PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVID SINGER By Lew Bryson
are out of school. It’s baseball season, and that takes a lot of beer. The 4th of July is a huge holiday for take-home beer sales, and just the increase in summer activities like boating, hiking, swimming, and softball means more occasions for a cold one at home. Your customers are hot and thirsty, you have beer and they have money: how hard can it be?
S
Selling beer in the summer ought to be easy…but you’ve got to do some work to sell more beer; more than last year, more than your competitors, more profitable beers. You’ve got to have the right beers in the right place, at the right time, in the right quantities and packages, at the right price…and it doesn’t hurt to have a little sizzle with it, too. Let’s get some ideas going.
Light Is King T
he right beers in the summer are lighter beers. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about the bigs or the crafts, no one’s looking for a big fat heavy
beer in the summer. Give them what they want, and plenty of it: stock up on 30-packs, says Adam Tolsma, the senior Atlanta-area beer buyer for the Columbia, SC-based Green’s Beverages chain. “The light beers
elling beer in the summer ought to be easy. It’s hot — no matter where you are — and people take vacations and have parties while their kids
Tom Welton, the operations manager at Julio’s Liquors in Westborough, MA, sees more variety in summer craft beers this year, and is putting up large displays of craft beers in cans to spur interest.
aren’t our focus, but we sell more of them in cans, and 30-packs in general: Bud, Bud Light, Miller, Coors. They really took the 24-packs off at the knees. The brewers would probably like to get people back buying 24-pack cases, but what’s been done can’t be undone.” This is Bud Light Lime season, and time for the return of Corona. “My Corona numbers over Memorial Day went through the roof; I sold over 200 cases over the weekend. As soon as the weather turns, customers gravitate to the summer beers,” notes Greg Ramirez, owner of Exton Beverage in Exton, PA. It’s true in the crafts as well; summer beers are com- ing on strong this year after spending time in the shad- ow of Samuel Adams Summer Ale, and they’re a lighter, more refreshing breed. “Things go to the lighter styles of beer, blondes and saisons, rather than the darker,” notes Matt Link, the beer buyer for Hi-Time Cellars in Costa Mesa, CA. All those new beers make great mate- rial for a Facebook page or store Twitter feed. Tom Welton, the operations manager at Julio’s
Liquors in Westborough, MA, sees more variety in sum- mer crafts this year, and has a local angle to leverage on it. “The summer beers are expanding,” he says, and
Beverage Dynamics • www.beveragedynamics.com • July/August 2011 • 45
