How the beverage distribution business works (yawn)

Depends on the route you are assigned and weather you are side loader or bulk truck. If you are side loader it's safe to say you will probably average about 500 cases a day so 2500 cases a week.

That's not counting Kegs though you may have a heavy keg day and a light case day, which was kind of like my Thursday, so that's something to keep in mind.

Now bulk truck route could be many more cases could be 2,000 more cases a week, but that's not necessarily finger printing, a lot of those are shrink wrapped onto pallets and you just pull the pallets off the trailer and on to the loading dock.

 

Usually if there mixed like that, that means the machine is owned by Mr.JollyBeam and he packs it with what ever he wants. Coke and Pepsi do trade on the Dr.Pepper thing from time to time because Dr.Pepper is weird, but out side of that no, if it is a machine owned by Pepsi and maintained by Pepsi then you wouldn't see any Coke in it, same with Coke at our little office at GFS we have a Coca Cola vending machine, the machine is owned by Coca Cola Cleveland and they maintain it, it's always stocked and it gets a lot of sales $0.75 for a can of pop.

There are companies out there that provide food service to business and also run business cafeterias and stuff and those companies also own there own vending machines and those are the places that have the mixed machines. Those companies usually have a warehouse somewhere, where they park all there vans and cutaway box trucks and then Pepsi and Coke go there to there warehouse and make a bulk stop and then those guys go out and refill there own vending machines and snack bars.

From what I learned when I did beer Coca Cola is a much easier company to deal with then Pepsi, there business terms are not nearly as harsh. A lot of the little convenient stores that I delivered beer to did not directly get Pepsi from Pepsi, because of Pepsi's harsh business terms. There are a handful of small time hole in the wall convenient store suppliers here in Cleveland and probably any major big city.

You know you buy a couple beat up Izuz straight trucks that have a big gash on the side and some graffiti painted on them and rent some real crappy warehouse space, just make sure it has a legitimate loading dock and then you go off and stock your warehouse with goods that C-Stores would sell, candy bars, beef jerky, cigarettes stuff like that.

Anyhow a lot of the hole in the wall C-Store suppliers would usually buy a load from Pepsi and then there customers would call up "Yo Joe I need 48 20oz of regular Pepsi and a case of 2 Liters of Mountain Dew." Joe then gets his lacky's to pick that order and they throw it into the back of there truck that's tagged with graffiti and go to Quick Stop Convenient and 24 Hour Check Cashing now accepting EBT and Food Stamps and deliver the Pepsi.

 

Well the way the company I used to work for got started was the mafia started it way back when and then when the 21st ammendement came into play they started selling wine and did wine for a very very long time. Then over the years the beverage business went into consolidation mode, and that would seggway into what I am going to say right now:

The best way now a days to start a beer and wine distribution business would be to get the license from the state and become a "licensed whole sale distributor" then what you would do is go after all the small micro brews and winerys that are out there or imports as well, that's what the smaller companies like Cavalier do, all the big breweries are spoken for your not going to get Miller, Coors, Budweiser those are all spoken for already so you can forget them.

What you would do is get all the smaller micro brews and import books and then you would have to have your sales people along with the breweries sales people pounding and promoting the living crap out of this stuff.

Anymore and this is why I keep saying the micro brew business at it's current state is a bubble ready to burst, and @KillingTime and I both agree, there's only so much out there meaning there's only so many people who are going to buy micro brews and stuff and now a days being an owner of a micro brew is the same thing as starting a rock band it's a s-ton of work and it's all about self promoting your self.

Well the distributor and the brewery work together to promote the different brands, and once those brands get notoriety and stuff then you start to get some sales.

Alot of these distributors are older companies that have been around for some time and over the years they bought out other companies, like I said past 10-15 years the beverage business went into a lot of consolidation.

@Russian Rabbit say, you decide your sick of working at UPS freight and you got a good deal on an old commercial brick building with some warehouse space and a loading dock and you have a lawyer friend who was able to get you a distributors license, and you get your hands on some Ford F-450 cutaway box trucks and a Ford 250 Econoline van and say at the same time because you have room and you have the means, Bob Hose Water approaches you and says "Rabbit, were looking to break into this market and we need a distributor and all the bigger places we feel they can't give us the attention we need and we like your small time distributorship, we want to do business with you and have you distributor our product in the counties that you serve."

You say "Well what's your plan?" They say "Well we have sales reps already in the area and we have signed on deals with Wawa and Weise supermarkets.They have agreed to carry our product."

You say "Well those are good accounts to start we have a deal." So then you all shake hands and you buy a truck load of Bob's Hose Water from Bob's Hose Water and you hire some blond girl to go out and collect orders and maybe a merchandiser to go and build displays and you hire a couple guys to drive the trucks and off you go.

Now say you guys are doing good with Bob's Hose Water and McGillicutties Micro Brew is looking to get into your market, you then make a pitch to them try to get there business and then ad them on.

Now okay you've got Bob's Hose Water and McGillicutties Micro Brew, your still small time, but your running a prosperous little business, well maybe Central Beverage Distributors-Distributors of Fine Miller-Coors products decides that they haven't bought anyone out in a while and they want more to sell, they see Russian Rabbit Distributing running around and they look at your small operation and say "Well that looks good to us." So they go in there and say "Hey Russian, how would you like $5,000,000 bucks for your business?" Or what ever it's valued at. You say "Sure that's pretty good." You take the check and go and retire and the blond girl and warehouse people and office staff and truck drivers now work for Central Beverage Distributors.