Business Strategy: Redhook Brewery

In 1844, the Empire Brewery was founded by Jacob Best and his sons in Milwaukee, WI. In 1860, Jacob’s son Phillip took over and renamed the brewery the Phillip Best Company. Phillip’s daughter, Maria married a steamship captain, Frederick Pabst. Captain Pabst sold his shipping interest and bought a partnership stake in the brewery. In 1872, Captain Pabst became President of the company. In 1889, he renamed the business the Pabst Brewing Company.

     The brewing industry was once held to competition among many breweries in small geographic areas. That was almost a century ago. The U.S. brewing industry today is characterized by the dominance of three brewers, which I will talk about in this paper. There are many factors today that make the beer industry an oligopoly. Such factors include various advancements in technology (packaging, shipping and production), takeovers and mergers, economies of scale, barriers to entry, high concentration, and many other factors that I will cover in this paper. Over the course of the paper I will try to define an oligopoly, give a brief history of the brewing industry, and finally to show how the brewing industry today is an

In a world where large, corporate breweries rule the market, craft beer is created to please an audience that applauds the styles, techniques and flavors. Though craft beer can be purchased through several different outlets, the best place to thoroughly enjoy the entire experience of the specially made beer is in the brewery where it was made. The article titled, “In Lean Times, a Stout Dream” in The Wall Street Journal1 states that, despite the hard economic times and consequent consumer cutbacks, sales of craft beer, the industry 's fastest-growing segment, rose

Strives to be the leader in micro brewing while maintaining the core values it started with and had employee buy in even before it went” 100 % employee owned in2013” (Gorski, 2013).

Boston Beer Company (BBC) has enjoyed much success with their craft beers with Samuel Adams as their main focus. Being the leader of this segment, overtopping five of their competitors combined (Exhibit 1), the company now must decide how to take advantage of the light beer market. Boston Lightship, their current light beer, had been a small contributor in BBC’s product line. Currently, it is facing dwindling sales with product volumes down from 12 000 cases per month to 3000 cases per month.

This report is based on the plant information of Jos. Schlitz Brewing Company's sixth brewery, which located near Winston- Salem, North Carolina. The purpose of this report is to show the brewery's operation management, analysis and critique the plans and actions of the organization, and point out some disadvantages in the operating.

Each distributor makes money on the products that their recruits sell in addition to the money they make from their own sales. The idea is that eventually the original distributor can just sit back and let the distributors he recruited make money for him.

The documentary shows how the two small beer entrepreneurs, Rhonda and Sam try to establish themselves in the beer industry and success in the high potential market. The film shows that the beer industry is governed by some difficult and outdated laws along with an oligopoly of the large brands. These large brands manipulate the beer industry by acquiring and buying off the smaller brands which they find competitive among the market. The small brewers thus face difficulties and barriers establishing themselves in the American beer industry. The big giants like the Coors Brewing Company, Anheuser-Busch, and the Miller Brewing Company face challenge from the independent craft beer producers when these new brands are put on shelves; so they seek ways to prevent distribution and production of these small brands, which is harmful for the competition in the beer industry. Sam Calagione and Rhonda Kallman are considered as small entrepreneurs in the beer industry who struggle from the large brands, the difficult laws, and the less competitive but highly profitable

Therefore, it really needed a strong product that responded the market’s needs and wants so that the product could speak itself in order to survive the keen competition.

Several attempts have been made by Boston Beer Company to continue on a growth streak but not all attempts have been successful. The main goals for Boston Beer Company are to increase revenue and continue growing in the industry. Boston Beer Company has had trouble growing as barriers of entry are low and competition is high. Even though the market has seen a slight upturn, however Boston Beer’s founder Jim Koch elaborates on the company’s dissatisfaction, “We are disappointed with our depletion trends in 2016, which have remained weak so far in 2017. These trends are affected by the general softening of the craft-beer category and cider category and a more challenging retail environment with a lot of new options for our drinkers”. (https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/02/22/boston-beer-finds-growth-the-hard-way.aspx)

The brewing industry can be characterized by Porter’s Five Forces framework. New entries to brewing have a relative ease in creating home micro-breweries, which is aided by

Within the craft beer market, consumers have many products to chose. A product is anything offered within a market that which fulfills a want or need (Armstrong & Kotler, 2015). In 2012, over 1,750 breweries operated in the United States (U.S.), with over 1,920 the following year (Brewers,

Coopers is a public company which is not listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, currently holding a 3.4% market share of the Australian beer market (Coopers Chairman’s Report, 2009). Its major competitors are the Fosters Group and Lion Nathan together holding 94% of the Australian beer market (Byrom & Lehman, 2009).

Meanwhile, since Grolsch used other brewers for distribution while importing beer into foreign countries, the ongoing industry consolidation often led to a need for changing distributors. In several of their markets Grolsch was already on its third or fourth distributor in the span of 15 years. Besides the political, economic, and logistical issues Grolsch had to adapt to, they also were adapting to cultural differences. Their marketing campaigns would vary significantly from market-to-market. While their ability to be nimble, change strategies, and adapt where necessary has been a benefit, it has also been limiting in that Grolsch has struggled to build a consistent brand image and market position in several of its key markets. For example, even though the UK accounted for 25% of Grolsch’s volume, they still only held 1.5% of the UK market. Further, operations have been impacted by the consistent turnover of distributors in several important markets. Grolsch’s adaptation strategy has kept them nimble but has prevented any large scale and stability in certain countries outside the Netherlands.

impact of the decision on the cost structures and the resultant margins for each of the