WV beer distributors make major market moves

Two of West Virginia’s big dogs in beer distribution came together in a major business deal this month when the Rucker family sold its Proud Eagle operation to Triple Crown Beverage Group/Spriggs Distributing. 

Spriggs/Triple Crown also operates beer distributors in Huntington, Williamson, Ashland, KY, and Ironton, OH. The Rucker family, led by Bill Rucker, Jr., operates three beer distributors, including Mountain Eagle, Inc. in Beaver; Northern Eagle in Romney; and Mountain State Beverage in Summersville.

With this purchase, Triple Crown Beverage Group joins the top tier of West Virginia’s beer distribution hierarchy. The new Triple Crown unit will operate as Spriggs Distributing Company, Central Division, out of the former Proud Eagle facilities in South Charleston and Parkersburg. It will distribute AB-InBev products in all or parts of 12 counties centered around Charleston and Parkersburg.

In addition to all AB-InBev products, Spriggs will represent several craft beer lines, including the best-selling West Virginia-made beers of Big Timber Brewing and Mountain State Brewing, the popular Country Boy Brewing out of KY, Yuengling, and all the craft lines affiliated with AB-InBev, such as Goose Island, Devils Backbone, Hoegaarden, Widmer, Kona, and Red Hook, etc.

In Huntington, Triple Crown’s Eagle Distributing unit has grown to become been a strong craft player with Country Boy, Big Timber, New Belgium, All Tech, Mountain State Brewing, and others, in addition to selling all the AB-InBev products. One would expect that this craft experience will help the owners continue a strong craft presence at their new Spriggs Distributing unit.

The Triple Crown Beverage Group has been a strong supporter of local craft beer festivals, especially of Huntington’s Rails & Ales Festival and Ashland’s Firkin Fest. Hopefully, that sponsorship fervor will continue in Charleston and extend to the Foam at the Dome Festival and others.

Nine craft beer lines change ship

For nine of Proud Eagle’s former craft beer lines, however, the Ruckers transferred the Charleston-Parkersburg distribution rights to its own Mountain State Beverage (MSB) operation instead of selling them to Triple Crown. These nine lines include Bell’s, Founder’s, Oskar Blues, DuClaw, Southern Tier, Blue Mountain, Flying Dog, North American Breweries (Magic Hat & others) and Fayetteville’s Bridge Brew Works. MSB was already handling some of those lines in other parts of WV, but not in the territories served by Proud Eagle.

It makes sense that Rucker would want to move some strong craft lines to its MSB unit in Charleston and Parkersburg because MSB really needed some beer to sell in those markets. MSB has been a wine and craft-beer focused distributor operating primarily across the southern half of WV, but in the Charleston and Parkersburg markets, it had almost no beer to sell. Now the Ruckers can position MSB as more of a true craft specialty house. MSB does not represent a major standard domestic or popular import line such as AB-Inbev, Miller-Coors, Yuengling, Corona, or Heineken, etc.

More craft visibility, hopefully

The effect of this change in the line-up of craft brands will hopefully translate into more visibility for all craft products at both MSB and Spriggs in the Charleston and Parkersburg markets. This is because the lines now have much less internal competition within their distributors.

When Proud Eagle had them all, the lines had to compete internally with many other craft and standard lines of beer. Even though Charleston-Parkersburg was a decent-sized market, it was near impossible for Proud Eagle to find room to carry all the brands, styles, package types and sizes the nine lines offered. However, with the nine being the primary beer products that MSB now represents in Charleston and Parkersburg, MSB must sell the heck out of them if it is to be profitable in that market.

And at Spriggs, the remaining craft lines should get proportionately more attention because they also have less internal craft competition than before. And, with the Bud beers continuing their sales downturn, Spriggs will need to put more focus on its other lines to keep sales up. This could be a win for craft. We will have to wait and see.

Northern Eagle tells of more changes

On December 10, an announcement by the Rucker’s Northern Eagle distributorship in Romney tells of more changes coming to their network of distributors. Northern Eagle’s wine and craft beer operations are merging into Mountain State Beverage, making MSB truly a statewide distributor.

Here is their announcement:

“We have merged our 2 wine & craft beer companies into one!! About 6 years ago Northern Eagle expanded its territories to offer wine and craft beer to the north and eastern half of the state. At the same time a sister company was created by our owners to offer these same great products to the south and western parts of this great state. After years of hard work, growth and many successes the time had come to merge these great companies into one. Our companies will now operate state wide as one under the name of Mountain State Beverage.”

Based in Romney, Northern Eagle is the AB-InBev distributor in a few WV Potomac Highland counties. It also distributed wine and craft beer across a wider area of northern and eastern WV. That appears to be changing. We assume that Northern Eagle is keeping all its AB-InBev lines and will remain their distributor in the Potomac Highlands territory.

MSB centralized warehousing

Mountain State Beverage was founded by Bill Rucker, Jr. and Scott Parkes in 2011 to be a statewide wine distributor. They soon also explored its potential for distributing craft beer. Being a statewide distributor in a place with the geographic challenges of West Virginia is not easy. The logistics of sales and deliveries are always going to be challenging, however, Mountain State Beverage seems to have a solid plan.

All beer and wine that MSB purchases is shipped into and stored at a state-of-the-art, 180,000 sq. ft. climate-controlled facility in Summersville, WV, which is pretty centrally located within the state. MSB’s sales force then presells from this inventory to retailers across the state. As orders are received, they are picked and shipped daily from the hub to regional distribution spokes in places like Morgantown, Poca, and Romney. From there, products are transferred to local route trucks and delivered to retail licensees.

One statewide distributor may be best

By centralizing its inventory statewide, a distributor should be able to better manage ordering product from the craft breweries and keep more products in stock more often than could a group of small local distributors operating independently and covering the same territory. One large distributor can place orders more frequently keeping inventory fresher. Just ask any IPA fan how important that is.

When West Virginia is split up among six or eight small local distributors, getting a craft brewery order coordinated can be a nightmare and out of stock conditions are common. Smaller houses stock fewer of the package sizes and brands. Inventory management is tougher. Old stock tends to be more common. It’s harder for the breweries to manage it too. There is simply not enough sales potential with most craft brands in West Virginia for a small distributor to focus much attention on each. But for one large statewide distributor, or maybe two large regional ones, the market is big enough to justify the attention a craft brand needs to succeed.

For years, North Central Distributors in Bridgeport has found  success in West Virginia with its Sierra Nevada, Harpoon, and Merchant du Vin craft beer lines running a similar statewide strategy, using centralized ordering and warehousing. Now with Mountain State Beverage moving to become more of a true statewide operation, West Virginia beer distributors are showing it can be done here with craft beer.