The Ramirez family may have run R&S Beverage for almost 24 years, but it’s anything but complacent about its position in the marketplace. The company is constantly striving to keep its employees and its customers happy.

Based in Adelanto, Calif., the company is an exclusive Anheuser-Busch-InBev distributor, with an alcohol division and a non-alcohol division selling Monster Energy drinks. Michael Ramirez, general manager for the company, chats with Beverage World about R&S Beverage’s investments.

Beverage World: What are your plans for expansion?
Michael Ramirez: We have a separate non-alcohol division that we created last summer. It’s building up its sales force now to gear up for the coming summer.

BW: What challenges did you face with the new division?
MR: We’ve only had Monster for just over a year now; last year was our learning curve. It’s different from beer because (with beer) retailers are used to one price (no volume discounts). With non-alcoholics they are used to discounts—from Coke for example. We weren’t good at doing this because we’d never done it before—we learned about volume discounts and sales. With beer we have to post prices 30 days out and can’t change for 30 days. For non-alcoholics we can change them any time and for different accounts.

BW: What makes you different?
MR: We sell Monday through Friday and we deliver Tuesday through Saturday. We deliver on Saturday because it’s our accounts’ busiest time. It means we don’t have to figure out what they’re going to sell all weekend on a Friday. Stores carry less inventory and it means better cash flow for them.

BW: What do you do internally that works well?
MR: We don’t have a night shift. The only downside is we have a tighter schedule and less flexibility in the day.

BW: How do you keep close ties with your community?
MR: We bring in a speaker every year from Anheuser-Busch to speak to our community schools about drinking and driving and underage drinking. We feel it’s worthwhile and it really touches the students. We also are involved in the community and either volunteer our time or participate in events. We do believe you need to be involved; being involved is more than saying, ‘Here’s a check.’ People remember that and people appreciate that. It’s a little way that we can say ‘thank you.’

From Beverage World February 15, 2010