and warm shelves during resets (but only suggestions. final say is still made by the chains and usually based on existing sales figures for established brands.) Granted, these sorts of things can be handled by the breweries themselves, but it takes time to build the relationships the distributors have already established. If you compare craft six pack prices around the rest of the US with the Charlotte market you'll quickly see how, at least in our market, distributors are a good thing.
Ask Triple C about how they got into Harris Teeters. I watched this process personally. They had to work really hard at it starting at the store level, and it still it took them about a year just to get on warm shelves in a handful of stores. Longer to get in the cold boxes. Keep in mind they are local and competitively priced.
Now consider the opposite extreme: Ballast Point. Non-local, and their Sculpin IPA is the most expensive six pack in most grocery cold boxes. They signed on to a local distributor and were in the cold boxes within a couple of months.
So there are pros and cons to both distribution models. I am not privy to the cost details for either side. But from my biased point-of-view contracting with a distributor is a good investment. No need for a brewery to build warehousing or order placement and delivery infrastructure. Local marketing and advertising gets handled by the distributor because if it doesn't sell, they lose money not the brewery (current law prohibits selling product back on any step of the three tiers.) I would argue that the time and money saved and reinvested into actually developing and making product far outweighs the short-term DIY method.
But, as mentioned above, I do have a pony in this race.
