L. Knife & Son Cos. has a unique company structure, says Eric McKay, director of communications for the beer wholesaler based in Kingston, Mass.

Ranked by Beverage World as the No. 10 beer wholesaler in the United States based on case volume this year, L. Knife & Son Cos. now owns 12 distribution companies in six states.

“Given our unique structure,” says McKay, “we felt like we had to take a unique approach to effective marketing.”
To do so, the company set up Great Brewers (GreatBrewers.com) as a central marketing platform to provide an all-inclusive way to market the company’s entire portfolio in a consumer-friendly way. In an effort to remain on the cutting-edge of beer marketing, the company relaunched the website in February of this year with two primary goals in mind: search engine optimization to draw more new visitors to the site and to create a more Facebook-type of approach to the site that encourages consumer participation. Since the relaunch, the site ranked among the Top 5 websites for beer information and beer education last month, according to Alexa, a web information company. McKay also notes that the site is approaching 170,000 visits per month, up from about 40,000 at the time the site was initially launched.

While the site offers applications like the ability to make customized beer lists, beer maps, the Great Beer Test and a location- specific beer catalogue, there is one thing in particular that makes the site truly unique.

“The biggest feature that probably differentiates us from other beer websites that are out there is this feature called BeerCloud,” notes McKay. “With BeerCloud we are enabling people to store lots of different information pertaining to their beer life in one spot.” For example, members of Great Brewers can tag favorite beers, breweries and restaurants and retailers, which will then appear in their BeerCloud (just like your Wall on Facebook).

Members also can use their BeerCloud to store tasting notes, keep track of events that they signed up for (available through the “Events Calendar” at greatbrewers.com), set notifications for updates on beer groups of which they are members and get and store beer news from a news feed on the site. And soon, members will be able to integrate their BeerCloud with their Twitter account, allowing them to share their beer life with their followers.

Great Brewers also has launched BeerCloud as a mobile app for iPhone and android devices. With the app, users can use BeerCloud for food and beer pairing suggestions to track down favorite beers in a particular neighborhood and pull up a full description of almost any beer with a scan of its barcode (available with the android version). “The idea behind our mobile development is that we believe more and more that consumers need a way to get educated at the point of purchase,” says McKay.

In the pipeline, McKay says, are plans to extend this idea beyond mobile phones by working with retailers like Wegmans grocery stores to provide in-store kiosks, so any consumer can scan a beer bottle’s barcode and instantly read a description of it. The database for the applications offered through Great Brewers covers 90-plus percent of commercially available beer in the US, notes McKay, including the portfolios of additional wholesalers that are members of the Great Brewers network, including J.J. Taylor and Ben E. Keith.

“As we’ve seen the potential with web development and different forms of communication like mobile devices, we thought, ‘imagine what we can do if we partner with other companies,’” McKay says. Great Brewers welcomes wholesaler membership to create a collaborative partnership with like-minded wholesalers for sharing ideas, best practices and a range of educational training resources. Wholesalers pay membership dues, though membership is non-binding, says McKay. Dues are based on a formula designed so that any size wholesaler that is enthusiastic about joining would be able to do so, as long as they meet certain criteria.

“By collecting membership dues we can help to improve our services to develop new features to continue to keep this marketing package on the cutting-edge for beer distribution and then also to support the beer industry on a significant scale through sponsorships,” McKay says, adding that one representative from each wholesaler weighs in on decisions.

“As quickly as the industry is changing, I think we all need to have our eyes open to new ideas and to work together to come up with them and implement them.”

VITAL STATS
L. KNIFE & SONS COS.
CEO: Timothy Sheehan
HEADQUARTERS: Kingston, Mass.
EMPLOYEES: 1,045
’08 CASE SALES: Over 23 million
GOALS: The goal of Great Brewers is to bridge the gap between the world’s great brewers and consumers with a paramount focus on education and on enhancing the value that beer distributor offers to their suppliers and to their customers.

From Beverage World December 15, 2009