In many cases, beer wholesalers have discovered that it is often them, not their supplier and not their retailer customers, who are best positioned to get close to those consumers who are passionate about drinking “better beer.”

Wholesaler-run initiatives like Great Brewers and World Class Beverages have created websites brimming with information about craft beer. But while similar wholesaler initiatives in the past may have served as a way for retailers to track inventories, these sites instead are directed squarely at consumers.

For example, WorldClassBeverages.com allows craft beer lovers to search an exhaustive database of craft styles and brands, and also directs them to where they can buy it. Users also can find out about upcoming events like tastings, tap into a comprehensive virtual Beer University and keep up with a selection of beer blogs. GreatBrewers.com has this kind of functionality as well, along with an interactive food and beer-pairing guide and additional features.

While wholesalers have traditionally been content staying behind the scenes, with most consumers probably never having heard the name of the company who supplies their local restaurant or bar with their favorite beer, the craft business has begun to change that.

“There are a lot of distributors out there who essentially define themselves as their lead brand and don’t essentially create and promote their own independent brand identity or provide a marketing platform for their suppliers,” explains Eric McKay, director of communications, L. Knife & Son Cos., the wholesaler that spearheaded Great Brewers. “But distributors in general have shifted quite a bit in the past few years. While we’ve been distributing craft beer aggressively, working closely with many craft brewers since the early 2000s, it’s only been in the past couple of years when you’ve seen a lot of distributors that have traditionally either been exclusive or have mostly carried beer from just one supplier, who are now aggressively recruiting craft brewers into their portfolio.”

McKay continues, “So distributors have to be able to market themselves as companies that offer a highly valuable service to be the most attractive option in any given market for a particular craft brewery, where as in previous years, say five-plus years ago, that was rarely a part of a large distributor’s growth strategy.”

Simply put, taking on the form of a branded craft beer website, such as GreatBrewers.com or WorldClassBeverages.com, proves to craft brewers, many of whom are young entities themselves that are just starting out, that these wholesalers mean business when it comes to promoting their brands—that their brews are not going to be small fish in a big pond dominated by one of the national brands.

“These identifications allow an emerging brand to identify with something other than a distributor that might have previously been allied or identified more exclusively with a national brand,” says Craig Purser, president of the National Beer Wholesalers Association.

Adds Jim Schembre, manager of World Class Beverages, which was started by wholesaler Monarch Beverage Co.
in 2003, “It gives us credibility that we are taking consumers to the retail store for better products. This has a huge value for the retailer so we are seen as a more favorable wholesaler.”

And it doesn’t hurt that wholesalers believe they also are helping promote the burgeoning craft category overall. Purser explains, “The real shining star of 2009 was the continued steady growth of craft beer and so when you’re working to advance a category or working to advance a growing segment of your business, there’s a lot of different ways that folks will evolve or work to build that identification. It provides these great brands, many of which have tremendous equity, but are truly just being developed, it provides a new way to help them take root.”

Comments Paul Gatza, director, Brewers Association, the craft brewers trade group, “As people have cut back on volume of beer in 2009 (down 2 percent in the US overall, or 4.5 million barrels fewer), distributors and retailers have both participated in helping craft brewers get to market and get to beer drinkers. Craft is where the margin is strong and where the sales dollars are shifting. So distributors are more interested in securing craft brands, getting them out to retailers and craft brands have become an increasingly important part of the distributor’s profit center.”

The trend also has seen beer wholesalers join forces in partnerships around craft beer. Great Brewers and World Class Beverages are composed of several beer wholesaler partners. Joining with L. Knife behind Great Brewers, for instance, are Ben E. Keith, Texas; Standard Beverage, Kansas and the recently merged Hartford Distributors/Franklin Distributors, Connecticut. Great Brewers is speaking with other wholesalers and is on pace to add one or two new partners each month in 2010, according to McKay.

Having established themselves firmly on the Web, Great Brewers and World Class Beverages are now focusing on the next iteration of their brands: mobile apps. Great Brewers’ Beer Cloud is already a popular download on the iPhone and Android with some 37,000 users. And World Class Beverages is getting set to launch its mobile app this spring.

From Beverage World March 15, 2010