"Yeah, but this is Ohio. I mean, if you don’t have a brewski in your hand, you might as well be wearing a dress.”
Ohio culture has probably moved on in the 20 or so years since Jason “J.D.” Dean (Christian Slater) spoke those immortal words to Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder) in the film Heathers, but the Buckeye State remains a pretty good place to make a living selling beer. As the rest of the nation witnessed in the run-up to the Ohio primary, it’s a state that’s short on letters, but runs deep in terms of blue-collar, Rust Belt roots. In other words, no matter who you are or what you wear, it’s beer drinking territory.

Servicing a dozen counties across 4,000 square miles that would collectively choose to down that ice cold brew rather than sip a spritzer is Bonbright Distributors, the Dayton, Ohio, USA-based wholesaler that is 99 percent beer, just a touch of bottled water and absolutely no wine...no offense to wine. It’s just not what Bonbright does.

With the Miller brands as its flagship, “we’re pretty much everything but Anheuser-Busch,” explains Bonbright vice president of sales Brock Anderson III, who runs the wholesaler’s operations in concert with general manager John DiMario, CFO Jim Brown and vice president David Treese, “so we have a good gauge” on the beers that define Ohio. The picture Anderson paints is one in which “mainstream” dominates the canvas (successfully, considering “2007 ended as well as we could have possibly expected”), where imports and crafts have a niche, albeit not as big as the place they might have on either coast and where, given the state of the state and, maybe, the nation, economy-priced beers are having their day.

“There’s been a little bit of trading down this year,” Anderson reports, noting the million cases of Milwaukee’s Best Bonbright sells annually, “but it’s probably not that much different from the rest of the country. The median income in the state of Ohio is not that much different from the rest of the country. It might differ in terms of what people are willing to pay for,” with imports and crafts accounting for a share of business that is—despite Bonbright’s growth in those sectors—“significantly lower” than what you might find elsewhere.

Bonbright’s volume is led by Miller Lite and Coors Light, both enjoying strong starts in 2008, but both looming as reminders of a little uncertainty down the road given the impending merger of those respective brands’ brewers. What will it mean to a house like Bonbright?

“That’s the big question,” Anderson admits. “We’re all kind of on eggshells. We’re already a combined house, but going forward having one strategic vision will make it much easier for distributors who are used to juggling the different strategies from both breweries. It will be easier to focus on one competitor than trying to balance multiple deals.” Eggshell uncertainty aside, Anderson anticipates “most of all moving forward and not balancing between the two as much. Miller and Coors combined will have tremendous resources and benefit distributors immensely.”

As for everything else at Bonbright, Anderson terms the imports and crafts—a “wonderful” portfolio—as underdeveloped even while growing in Ohio. Representing everything from Corona and Heineken to the brands of Diageo to the domestic goods from Great Lakes, Magic Hat and Ohio’s own Christian Moerlein, one key mission for Bonbright is to keep developing them. To do so, the wholesaler is attacking the necessary learning curve that will help its people sell the most they can.

Bonbright has an education program for all its employees that ratchets up the learning process so as to better impress on everybody what makes a craft a craft, what makes an import an import (besides port of call) and why those beers are worth what they sell for.

Dubbed Beer 101, the program explores the nuances of beer and aims to extract the confusion and intimidation that its burgeoning variety can sometimes bring about. The goal is to make certain everyone at Bonbright—and by extension everyone Bonbright sells to—understands everything from traditional American lager to high-proof blueberry beer.

“We go over brewing process, styles, history,” Anderson says. “What we try to do, ultimately, is educate our retailers to what is happening out there and what brands are working at other places in our market.”

Retailer relations are important to any wholesaler in any slice of the United States, but in Bonbright’s Ohio there’s a little something extra to the interaction. “Ohio grants a lot of licenses,” Anderson says, pointing out that many of his drivers’ routes might seem almost eclectic. “Half of our business is independent convenience stores. There are a lot of drive-throughs, a lot of corner stores. I think that helps a lot more in that you can affect that kind of channel and be more of a major driving influence than you’d be in a chain.”

Within a trade that is 80 percent off-premise, Bonbright has established a channel selling process, its salespeople responsible for dealing with a specific type of outlet and impacting that outlet’s beer sales. That salesperson specializes in servicing the independent, knows the SKUs that work and offers that retailer as much information on trends and packages as possible. The wholesaler has become a valuable repository of what sells best in what type of ZIP code.

“It’s kind of a personal pet peeve of mine,” Anderson reveals, “that anytime I’m purchasing a product, I expect the person selling me the product to know more about it than I do.” Sadly, “that’s not the case outside the beer industry and I wouldn’t want that in our organization.”

From Beverage World April 15, 2008