New Belgium Brewing Company Analysis

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.

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.

Boston Beer Company Mission statement is to “seek long-term profitable growth by offering the highest quality product to the U.S. beer drinker”

The Boston Beer Company is currently the largest craft beer company in the United States, however, the craft beer industry is growing in an otherwise shrinking market increasing the amount of serious competition that The Boston Beer Company is facing.

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 Coors brewing industry had many ups and downs throughout its history dating back to its start in 1873 (Adolf Coors in the Brewing Industry). There were times of great growth and expansion that would get interrupted by numerous setbacks. Some were small and some led to extreme changes. It sounds similar to any type of business. However, the different generations of the Coors family seemed to find ways to usually compete with their competitors and maintain the success of the company. It was also very challenging. Different changes had to be made for each new obstacle that came their way. Over a century has gone by since its start in Golden, Colorado, and the business seems to still be available in stores around the world (Adolf Coors in the Brewing Industry).

New Belgium brewery has increasingly grew throughout the years since their development in 1991. Despite the dominance of the “Big Three” (Budweiser, Miller, and Coors), NBB needs to be aggressive and strive to invest in the attractive beer industry in able to grow more. If positioned correctly, NBB and its main brand, Fat Tire, can continually grow. An evaluation of the industry, the business itself, its brands, and the customers and competitors is needed in order to be continuously successful.

Jones Blair Company, JBC, currently faces a unique challenge in which the upper level management must act in order to maintain its profitability. Jones Blair current market position is in the process of being eroded due to the mass merchandising efforts of companies like Kmart and Sears. In developing their strategy forward, Jones must address two key issues to address the problem statement. First, Jones Blair must determine which marketing medium they will use to access their potential customers. Secondly, they must determine the geographic locations in which

1. What environmental issues does the new belgium brewing company work to address? How does NBB taken a strategic approach to addressing these issues? Why do you think the company has taken such a strong stance toward sustainability?

Company G is one of the top three small appliance and electronics companies in North America. Company G has decided to venture into the beverage category with state of the art coffee brewers to reach its profit potential and achieve customer demand. The new Doppio (pronounced dope-yo) Caffe Brewing System will shake up the Company because of its unique design and the high quality of the materials built right here in the USA. We believe the Doppio Caffe will be superior to any brewing system in the marketplace.

Establishing strategic focus (2014) is something that concludes a marketing managers SWOT analysis (Ferrell & Hartline, pg.100). An organization’s strategic focus could either be influenced by competitive advantages or could assist in strengthening some of the firm’s weaknesses (Ferrell & Hartline, 2014, p.100). New Belgium’s Director of Finance, Danielle McLarnon, recounts how important the company’s values and beliefs are in the article entitled “The Last Word”. McLarnon states that, “It’s the culture at New Belgium that makes us different”, (Amato, 2014, p.1).

Competitive advantage is important in any company’s market structure. A good example of competitive advantage is when a customer asks why he or she should purchase this product over the company’s competitor’s product (Lambardo, 2017). For a company to obtain a substantial competitive advantage, a company has to gain a customer base that trusts their products over their competition’s product. For example, in the beer industry, Anheuser- Busch has created beer products that obtain a strong competitive advantage over their competitors. Budweiser was able to create this competitive advantage because they obtained a strong market structure. Also, there is a huge relation between company brand and competitive advantage (Abbas & Kraidy, 2017). For New Belgium brewing company, the brand and social responsibility are they key competitive advantages.

J.D.B.T.’s overall business strategy was competitive benchmarking on factors such as price, brands, and advertising. After noticing a decline in our profits and market demand, we added a competitive twist to our business strategy. We expanded our sales channels,

Belgium is home of the finest ales and have been known to brew for centuries. So when Jeff Lebesch, an electrical engineer from Fort Collins, Colorado took a bicycle trip through Belgium it made him realize there may be a market back home to sell Belgian-style ale. Jeff returned home with hopes to experiment and brew his own beer in his basement from the various ingredients he received on his trip. When his friends approved of the ales he started marketing them to the local town. He later opened New Belgium Brewing Company in 1991. His wife, Kim Jordan was the company’s marketing director. They named their first brew “Fat Tire Amber Ale” after Jeff’s