Harpoon ipa beer handle5/16/2023 ![]() Currently the 44 th largest craft brewer in the US, the Schlafly Tap Room and Schlafly Bottleworks restaurants and breweries in St. Twenty-one years on, The Saint Louis Brewery (also known as Schlafly Beer), is set to become the largest locally owned brewery in Missouri. For more information about Harpoon beers and visiting the breweries, visit Founded in 1991 by Tom Schlafly and Dan Kopman, The Saint Louis Brewery’s Tap Room was the first new brewery to open its doors in St. Harpoon has since introduced the limited batch 100 Barrel Series and the as well as the all-natural Harpoon Cider made from freshly pressed, local apples. In 2000 Harpoon purchased a second brewery in Windsor, VT, making Harpoon the 9 th largest craft brewer in the US. Harpoon’s line of craft beer features its award winning IPA and UFO Hefeweizen beers, along with four special seasonal selections. ![]() In 1986 Harpoon was issued Brewing Permit #001 by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, since it was the first brewery to brew commercially in Boston after a dormant period of about 25 years. The Harpoon Brewery was founded by beers lovers, Rich Doyle and Dan Kenary. The beer will remain on tap until the keg is empty. Making the right decision has got a lot of variables to consider there’s not just one right path.Once the Series victors have been crowned, the brewery that has won the wager will ship a tap handle and a keg of their flagship beer to the losing brewery for tapping on their draft system. “A brewery could self-distribute, go with a large wholesaler with a big portfolio or a smaller wholesaler with a very limited portfolio of smaller brands. “There’s not one solution that’s right or wrong,” he continues. “They’ve got knowledgeable salespeople and they’ve got all the efficiencies to sell craft beer extremely well. “In this day and age, large distributors have become extremely proficient at selling craft beer,” Storey says. Wholesalers have become much more adept at handling and selling craft beer, much more than they were in Harpoon’s early days - a time when many small brewers just starting out couldn’t even get distributors to return their calls. Distributing one’s own products means the brewer gets close to 100 percent share of mind.īut Storey cautions that self-distribution may not be the best option for everyone. “If it were a more geographically extensive market, without the density of population, the time between stops, the number of cases dropped per stop would probably be at a level that would make it unsustainable for us to operate,” Storey notes.Ī handful of single- and double-axle box trucks, as well as a couple of cargo vans, get the job done for Harpoon Distributing Co.īeyond operational efficiencies, there are definite sales and marketing advantages for Harpoon. The company reaches a lot more retail customers over a much shorter geographic distance than in many other metro areas. In fact, it’s the city’s dense population that provides a logistical advantage for Harpoon to manage its own distribution there. “But in the morning, in some cases, on some routes drivers are going against the traffic - outbound from the city and vice versa at the end of the day. “Boston is certainly a congested city, an old city, so the traffic patterns don’t conform to modern grids and the highways and infrastructure are old and stressed,” Storey explains. Having a home base smack in the middle of an urban center like Boston - Harpoon’s headquarters is in the city’s Seaport District - brings its own set of challenges. There are a lot of ways to get those, but if you can’t deliver on operational efficiencies, it’s probably not sustainable.”ĭistribution, he continues, is not a simple process of getting a keg or a case from point A to point B, but a complex suite of services that encompasses sales, merchandising, relationship management, troubleshooting, accounting and a host of other tasks. It’s an operation that requires operational efficiencies. ![]() “It’s actually its own independent enterprise and has to be managed that way. “It’s not simply an extension of brewing,” he says. He advises that any brewer pondering self-distribute (in states that allow it) must recognize that distributing beer is a completely different business than producing it and should operate as such. Someone who works on the distribution side doesn’t do things like packaging, brewing and filtering.” There’s no overlap between tasks on either side. “There’s spatial overlap, if you will, but is an independent entity. “It’s managed out of the same building,” Storey notes.
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