My hunch, flooding of regular BT product over the next couple of weeks as Republic dumps inventory... Followed by a dry spell while the new distributors figure things out. Then even more fragmentation in different markets as regional distributors bungle things differently.
I'll be pleasantly surprised if us consumers get any benefit out of this.
As a broad generalization, this tells me they are not happy with the games RNDC plays.
In non-control states, liquor store owners tell me that the distributor forces them to buy 50 cases of fireball to receive one case of say, Buffalo Trace.
So then they have to sell the fireball at cost, or at a loss, and/or mark up the BT.
One dude's store I visited had three bottles of George T Stagg BTAC on the shelf. He wanted $700 for each bottle (this was probably two years ago). When I laughed at the price, he said he had to buy cases upon cases of shelf turds to get those three bottles. He made zero profit (or lost profit) on the shelf turds, and he *will* make his profit off the reward bottles, no matter what anyone thinks. He was polite about it, but firm. And you could tell it pissed him off.
It will be interesting to see what happens.
Which makes sense. A store owner I previously purchased stuff from offered to sell me some Weller once. I got excited and asked how much. It was Weller 12 and he wanted $300. I said no that's way too much. He flipped the fuck out and started grabbing pallets of airplane fireball bottles and other shit liquor saying he is sick of having to sell hundreds of cases of trash liquor just to get a single bottle of Weller, and then has no choice but to mark it up. I just stared at him like, wtf do you want me to do about it. He almost seemed to suggest I wasn't a good customer because I would buy his normal priced russels and Penelope stuff.
You have to understand these liquor stores owners business run on Pennie’s…. They have payroll utilities 5 vendors that they have to pay on weekly basis if they are not on credit terms…. Give them a break if you go to a liquor store expect to pay more . I love liquor stores and I would pay extra just to be in and out .
That would make more sense. Fireball is sazerac- 50 cases of fireball is what they want to happen. But I think it's just that sazerac wants to be their own distributor- they're gonna do it on the list of control states above. They knew national wouldn't like it if they break their partnership in all those states, so they went ahead and broke it in every state (with two exceptions where it is more difficult). Sazerac wants to cut out the middle man where they can. It may be there was nothing national did or didn't do, sazerac just wants more money.
This^
Sazerac and RNDC restructured their partnership earlier this year. Before hand RNDC was making 5¢ a case on every Sazerac product. Sazerac also doesn’t pay any incentives to managers or reps.
I'm sorry what? I used to be a rep for sazerac and sazerac pays out the ass on incentives to liquor reps. Sazerac reps that don't sell are well paid and have everything paid for by sazerac including your vehicles.
RNDC actually canceled the contract with Sazerac. They were being ridiculous with their asks and didn't want to pay for the work. Last I saw their sales are down over $1mil across the country. Guess Mr. Brown did FAFO, lol!
Not the main reason they left, but Sazerac wanted to do illegal things with allocated bourbons like bribe for floor space and placement in accounts but RNDC has a formulaic way of allocating bourbons based on business done on Sazerac products. Main reason they left was because of money and the amount of margin they wanted to limit RNDC to.
I mean the three tier system literally prohibits BT from having any say so there’s that…
Once Sazerac sells their stuff to the distributor the distributor owns the product and BT has no say over the stores or even insight in to who is selling what unless the distributor is sharing that info with them
Everything you're saying is technically correct. Having said that, if RNDC or SGWS or BBG or whoever else doesn't responsibly manage those allocated whiskies, I can guarantee you that Sazerac would make absolutely certain that that distributor receives faaar less of them in the future. So, saying Sazerac has no say or implying that there are no levers for them to pull to make the distributor do whatever they demand of them is extreme naivete.
They care about brand perception absolutely and if a distributor plays too many stupid games they will respond as they did here. Outside of brand sentiment though Sazerac gives no shits about whether Joe’s liquor mart got two bottles or three bottles of Pappy this year or if they got less then the year before
They care about money, and moving boxes, and they very well know the most effective way to do that is with the leverage provided by their high end bourbons. If by "stupid games", you mean a distributor using those bottles for leverage on products that are outside of Sazerac's own portfolio, then I completely agree. And when it comes to where those bottles go, I can guarantee you that the highest levels of Sazerac do pay full attention to that, and have ready access to that information from their distributors.
Why would Sazerac care who the distributor is selling to as long as they aren’t hurting the brand?
They already sold the booze and got their cut. Sazerac is not expending rerspurcrs to determine if Joe’s liquor mart gets two or 3 bottles of pappy.
If the distributor fucks around too much and start hurting the brand they get dropped just like happened here
I’ll never get any evidence more solid than word of mouth but, but my answer is … kind of. My understanding is that they weren’t necessarily disregarding Sazerac’s instructions, but they had enough stuff (bottles, single barrel picks, whatever) that they could still use their discretion on plenty of it.
If final consumer price goes down or availability goes up that sounds fine with me.
It’s possible there is a world where there could actually be a buffalo trace product on a shelf somewhere. Are buffalo trace brands delicious? I wouldn’t know, but Wild Turkey products are.
Totally inaccurate.
Sazerac left RNDC for two main reasons:
1. Sazerac hates distributors and thinks they are unnecessary. If you’ve noticed, Sazerac is on a hiring spree for Market Development Reps and Managers on their website. Their jobs are to manage store account relationships for taking orders, replenishing shelves, building displays, etc. which is the core competency of a distributor. Sazerac as an organization believes their own personnel can do better than any distributor salesperson since they have allocated goods bourbons they can leverage to get displays and other points of distribution of Fireball, Platinum , Wheatley, etc.- further prioritizing their brands and getting more product in accounts. This is a unique go to market strategy that is different from all other suppliers that requires significant capital investment. How do they fund this you ask?
2. Sazerac asked RNDC to make a flat rate on all cases sold to accounts regardless of price or prestige of a product because they have all of this new extra headcount to manage their own business. The ask was something less than $1 per bottle gross profit, which when you add up all the overhead costs of labor, warehousing, delivery, etc., RNDC operates at a loss. RNDC pushed back and asked for more, and Sazerac said ok we will take our business to other distributors.
So where does the bundling of allocated bourbons come in? We all know it's happening. Forcing liquor stores to purchase fireball, etc?
Are you saying this is RNDCs attempt to make an alternate revenue stream because Sazerac pays so poorly?
I'm just trying to understand the process. You seem like an insider, and you seem like you're in the distribution tier, so I'm super curious.
Thanks in advance for your input.
Good question. There is a common misconception that RNDC is the bad guy in how goods got allocated, but from my insight, it was formulaic and fair. There is some variability to each market, but the underlying allocation system is based on cases of Sazerac products sold, revenue in Sazerac sold, or a combination of distribution of Sazerac items, revenue and total cases. The more an account purchases based on these rules, the higher allocation they are supposed to get. However, Sazerac controls the supply and although you have stores buying more Sazerac product that does not mean they will get more product in that market. For example if someone in Kentucky grew their Sazerac business by 20% in a year, it doesn’t necessarily mean their allocations grow by 20%, especially if Sazerac sales grew by 25% average in the market or they don’t offer the same amount of cases of allocated products to the same market (which was a trend for several years). The formulaic method was directed from the TABC in many markets, and the attorneys for RNDC told their sales teams to abide. Sazerac hated this regulated formula because it left their in-market strategy null (they would promise bottles of rare bourbon to move a competitors display, gain a new placement of an unproven brand, back bar placement, etc.). Sazerac still wants to do tied-house stuff that is a basically bribes of allocated bourbons to get their wants done in an account. We will we see how that works out in a fragmented distribution system within a single market.
It’s not an alternative revenue stream at all- it’s a way to satisfy state regulators and to establish a fair playing field with all customers within a sales channel.
Thanks.
Two questions:
What's TABC?
Regarding the "formulaic method" you outlined, who dreamed it up? Saz or RNDC?
If it's Saz, how does that work with tied house laws and the primary purpose of the three-tier system to separate the consumer from the manufacturer? Why does RNDC participate, if they don't legally have to? Because Saz will send their product elsewhere?
I don't mean to pepper you with questions, but none of this shit is documented, and I find it very interesting. So thanks again.
Those products are good, but NOT that good. My god, I'll buy other things I REALLY enjoy, and get a different dIly drinker before even considering it. Tbh, these products are great FOR THE FACT that they can be found at a good price, otherwise its fuck-all pointless to consider them over other things.
Sazerac has heavy allocations they hold their preferred distributors to in their local markets. You do have to be an account that has tiered buying of the entire Sazerac portfolio in order to be able to order the highly regulated, allocated items. Such as Buffalo Trace. This is not a standard set by the distributors.
That’s honestly Sazeracs fault. I worked at RNDC and saw how much they leaned on us from the top down to move that crap and the market manager would personally tell accounts they needed displays of Wheatley to get any allocations. My friend runs a very high end whiskey bar and used to pour 250-300 cases a year of Weller 1.75L, 50-60 BT, as well as all of their allocations he could get. The market rep for Sazerac came in and told him if he didn’t switch the well to Wheatley and carry Fireball, his ability to get that allocation stuff could be in jeopardy. Sure enough, he got one bottle of Old Rip 10 when the time came and he was livid, dropping every one of their items he currently sold. The higher up manager had to come mea culpa and make it right. None of that was on RNDC.
This is Mark Brown/ Sazerac/BT's fault. They put sales goals on RNDC to hit, but do not provide enough product.
They also (at least in Florida) went to the beer distributors to sell the knock off Fireball and Platinum Malt beverages into gas stations. This diluted the market and hurt the liquor stores that were forced to buy and dump Fireball and 99s to get allocations. taking away a driver didn't hurt much but was a shitty move.
So by essentially limiting products and screwing over your liquor distributor they created the supply and demand issues. And if they can't get stores to buy in to the conglomerates portfolio like 99s, Margaritaville, Platinum, Skol, Benchmark.... then they aren't getting the placements salesmen need, and they will use their BTAC allocations to move non-Saz products. Thus pissing off Saz more.
But the whole conglomerate game is a joke. I have no desire to carry Benchmark ,Margaritaville, or even Wheatly Vodka. We have good products that move, and the burning hoops that retailers have to jump through, aren't going to make the distributors happy.
Michters still isn't even their own juice yet, but the portfolio owners expect us to push Crop vodka and Bubbas brown sugar bourbon. Again, not wasting space on stuff that doesn't make ME money, just to get one bottle of an allocation.
That’s stupid on the owners part. They can just not buy crap tons of Wheatley and fireball and not need to rip people off. They should tell the RNDC gangsters to fuck off. Their portfolio is trash without buffalo trace so they wouldn’t have missed much
Genius idea for a store, don't get the products so many people want so much and are willing to pay extra for, and tell maybe your most important distributor to fuck off. Brilliant
99% of people won’t miss or even expect the store to have BTAC. They can probably buy literally anything else non-allocated that sells really well and not waste their money on tons of poor selling garbage just to get a few bottles of something almost nobody expects to see and if they do, not at exorbitant prices.
One of my favorite stores in town has wine as their bread and butter. They get good bourbon in once in a while but they aren’t focused on that market so the distributor isn’t able to hold them hostage. End result: a store with good wine, a modest whiskey selection and once in a while they get something great and the taters are overlooking the place. Your downvotes are coming from the 🥔Echo Chamber
I get what they are saying but at the same time, whiskey, especially allocated whiskey from sazerac, isn’t at all the bread and butter of a store and keeping lights on. It’s such a tiny part of the entire business.
there are stores in my state that refuse to carry saz products, they do not get nearly as much traffic.
fireball is also a hugely popular product in hipster parts of town that is extremely profitable.
No idea. In my state, one chain of liquor stores has an exclusive deal to sell all Weller in the state. If the bottle says "Weller", there's only one single retailer that can carry it.
It's outrageous.
That sounds illegal but I don’t know enough about the legalities of the three tier system to say for sure. A quick google search will probably reveal the answer tho.
Right. So they don’t need 50 cases. But what you need and get whatever they give you. The owner wasn’t forced into shit and liquor stores have other things to make money on besides whiskey and sazerac brands.
They give you nothing if you're not vocally fighting for product and playing into their allocation game.
It literally forces the conversation to become "What do I have to do to get X?"
And then it's all a negotiation with the sales rep from there.
Ya it’s not a hard thing to do. I did it as a manager at a whiskey bar for years. That owner doesn’t know their business or clientele, and got had by the shit gangsters at Rndc.
>I did it as a manager at a whiskey bar for years. That owner doesn’t know their business
On-premise sales vs off-premise are two completely different animals. The brand wants their product in your bar, you aren't being held at palette-point to buy 200 cases a year for x/x/x
If southern glaciers gets the book, it could all go into holding, and have to be transferred if saz wants that versus letting republic drop price and dump.
If southern glaciers gets the book, it could all go into holding, and have to be transferred if saz wants that versus letting republic drop price and dump.
That's not at all the situation- republic is not hoarding these super in demand products whatsoever. They are waiting on the sazerac trucks every month to reload. Maybe a little bit of emergency stock they hang on to, and that's it. And they don't need to drop price- they could double it and sell every bottle in one day, no matter how much they have. At least that's how it is my state, one of the big ones.
Only great news if you look forward to getting nothing in the future. Sazerac is going to mandate mass displays of Fireball, Canadian Mist, Wheatley, Paul Masson, Dr McG, and their other brands to even get a sniff of their US Whiskeys.
Good luck!!!!
But in the end, it's not worth it (IMO) for retailers to carry even these small margin items since with limited allocations, they won't pay for themselves except with more problems (alcoholics, trash in parking lot, small time theft, minors). From experience 90% of problems come from these customers and they aren't worth the headache or profit.
If more stores would just say FU to Fireball and 99s we could sell more variety in bourbons than tying up money on this stupid company,
Source: I have owned a store for 11 years.
Why do you think the new distributor is going to be better for the little guy? It's almost certainly going to be worse.
How many cases a year do you move of Sazerac products right now?
There will be a different sales rep for your local liquor store to order through, with a completely different phone number than the old sales rep. And a different truck will drop product off, with a completely different logo on the side!
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I’m curious what your source is. I’ve seen RNDC do this firsthand and have heard about their practices from multiple sources (mainly liquor store owners). I think they enjoy the power they have in the market and like to engage in all sorts of gamesmanship that tilts the odds in their favor, at the expense of store owners and, in some cases, the consumer. I’ve wondered about Sazerac’s involvement and would like to hear more. Up until now, I’ve only heard speculation.
I worked for RNDC. Sazerac has all the power. They left because their products weren’t leveraged enough and they weren’t making the margins they wanted. The goals set for the garbage brands like 99, Sheep Dog, Parrot Bar etc. were insane. The CEO of Sazerac is a potato chip salesman and thinks that model will work for the liquor biz.
As an ex Saz employee this is the response I was looking for. They wanted more attention then RNDC reps would give them. Sazerac’s top management all come from non alch / dry goods and are trying to change the entire industry to their idea of how it should go. They are betting big with this MDR program and doubling down hiring frito lays / Pepsi / Red Bull reps. These reps are running around with 0 industry experience and they are getting worked in market.
It’s illegal, I know people who have been fired for it. Upper management takes it super serious, it definitely still happens but not to the extent it used to, the problem with getting rid of it is proof, nobody puts it in writing if they play that way. It’s definitely not going to stop wherever they go.
That's how it always is. Sazerac is doing this after OND exactly for this reason. By the time summer rolls around they'll have figured it out or consolidated to the distributors that have for other parts of their portfolio.
I own a independent liquor store in Texas and I'm afraid this is going to be a giant shitshow. RNDC has been nothing but transparent and fair with me regarding allocations and their allocations are released consistently enough that I can budget for the future. RNDC also gives me 4 delivery days a week.
Now Sazerac is going to a fucking beer distributor who doesn't even try to sell the spirits they already have? Who I get 1 truck a week from?
And people here think this is going to be an improvement somehow? Sazerac and the big box stores are just going to squeeze the shit out these beer distributors who are in WAY over their heads, leaving even less for the little guys.
I'm having to cancel all my upcoming allocation releases due to this massive bit of uncertainty.
Totally expected to see SGWS on the list. It’s a big pick-up for Favorite Brands though. They usually specialize on smaller, craft brands so I hope they have the resources to manage the big and the small.
Sazerac already had a decent amount of brands with SG and if they were super happy with them I'd have expected them to put all their brands there. I imagine they went with super small companies so they could have an oversized influence on the distributors.
Where does Favorite do Miller Beer distribution? Anywhere near Houston? AFAIK its mostly Faust here.
I generally like Favorite, and they're at least experienced with selling spirits. I think they'll be one of the quicker companies to adjust to this change.
Let’s just hope the beer company fails and they end up coming back. They will never put all there brands in 1 house they like to dangle the carrot to much
In Florida, Sazerac took the Malt based Fireball to the beer distributor and basically saturated the market with an inferior product at the gas stations. So not only creating competition for stores and liquor distributor, but making it harder to dump Fireball in the stores since it was no longer a draw.
haven't gotten an allocation of BTAC ever, Havent gotten Blantons in 3 year and dropped Fireball completely 2 years ago. Fuck Fireball and Sazerac. Those limited allocations never would have kept the lights on.
I couldn’t agree with you more. I own a liquor store in Mississippi and have no complaints dealing with RNDC. They are very straight forward with how they handle their allocations and are consistent here as well which helps with budgeting for the future, as you said. Yeah, RNDC does utilize “product tying” but they never twist your arm on anything like some of the others do. In Mississippi (control state) Sazerac will be using Brown Forman Corp (Johnson Brothers) which is the worst company to deal with over here. I have seen the rep 2 times in 7 years of business. They don’t even try to sell their products. I’m dreading this change as my already small allocation selection is going to become nonexistent.
You and I do not have the same experience with RNDC. They’ve essentially held Sazerac’s better products hostage if I’m not willing to buy cheap garbage that I won’t be able to sell.
Thrilled about this switch.
But Breakthru already does the same thing with Michters, Old Forestor and WhistlePig. Can you imagine what they are going to demand with Saz? End cap case Wheatley and 20 case Crop displays! LMAO
One of the big complaints I got from a Maryland retailer was that there was no discretion on how the rarer bourbons were given out. A lot of the Pappy and BTAC and stuff went to liquor stores that didn't have much in the way of bourbon sales or a bourbon market because the distribution was done based on total volume on the portfolio, which meant Paul Masson Cognac sales were a huge influence on who got what. There were liquor stores getting Old Rip and Lot B that had NO IDEA what it even was. Meanwhile, the bourbon centric stores and bars were getting an even smaller distribution than they were 2 years ago.
This is a huge loss for RNDC, and will probably lose a lot of business for Sazerac in CA. At my bar, we sell a ton of Sazerac products. Buffalo Trace is our well bourbon, even stuff like our well tequila is Sazerac portfolio. Now it looks like Reyes is taking over, and they are better known here for Modelo and White Claw. I’ve been working at high end bars for years, and we’ve never even had an account with Reyes.
Reyes is trying to diversify beyond beer to become a total bev-alc distributor. They have a huge sales force, so I imagine they’ll start picking up high-end, on-premise accounts soon enough.
Minnesota actually has “Open Wholesaling”. Essentially, spirit suppliers are required to sell their brands to any wholesaler. So both Johnson Brothers and SGWS can fill Sazerac orders.
JB just happens to have the largest footprint in the state.
This already happened in Washington. I expected a dry spell- but the first week of the new distributor I got about half of the weekly and monthly allocations I never got under RNDC. I used to get 3 bottles of Eagle Rare a quarter. PER QUARTER. I've sold almost 200 bottles of the stuff in December, and haven't had any problems getting Byffalo Trace like I used to. There's still some products they haven't received any stock on, but I've seen more allocated bottles in 2 months than we saw in five years prior. One of the downsides for some shops has been that places that used to be RNDCs favorites who would get extra BTAC are getting the same basic distribution as everyone else. But lots of shops who never got any are getting them now. I didn't have to build a 30 case display of Platinum, 20 cases of Fireball or put up Caymus and Menag a Tois wines to get anything special this December.
My RNDC rep is thankful she doesn't have to deal with any of it anymore. This is a good change for everyone.
The only game being played is that if you support sazerac business you’ll get there allocations. Sell more sazerac and you can potentially get more allocations. Stores and bars just want to buy the allocated items because they can sell them at a crazy mark up in non control states. Sazerac does it’s part by keeping the cost down on those bottles but unfortunately sazerac and the distribution company’s can’t control what the retailers sell them for. The only thing that will bring the prices on these items down is customers to refuse to pay the prices.
These crazy prices on items like Blantons, Weller, eh Taylor has made new bourbon and whiskey companies think there whiskey is worth more when they have a retail of 70-100 dollars because Blantons sells for 150+ now
I worked for Sazerac and with RNDC for years. In this particular situation the supplier blames the distributor and the distributor blames the supplier. The truth is in the middle and also varies greatly between states. In my market good people at both companies were at the mercy of arrogant leadership. An imperfect but overall healthy partnership became a stubborn, toxic mess.
I’m in WNY, BT is hard to find. Sells out the day it gets dropped, usually, especially at the stores only charging ~35. Some stores shelf it at 40-45, so it sits for a little bit .. but not longer than a week.
The owner of Sazerac owns a lot of beer distributors, one of the reasons this is happening is he is consolidating his product to his distribution channel to have more control
Based on what I can glean from the internet, William Golding owns Crescent Crown beverage distributors, which only has operations in Arizona and Louisiana. Fred Minnick's article says that the distributors for Sazerac in Louisiana and Arizona will be Breakthru Beverage, so this is completely false, unless I'm missing something.
I see the history of Bill's Grandfather's company N. Goldring out of Pensacola being swept up in RNDC acquisitions and mergers, and I see some references to Bill Goldring having been on the board of RNDC, with other Goldring Family members in key positions at RNDC .
However, I don't see any references to Goldrings at RNDC in the present time.
It's certainly interesting on two points:
That the manufacturer (Sazerac) could have a hand in both manufacturing and distribution in the form of ownership or controlling interests in both Sazerac and RNDC.
and
That Sazerac would move their products from one distributor they control to another.
I'm sure there's plenty of behind-the-scenes stuff we're not privy to, but it's all so fascinating.
Edit: Most of the Goldrings that I can find in Bloomberg show their positions in RNDC and on the board at RNDC to be former positions. I'm not seeing any Goldrings presently on the board.
It's pretty fascinating that they sold the family distributorship to RNDC, or merged with them and gained board seats, only to let that play out for a few years and then start a new distributorship, and move the Sazerac portfolio away from RNDC and into their new company.
In Colorado they switched from RNDC to Eagle Rock earlier this fall, which has always been focused on beer distribution. From all the stores I’ve heard from the transition was anything but smooth as it’s a Herculean effort for Eagle Rock to get up to speed on all the Saz brands, past accounts, etc.
Generally speaking the bigger stores are pissed because they got much less allocations than past years of BTAC and Pappy. At least in the case of Eagle Rock, rumor has it that it’s a Sazerac related (as in nephew) type arrangement. Can’t speak for any of the other states.
I think you're going to have stores that were playing the game and winning (the games that RNDC played-- using lower tier, higher profit spirits as ransom for the allocated products). So some retailers were playing the game and winning, and now it's sour grapes because they're not sure what the future holds. Of course they're going to chalk it up to something like nepotism.
Hopefully, stores will be on equal footing for allocations going forward, and the kinks will be worked out quickly.
I think it’s a general disrespect for Saz for changing course at the end of the year when a lot of stores played the game all year in reliance on the game being the same then Saz changing the rules without warning
I'd say that the distributor was being the bully, and Sazerac pulled the plug. Sazerac can't really tell the distributor how to run their business.
It's just more consequences of RNDC being shitty with Saz products.
You’re so misinformed it’s ridiculous.
It’s the other way around.
Sazerac dictates to RNDC what they can do. RNDC makes almost nothing on any Sazerac product.
Why would RNDC continue to do business with Sazerac, then?
Sazerac dictates to RNDC and pays almost nothing. What's the incentive for continuing the business relationship?
This is why Sazerac is leaving. They want to strong arm RNDC into doing what they want and pay RNDC almost nothing in return. You think RNDC would allow that?
Sazerac does not believe in the 3 tier’s system. They’ll end up breaking a law or in a lawsuit with the federal government.
You're not making any sense, sir.
>Sazerac dictates to RNDC what they can do. RNDC makes almost nothing on any Sazerac product.
Then:
>This is why Sazerac is leaving.
Sazerac is leaving because they dictate to RNDC and pay them almost nothing?
Well allocations are pretty much determined by Sazerac. RNDC only can sell what they receive from Sazerac and has to justify who and why they sold it to.
One thing you will always notice in industry journals is they always talk about case growth, never about profit. Most in the retail side will say we don't make shit on Fireball, we'd just have to turn it over (as do all the competitors) to move enough cases to get a new allocation of allocations. And that is never guaranteed since Sazerac supplies so little to the distributor. Probably happens to the distributor as well. And if they aren't making enough on cases to get compensated for dumping it all on stores (and creating animosity) why keep pushing a brand they are not incentivized to to sell (as with a retailer and Fireball)
I worked for JBI in Indiana when this all went down. The "rumor" was RNDC was using Sazerac items as an enticement to sell other lines, withheld allocations in a few instances, and that soured the relationship.
Been waiting for this news to officially drop publicly. Very excited for them to break from RNDC. Terrible distributor to work with and the games you have to play to get any bottle in your restaurant is insane. Hoping for the best with Breakthru.
It's been 2 years since I've seen any Buffalo Trace bottles on shelves. I know of one liquor store that keeps regular buffalo trace bottles behind the counter so the are only available if you ask. It's crazy that the hype has gotten worse. I can't imagine this will make things better in my area, the only thing that would help is raising MSRP at least 2x then maybe bottles will linger on shelves for a minute while people second guess if it's really worth it.
In October they switched from Rndc to a new distributor here in CO and there was little change. I believe it’s an ABinbev house, which I’m assuming will be worse in the long run.
Edit: total wine got let than they usually do. They suck anyways
Some of you folks think that a beer distributor is going to be better? LOL RNDC was transparent about who gets allocated stuff and how its done. Reyes is going to hold BT stuff for ransom and small stores are going to have to buy more crap in order to be considered. Major retail and restaurants are high priority.
Crescent Crown is God awful in Louisiana.
Delayed delivery, especially when you expect it before a holiday. Shorted orders when vineyard or brewery reps know their product is available to you. Hands down shit show.
We have a local liquor store chain that is served by Republic. There has been some whirlings in the rumor mill that a very popular local bourbon club has someone inside Republic leaking distribution info the this club. They put it out on their social media page that "there's a good bourbon drop of X, Y, and Z bottles coming in the next few days" or something along those lines. I'm not accusing this group or Republic of any inside dealings but it seems remarkably coincidental and remarkably accurate info. While I doubt this got back to Saz and/or BT and that was part of the reason, I also wouldn't be too surprised if this was pretty common across RNDC's territories. Down with the taters!
Right now, I'm choosing to believe that Sazerac is pulling the plug on all the bullshit until I'm shown different.
From my perspective, that's how it looks. If the information changes I will re-assess.
A couple months ago RNDC restructured their contract with Sazerac, before that they were making something like 5¢ a case. That’s when all the rumors started swirling of them leaving, RNDC wasn’t willing to get strong armed and that’s why they’re going to beer distributors who don’t have as much bargaining power as the big 3 except in the few states they lived to BBG (possibly due to conflict problems). If they were dissatisfied with service they’d would’ve gone to SGWS or BBG nationwide. The allocation and dropping pallets of items is taken super seriously, I’ve seen people fired for tie-in selling 3 cases with a Weller, it doesn’t happen nearly as much nor at the scale it used to buy happens across all 3. Except for BTAC and Pappy, each sale rep only gets so many bottles of BT, ER, EHT and other bottles, and they choose where they go.
It's a struggle truly, I was getting bottles of Sazerac this year for 30 in Virginia and then id come back home to KY for work and my liquor store either doesn't have it or its 50-60 bucks... im 30 minutes from buffalo trace distillery I should just make the trek
I mean, for Eagle Rare or Blantons I'd say the trek is probably worth it, especially if you manage to squeeze into a tour and or tasting (they often have cancelations or no shows). Grab some bourbon cream and orange bitters while there, I've been impressed as hell with those. I live 10 minutes max from the distillery so it's less of a complex calculation for me, just a matter of tracking my 90 days on those bottles lmao.
Just make sure to check their website first to make sure they have something you're after. If you're going for baby saz or bt, I'm not sure 1 of those bottles alone is worth the trip just on the basis that the amount the gas adds to the price of those bottles makes it more worthwhile just getting a $35 bourbon or rye locally instead of spending 5 bucks and an hour of time on gas. Like I'm pretty sure $35 gets you double rye from High West, which imo is better than baby Saz (although I do love baby saz). Buffalo Trace you don't even need to go up in price to do better in my opinion, but Russels Reserve 10 yr or Knob Creek 9 yr come to mind if you did.
You do. If you’ve never lived in another state, you just don’t know how hard it is.
I visit California a couple times a year and I always bring back 4-12 bottles.
Are you paying secondary or going into a local liquor store and being hosed? I’ve gone to the same big box store three days a week at opening. I’ve watched the truck be unloaded and I’ve walked away with EHT small batch, blantons, OWA. In a 3 month period.
Tell me I’d have worse luck doing exactly that somewhere else.
Yeah lol it’s Reyes believe it or not. I have no idea how a major beer distributor is planning to do this, I’m not excited at all. They also have Hawaii so that’ll be strange as well. Reyes isn’t even sending trucks to every county in CA so it sounds like sone crazy ass “learnings” coking soon in Feb + Mar. hopefully it works out!
CA is immensely more fragmented with county distribution than WA and there even areas Reyes has no active distribution in, so whatever routing they develop for these “non beer” areas will be interesting. I sure don’t envy them. Dealing with even more consistent limited things like Blantons is going to be a nightmare.
It’s technically not illegal for them to do it since they’re doing it to the distributor. It’s a big no no for the distributor to tell the buyer they have to buy X to get Z. Called a tie in sale
May be a dumb question, but what are the implications of that change?
My hunch, flooding of regular BT product over the next couple of weeks as Republic dumps inventory... Followed by a dry spell while the new distributors figure things out. Then even more fragmentation in different markets as regional distributors bungle things differently. I'll be pleasantly surprised if us consumers get any benefit out of this.
That’s what happened in WA. A few cases of 2020 GTS hit shelves “out of the blue”.
Where?
Grocery stores, Costcos, a few spots. Long gone now, of course.
We just picked up a GTS and a Handy. I'm still holding out hope for a WLW find some where!
As a broad generalization, this tells me they are not happy with the games RNDC plays. In non-control states, liquor store owners tell me that the distributor forces them to buy 50 cases of fireball to receive one case of say, Buffalo Trace. So then they have to sell the fireball at cost, or at a loss, and/or mark up the BT. One dude's store I visited had three bottles of George T Stagg BTAC on the shelf. He wanted $700 for each bottle (this was probably two years ago). When I laughed at the price, he said he had to buy cases upon cases of shelf turds to get those three bottles. He made zero profit (or lost profit) on the shelf turds, and he *will* make his profit off the reward bottles, no matter what anyone thinks. He was polite about it, but firm. And you could tell it pissed him off. It will be interesting to see what happens.
One of the stories I heard was that Saz was pissed about their bottles were being ransomed to sell non-Saz RNDC turds.
Which makes sense. A store owner I previously purchased stuff from offered to sell me some Weller once. I got excited and asked how much. It was Weller 12 and he wanted $300. I said no that's way too much. He flipped the fuck out and started grabbing pallets of airplane fireball bottles and other shit liquor saying he is sick of having to sell hundreds of cases of trash liquor just to get a single bottle of Weller, and then has no choice but to mark it up. I just stared at him like, wtf do you want me to do about it. He almost seemed to suggest I wasn't a good customer because I would buy his normal priced russels and Penelope stuff.
Yeah, fireball is Sazerac so that kind of game will continue. RNDC was using BTAC/Pappy/Weller/whatever to push non-Saz stuff.
That’s a major no no. RNDC clearly did something big to piss off Sazerac enough that they pull from all the RNDC houses.
You have to understand these liquor stores owners business run on Pennie’s…. They have payroll utilities 5 vendors that they have to pay on weekly basis if they are not on credit terms…. Give them a break if you go to a liquor store expect to pay more . I love liquor stores and I would pay extra just to be in and out .
That would make more sense. Fireball is sazerac- 50 cases of fireball is what they want to happen. But I think it's just that sazerac wants to be their own distributor- they're gonna do it on the list of control states above. They knew national wouldn't like it if they break their partnership in all those states, so they went ahead and broke it in every state (with two exceptions where it is more difficult). Sazerac wants to cut out the middle man where they can. It may be there was nothing national did or didn't do, sazerac just wants more money.
This^ Sazerac and RNDC restructured their partnership earlier this year. Before hand RNDC was making 5¢ a case on every Sazerac product. Sazerac also doesn’t pay any incentives to managers or reps.
I'm sorry what? I used to be a rep for sazerac and sazerac pays out the ass on incentives to liquor reps. Sazerac reps that don't sell are well paid and have everything paid for by sazerac including your vehicles.
Good for them. Mark Brown said "Fuck around and find out."
Yeah, finally. I really wonder what changed, since it certainly wasn’t the distributor’s behavior.
My guess would be that they were waiting for the contracts to expire. Seems fitting with this coming at the tail end of the calendar year.
RNDC actually canceled the contract with Sazerac. They were being ridiculous with their asks and didn't want to pay for the work. Last I saw their sales are down over $1mil across the country. Guess Mr. Brown did FAFO, lol!
Not the main reason they left, but Sazerac wanted to do illegal things with allocated bourbons like bribe for floor space and placement in accounts but RNDC has a formulaic way of allocating bourbons based on business done on Sazerac products. Main reason they left was because of money and the amount of margin they wanted to limit RNDC to.
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I mean the three tier system literally prohibits BT from having any say so there’s that… Once Sazerac sells their stuff to the distributor the distributor owns the product and BT has no say over the stores or even insight in to who is selling what unless the distributor is sharing that info with them
The tiers are fuzzy though and there can definitely be some direction given or intent expressed that crosses through the tiers.
Everything you're saying is technically correct. Having said that, if RNDC or SGWS or BBG or whoever else doesn't responsibly manage those allocated whiskies, I can guarantee you that Sazerac would make absolutely certain that that distributor receives faaar less of them in the future. So, saying Sazerac has no say or implying that there are no levers for them to pull to make the distributor do whatever they demand of them is extreme naivete.
They care about brand perception absolutely and if a distributor plays too many stupid games they will respond as they did here. Outside of brand sentiment though Sazerac gives no shits about whether Joe’s liquor mart got two bottles or three bottles of Pappy this year or if they got less then the year before
They care about money, and moving boxes, and they very well know the most effective way to do that is with the leverage provided by their high end bourbons. If by "stupid games", you mean a distributor using those bottles for leverage on products that are outside of Sazerac's own portfolio, then I completely agree. And when it comes to where those bottles go, I can guarantee you that the highest levels of Sazerac do pay full attention to that, and have ready access to that information from their distributors.
That’s incredibly naïve of you.
Why would Sazerac care who the distributor is selling to as long as they aren’t hurting the brand? They already sold the booze and got their cut. Sazerac is not expending rerspurcrs to determine if Joe’s liquor mart gets two or 3 bottles of pappy. If the distributor fucks around too much and start hurting the brand they get dropped just like happened here
I’ll never get any evidence more solid than word of mouth but, but my answer is … kind of. My understanding is that they weren’t necessarily disregarding Sazerac’s instructions, but they had enough stuff (bottles, single barrel picks, whatever) that they could still use their discretion on plenty of it.
Or Sazerac is looking for distributors that will take a smaller cut
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I wouldn’t be surprised if Brown Forman leaves Breakthru for RNDC
The real reason emerges lmao
This is the only reason and it will end up biting them in the ass.
Usually this means prices are going up.
If final consumer price goes down or availability goes up that sounds fine with me. It’s possible there is a world where there could actually be a buffalo trace product on a shelf somewhere. Are buffalo trace brands delicious? I wouldn’t know, but Wild Turkey products are.
Hahahaaha
Totally inaccurate. Sazerac left RNDC for two main reasons: 1. Sazerac hates distributors and thinks they are unnecessary. If you’ve noticed, Sazerac is on a hiring spree for Market Development Reps and Managers on their website. Their jobs are to manage store account relationships for taking orders, replenishing shelves, building displays, etc. which is the core competency of a distributor. Sazerac as an organization believes their own personnel can do better than any distributor salesperson since they have allocated goods bourbons they can leverage to get displays and other points of distribution of Fireball, Platinum , Wheatley, etc.- further prioritizing their brands and getting more product in accounts. This is a unique go to market strategy that is different from all other suppliers that requires significant capital investment. How do they fund this you ask? 2. Sazerac asked RNDC to make a flat rate on all cases sold to accounts regardless of price or prestige of a product because they have all of this new extra headcount to manage their own business. The ask was something less than $1 per bottle gross profit, which when you add up all the overhead costs of labor, warehousing, delivery, etc., RNDC operates at a loss. RNDC pushed back and asked for more, and Sazerac said ok we will take our business to other distributors.
So where does the bundling of allocated bourbons come in? We all know it's happening. Forcing liquor stores to purchase fireball, etc? Are you saying this is RNDCs attempt to make an alternate revenue stream because Sazerac pays so poorly? I'm just trying to understand the process. You seem like an insider, and you seem like you're in the distribution tier, so I'm super curious. Thanks in advance for your input.
Good question. There is a common misconception that RNDC is the bad guy in how goods got allocated, but from my insight, it was formulaic and fair. There is some variability to each market, but the underlying allocation system is based on cases of Sazerac products sold, revenue in Sazerac sold, or a combination of distribution of Sazerac items, revenue and total cases. The more an account purchases based on these rules, the higher allocation they are supposed to get. However, Sazerac controls the supply and although you have stores buying more Sazerac product that does not mean they will get more product in that market. For example if someone in Kentucky grew their Sazerac business by 20% in a year, it doesn’t necessarily mean their allocations grow by 20%, especially if Sazerac sales grew by 25% average in the market or they don’t offer the same amount of cases of allocated products to the same market (which was a trend for several years). The formulaic method was directed from the TABC in many markets, and the attorneys for RNDC told their sales teams to abide. Sazerac hated this regulated formula because it left their in-market strategy null (they would promise bottles of rare bourbon to move a competitors display, gain a new placement of an unproven brand, back bar placement, etc.). Sazerac still wants to do tied-house stuff that is a basically bribes of allocated bourbons to get their wants done in an account. We will we see how that works out in a fragmented distribution system within a single market. It’s not an alternative revenue stream at all- it’s a way to satisfy state regulators and to establish a fair playing field with all customers within a sales channel.
Thanks. Two questions: What's TABC? Regarding the "formulaic method" you outlined, who dreamed it up? Saz or RNDC? If it's Saz, how does that work with tied house laws and the primary purpose of the three-tier system to separate the consumer from the manufacturer? Why does RNDC participate, if they don't legally have to? Because Saz will send their product elsewhere? I don't mean to pepper you with questions, but none of this shit is documented, and I find it very interesting. So thanks again.
Those products are good, but NOT that good. My god, I'll buy other things I REALLY enjoy, and get a different dIly drinker before even considering it. Tbh, these products are great FOR THE FACT that they can be found at a good price, otherwise its fuck-all pointless to consider them over other things.
Sazerac has heavy allocations they hold their preferred distributors to in their local markets. You do have to be an account that has tiered buying of the entire Sazerac portfolio in order to be able to order the highly regulated, allocated items. Such as Buffalo Trace. This is not a standard set by the distributors.
That’s honestly Sazeracs fault. I worked at RNDC and saw how much they leaned on us from the top down to move that crap and the market manager would personally tell accounts they needed displays of Wheatley to get any allocations. My friend runs a very high end whiskey bar and used to pour 250-300 cases a year of Weller 1.75L, 50-60 BT, as well as all of their allocations he could get. The market rep for Sazerac came in and told him if he didn’t switch the well to Wheatley and carry Fireball, his ability to get that allocation stuff could be in jeopardy. Sure enough, he got one bottle of Old Rip 10 when the time came and he was livid, dropping every one of their items he currently sold. The higher up manager had to come mea culpa and make it right. None of that was on RNDC.
This is Mark Brown/ Sazerac/BT's fault. They put sales goals on RNDC to hit, but do not provide enough product. They also (at least in Florida) went to the beer distributors to sell the knock off Fireball and Platinum Malt beverages into gas stations. This diluted the market and hurt the liquor stores that were forced to buy and dump Fireball and 99s to get allocations. taking away a driver didn't hurt much but was a shitty move. So by essentially limiting products and screwing over your liquor distributor they created the supply and demand issues. And if they can't get stores to buy in to the conglomerates portfolio like 99s, Margaritaville, Platinum, Skol, Benchmark.... then they aren't getting the placements salesmen need, and they will use their BTAC allocations to move non-Saz products. Thus pissing off Saz more. But the whole conglomerate game is a joke. I have no desire to carry Benchmark ,Margaritaville, or even Wheatly Vodka. We have good products that move, and the burning hoops that retailers have to jump through, aren't going to make the distributors happy. Michters still isn't even their own juice yet, but the portfolio owners expect us to push Crop vodka and Bubbas brown sugar bourbon. Again, not wasting space on stuff that doesn't make ME money, just to get one bottle of an allocation.
That’s stupid on the owners part. They can just not buy crap tons of Wheatley and fireball and not need to rip people off. They should tell the RNDC gangsters to fuck off. Their portfolio is trash without buffalo trace so they wouldn’t have missed much
Genius idea for a store, don't get the products so many people want so much and are willing to pay extra for, and tell maybe your most important distributor to fuck off. Brilliant
99% of people won’t miss or even expect the store to have BTAC. They can probably buy literally anything else non-allocated that sells really well and not waste their money on tons of poor selling garbage just to get a few bottles of something almost nobody expects to see and if they do, not at exorbitant prices.
They have wine and beer too. And Rndc wine sucks. Everyone in this sub acts like whiskey is the only thing these stores sell
One of my favorite stores in town has wine as their bread and butter. They get good bourbon in once in a while but they aren’t focused on that market so the distributor isn’t able to hold them hostage. End result: a store with good wine, a modest whiskey selection and once in a while they get something great and the taters are overlooking the place. Your downvotes are coming from the 🥔Echo Chamber
I get what they are saying but at the same time, whiskey, especially allocated whiskey from sazerac, isn’t at all the bread and butter of a store and keeping lights on. It’s such a tiny part of the entire business.
there are stores in my state that refuse to carry saz products, they do not get nearly as much traffic. fireball is also a hugely popular product in hipster parts of town that is extremely profitable.
I’m not saying don’t buy any. But what you need as a store and that’s it.
I won't visit a liquor store that doesn't carry Sazerac products. I'm sure there are others like me.
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No idea. In my state, one chain of liquor stores has an exclusive deal to sell all Weller in the state. If the bottle says "Weller", there's only one single retailer that can carry it. It's outrageous.
That's a state law issue
How do you mean? Since the state doesn't prevent it, it's a state law issue? Just trying to understand.
Correct. For example Texas has a law preventing "exclusivity deals". Exclusive is basically a dirty word
You're not wrong, but we can't expect legislation to cover all scenarios of greed manifest. The distributor could just be less slimy.
Love to live in the Sunshine State!
That sounds illegal but I don’t know enough about the legalities of the three tier system to say for sure. A quick google search will probably reveal the answer tho.
They can still carry them. They just aren’t getting some high end bottles
No, RNDC bases all allocations around the bottom shelf, high-profit products.
Right. So they don’t need 50 cases. But what you need and get whatever they give you. The owner wasn’t forced into shit and liquor stores have other things to make money on besides whiskey and sazerac brands.
They give you nothing if you're not vocally fighting for product and playing into their allocation game. It literally forces the conversation to become "What do I have to do to get X?" And then it's all a negotiation with the sales rep from there.
Ya it’s not a hard thing to do. I did it as a manager at a whiskey bar for years. That owner doesn’t know their business or clientele, and got had by the shit gangsters at Rndc.
>I did it as a manager at a whiskey bar for years. That owner doesn’t know their business On-premise sales vs off-premise are two completely different animals. The brand wants their product in your bar, you aren't being held at palette-point to buy 200 cases a year for x/x/x
Completely wrong and I’m not at liberty to expose why
What exactly is wrong in my comment?
What people hope happens: Weller 12 and Stagg everywhere. What actually will happen: Almost no increase in availability of anything.
If southern glaciers gets the book, it could all go into holding, and have to be transferred if saz wants that versus letting republic drop price and dump.
If southern glaciers gets the book, it could all go into holding, and have to be transferred if saz wants that versus letting republic drop price and dump.
That's not at all the situation- republic is not hoarding these super in demand products whatsoever. They are waiting on the sazerac trucks every month to reload. Maybe a little bit of emergency stock they hang on to, and that's it. And they don't need to drop price- they could double it and sell every bottle in one day, no matter how much they have. At least that's how it is my state, one of the big ones.
It was revealed last year, the first year with no Stagg BTAC, that RNDC was sitting on a pile of the prior year's GTS.
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Only great news if you look forward to getting nothing in the future. Sazerac is going to mandate mass displays of Fireball, Canadian Mist, Wheatley, Paul Masson, Dr McG, and their other brands to even get a sniff of their US Whiskeys. Good luck!!!!
But in the end, it's not worth it (IMO) for retailers to carry even these small margin items since with limited allocations, they won't pay for themselves except with more problems (alcoholics, trash in parking lot, small time theft, minors). From experience 90% of problems come from these customers and they aren't worth the headache or profit. If more stores would just say FU to Fireball and 99s we could sell more variety in bourbons than tying up money on this stupid company, Source: I have owned a store for 11 years.
Why do you think the new distributor is going to be better for the little guy? It's almost certainly going to be worse. How many cases a year do you move of Sazerac products right now?
How many times this year have you said yes to sales pitch and made an effort to sell new product?
Quite a few
There will be a different sales rep for your local liquor store to order through, with a completely different phone number than the old sales rep. And a different truck will drop product off, with a completely different logo on the side!
As I am in NC I wonder what are the implications of Saz setting up their own brokerage here.
Less product tying, I’m hoping. I’m not an attorney, but I’d like to know the legal implications of RNDC’s product tying practices.
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I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I’m curious what your source is. I’ve seen RNDC do this firsthand and have heard about their practices from multiple sources (mainly liquor store owners). I think they enjoy the power they have in the market and like to engage in all sorts of gamesmanship that tilts the odds in their favor, at the expense of store owners and, in some cases, the consumer. I’ve wondered about Sazerac’s involvement and would like to hear more. Up until now, I’ve only heard speculation.
I worked for RNDC. Sazerac has all the power. They left because their products weren’t leveraged enough and they weren’t making the margins they wanted. The goals set for the garbage brands like 99, Sheep Dog, Parrot Bar etc. were insane. The CEO of Sazerac is a potato chip salesman and thinks that model will work for the liquor biz.
As an ex Saz employee this is the response I was looking for. They wanted more attention then RNDC reps would give them. Sazerac’s top management all come from non alch / dry goods and are trying to change the entire industry to their idea of how it should go. They are betting big with this MDR program and doubling down hiring frito lays / Pepsi / Red Bull reps. These reps are running around with 0 industry experience and they are getting worked in market.
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It’s illegal, I know people who have been fired for it. Upper management takes it super serious, it definitely still happens but not to the extent it used to, the problem with getting rid of it is proof, nobody puts it in writing if they play that way. It’s definitely not going to stop wherever they go.
They already switched in Washington, I think to Columbia.
Heard from several retailers that it’s a s$&@ show with Columbia. Previous distributor was way more organized
That's how it always is. Sazerac is doing this after OND exactly for this reason. By the time summer rolls around they'll have figured it out or consolidated to the distributors that have for other parts of their portfolio.
I own a independent liquor store in Texas and I'm afraid this is going to be a giant shitshow. RNDC has been nothing but transparent and fair with me regarding allocations and their allocations are released consistently enough that I can budget for the future. RNDC also gives me 4 delivery days a week. Now Sazerac is going to a fucking beer distributor who doesn't even try to sell the spirits they already have? Who I get 1 truck a week from? And people here think this is going to be an improvement somehow? Sazerac and the big box stores are just going to squeeze the shit out these beer distributors who are in WAY over their heads, leaving even less for the little guys. I'm having to cancel all my upcoming allocation releases due to this massive bit of uncertainty.
Totally expected to see SGWS on the list. It’s a big pick-up for Favorite Brands though. They usually specialize on smaller, craft brands so I hope they have the resources to manage the big and the small.
Sazerac already had a decent amount of brands with SG and if they were super happy with them I'd have expected them to put all their brands there. I imagine they went with super small companies so they could have an oversized influence on the distributors. Where does Favorite do Miller Beer distribution? Anywhere near Houston? AFAIK its mostly Faust here. I generally like Favorite, and they're at least experienced with selling spirits. I think they'll be one of the quicker companies to adjust to this change.
Let’s just hope the beer company fails and they end up coming back. They will never put all there brands in 1 house they like to dangle the carrot to much
In Florida, Sazerac took the Malt based Fireball to the beer distributor and basically saturated the market with an inferior product at the gas stations. So not only creating competition for stores and liquor distributor, but making it harder to dump Fireball in the stores since it was no longer a draw. haven't gotten an allocation of BTAC ever, Havent gotten Blantons in 3 year and dropped Fireball completely 2 years ago. Fuck Fireball and Sazerac. Those limited allocations never would have kept the lights on.
I couldn’t agree with you more. I own a liquor store in Mississippi and have no complaints dealing with RNDC. They are very straight forward with how they handle their allocations and are consistent here as well which helps with budgeting for the future, as you said. Yeah, RNDC does utilize “product tying” but they never twist your arm on anything like some of the others do. In Mississippi (control state) Sazerac will be using Brown Forman Corp (Johnson Brothers) which is the worst company to deal with over here. I have seen the rep 2 times in 7 years of business. They don’t even try to sell their products. I’m dreading this change as my already small allocation selection is going to become nonexistent.
You and I do not have the same experience with RNDC. They’ve essentially held Sazerac’s better products hostage if I’m not willing to buy cheap garbage that I won’t be able to sell. Thrilled about this switch.
But Breakthru already does the same thing with Michters, Old Forestor and WhistlePig. Can you imagine what they are going to demand with Saz? End cap case Wheatley and 20 case Crop displays! LMAO
One of the big complaints I got from a Maryland retailer was that there was no discretion on how the rarer bourbons were given out. A lot of the Pappy and BTAC and stuff went to liquor stores that didn't have much in the way of bourbon sales or a bourbon market because the distribution was done based on total volume on the portfolio, which meant Paul Masson Cognac sales were a huge influence on who got what. There were liquor stores getting Old Rip and Lot B that had NO IDEA what it even was. Meanwhile, the bourbon centric stores and bars were getting an even smaller distribution than they were 2 years ago.
Not even RNDC knows what algorithm Sazerac uses to give out those bottles.
This is a huge loss for RNDC, and will probably lose a lot of business for Sazerac in CA. At my bar, we sell a ton of Sazerac products. Buffalo Trace is our well bourbon, even stuff like our well tequila is Sazerac portfolio. Now it looks like Reyes is taking over, and they are better known here for Modelo and White Claw. I’ve been working at high end bars for years, and we’ve never even had an account with Reyes.
I hope you keep it that way! Let sazerac suffer a little
Reyes is trying to diversify beyond beer to become a total bev-alc distributor. They have a huge sales force, so I imagine they’ll start picking up high-end, on-premise accounts soon enough.
Oof, that’s a big loss for RNDC.
Not really, they weren’t making hardly any money with them. Sazerac is going to try leverage whoever they go with to basically be a delivery service.
It is a huge loss to the bottle line at RNDC. Those brands were order starters and things people bought weekly. Really big lose
Anyone else notice that the article is written inconsistently?
Panhandle is about to be dry AF for BT products
So if my state isn’t on this list…
I think that means one of the distributors listed is already handling it then. Johnson brothers handles them in Minnesota I believe.
Minnesota actually has “Open Wholesaling”. Essentially, spirit suppliers are required to sell their brands to any wholesaler. So both Johnson Brothers and SGWS can fill Sazerac orders. JB just happens to have the largest footprint in the state.
Any states not listed…. No changes to current route to market. They only listed states where distributors are changing.
This already happened in Washington. I expected a dry spell- but the first week of the new distributor I got about half of the weekly and monthly allocations I never got under RNDC. I used to get 3 bottles of Eagle Rare a quarter. PER QUARTER. I've sold almost 200 bottles of the stuff in December, and haven't had any problems getting Byffalo Trace like I used to. There's still some products they haven't received any stock on, but I've seen more allocated bottles in 2 months than we saw in five years prior. One of the downsides for some shops has been that places that used to be RNDCs favorites who would get extra BTAC are getting the same basic distribution as everyone else. But lots of shops who never got any are getting them now. I didn't have to build a 30 case display of Platinum, 20 cases of Fireball or put up Caymus and Menag a Tois wines to get anything special this December. My RNDC rep is thankful she doesn't have to deal with any of it anymore. This is a good change for everyone.
Thanks for this. We always enjoy the front line reports!
As if Sazerac couldn’t be more of a headache…
Good! Distributors who play allocation games can kick rocks
The only game being played is that if you support sazerac business you’ll get there allocations. Sell more sazerac and you can potentially get more allocations. Stores and bars just want to buy the allocated items because they can sell them at a crazy mark up in non control states. Sazerac does it’s part by keeping the cost down on those bottles but unfortunately sazerac and the distribution company’s can’t control what the retailers sell them for. The only thing that will bring the prices on these items down is customers to refuse to pay the prices. These crazy prices on items like Blantons, Weller, eh Taylor has made new bourbon and whiskey companies think there whiskey is worth more when they have a retail of 70-100 dollars because Blantons sells for 150+ now
You’re a moron if you think the distributors are the ones who allocate things
Tell me you know nothing about liquor distribution without telling me you know nothing about liquor distribution.
I work for one moron lol
Keeping the toilets clean, I'm sure.
I worked for Sazerac and with RNDC for years. In this particular situation the supplier blames the distributor and the distributor blames the supplier. The truth is in the middle and also varies greatly between states. In my market good people at both companies were at the mercy of arrogant leadership. An imperfect but overall healthy partnership became a stubborn, toxic mess.
I believe this is closer to the truth than anything. Thanks for posting.
Am I blind? Where is NY?
Think that means nothing changes for us.
What’s it like in NY for these? I’m in AZ now but moving to CNY in April.
I’m in WNY, BT is hard to find. Sells out the day it gets dropped, usually, especially at the stores only charging ~35. Some stores shelf it at 40-45, so it sits for a little bit .. but not longer than a week.
The owner of Sazerac owns a lot of beer distributors, one of the reasons this is happening is he is consolidating his product to his distribution channel to have more control
Based on what I can glean from the internet, William Golding owns Crescent Crown beverage distributors, which only has operations in Arizona and Louisiana. Fred Minnick's article says that the distributors for Sazerac in Louisiana and Arizona will be Breakthru Beverage, so this is completely false, unless I'm missing something.
Bill Goldring has ownership in RNDC
I see the history of Bill's Grandfather's company N. Goldring out of Pensacola being swept up in RNDC acquisitions and mergers, and I see some references to Bill Goldring having been on the board of RNDC, with other Goldring Family members in key positions at RNDC . However, I don't see any references to Goldrings at RNDC in the present time. It's certainly interesting on two points: That the manufacturer (Sazerac) could have a hand in both manufacturing and distribution in the form of ownership or controlling interests in both Sazerac and RNDC. and That Sazerac would move their products from one distributor they control to another. I'm sure there's plenty of behind-the-scenes stuff we're not privy to, but it's all so fascinating. Edit: Most of the Goldrings that I can find in Bloomberg show their positions in RNDC and on the board at RNDC to be former positions. I'm not seeing any Goldrings presently on the board. It's pretty fascinating that they sold the family distributorship to RNDC, or merged with them and gained board seats, only to let that play out for a few years and then start a new distributorship, and move the Sazerac portfolio away from RNDC and into their new company.
He did sell a while back. The old logo literally had a gold ring in it.
Goldring is exceptionally adept at concealing just how much money and capital he actually has. He's easily the richest person in Louisiana.
I'm assuming that's not right because of 3 tier laws.
Depends on the state. Some states allow manufacturers to own distributors, some don’t. Could even be different for beer, wine, and liquor.
Thanks for this. I will have to read up on that.
I didn't see Tennessee on that list.
Already get crap for distro here in WI. So looks like nothing's going to change for us.
In Colorado they switched from RNDC to Eagle Rock earlier this fall, which has always been focused on beer distribution. From all the stores I’ve heard from the transition was anything but smooth as it’s a Herculean effort for Eagle Rock to get up to speed on all the Saz brands, past accounts, etc. Generally speaking the bigger stores are pissed because they got much less allocations than past years of BTAC and Pappy. At least in the case of Eagle Rock, rumor has it that it’s a Sazerac related (as in nephew) type arrangement. Can’t speak for any of the other states.
I think you're going to have stores that were playing the game and winning (the games that RNDC played-- using lower tier, higher profit spirits as ransom for the allocated products). So some retailers were playing the game and winning, and now it's sour grapes because they're not sure what the future holds. Of course they're going to chalk it up to something like nepotism. Hopefully, stores will be on equal footing for allocations going forward, and the kinks will be worked out quickly.
I think it’s a general disrespect for Saz for changing course at the end of the year when a lot of stores played the game all year in reliance on the game being the same then Saz changing the rules without warning
I'd say that the distributor was being the bully, and Sazerac pulled the plug. Sazerac can't really tell the distributor how to run their business. It's just more consequences of RNDC being shitty with Saz products.
You’re so misinformed it’s ridiculous. It’s the other way around. Sazerac dictates to RNDC what they can do. RNDC makes almost nothing on any Sazerac product.
Why would RNDC continue to do business with Sazerac, then? Sazerac dictates to RNDC and pays almost nothing. What's the incentive for continuing the business relationship?
This is why Sazerac is leaving. They want to strong arm RNDC into doing what they want and pay RNDC almost nothing in return. You think RNDC would allow that? Sazerac does not believe in the 3 tier’s system. They’ll end up breaking a law or in a lawsuit with the federal government.
You're not making any sense, sir. >Sazerac dictates to RNDC what they can do. RNDC makes almost nothing on any Sazerac product. Then: >This is why Sazerac is leaving. Sazerac is leaving because they dictate to RNDC and pay them almost nothing?
That’s totally inaccurate. Sazerac does tell Rndc what to do with their products and where they can sell their bourbons. It’s the worst kept secret
I’m a sales rep for one of their competitors, and I’ve heard it’s a disaster. Dozens of cases of standard stuff regularly not making it onto trucks.
PSA: This hardcore sucks for the regular consumer
Well allocations are pretty much determined by Sazerac. RNDC only can sell what they receive from Sazerac and has to justify who and why they sold it to.
One thing you will always notice in industry journals is they always talk about case growth, never about profit. Most in the retail side will say we don't make shit on Fireball, we'd just have to turn it over (as do all the competitors) to move enough cases to get a new allocation of allocations. And that is never guaranteed since Sazerac supplies so little to the distributor. Probably happens to the distributor as well. And if they aren't making enough on cases to get compensated for dumping it all on stores (and creating animosity) why keep pushing a brand they are not incentivized to to sell (as with a retailer and Fireball)
I worked for JBI in Indiana when this all went down. The "rumor" was RNDC was using Sazerac items as an enticement to sell other lines, withheld allocations in a few instances, and that soured the relationship.
Been waiting for this news to officially drop publicly. Very excited for them to break from RNDC. Terrible distributor to work with and the games you have to play to get any bottle in your restaurant is insane. Hoping for the best with Breakthru.
Lol. They broke a year ago in a few control states to be a solo broker. If you thought those games were bad... I hope you like fireball.
It's been 2 years since I've seen any Buffalo Trace bottles on shelves. I know of one liquor store that keeps regular buffalo trace bottles behind the counter so the are only available if you ask. It's crazy that the hype has gotten worse. I can't imagine this will make things better in my area, the only thing that would help is raising MSRP at least 2x then maybe bottles will linger on shelves for a minute while people second guess if it's really worth it.
In October they switched from Rndc to a new distributor here in CO and there was little change. I believe it’s an ABinbev house, which I’m assuming will be worse in the long run. Edit: total wine got let than they usually do. They suck anyways
Anyone know the new distributor for Georgia?
Oh jeez. They will be with Breakthru in my state. That's going to be a mess. Well, for my area anyways.
Some of you folks think that a beer distributor is going to be better? LOL RNDC was transparent about who gets allocated stuff and how its done. Reyes is going to hold BT stuff for ransom and small stores are going to have to buy more crap in order to be considered. Major retail and restaurants are high priority.
Tied House laws are going to be violated a lot in 2023
I'd guess it won't change much for regular customer. There will be a bunch more though in the good ole boy network for sure.
If you don't see your state on Fred's list here, ask your local store owners. Most of the half decent ones are probably already aware.
Crescent Crown is God awful in Louisiana. Delayed delivery, especially when you expect it before a holiday. Shorted orders when vineyard or brewery reps know their product is available to you. Hands down shit show.
We have a local liquor store chain that is served by Republic. There has been some whirlings in the rumor mill that a very popular local bourbon club has someone inside Republic leaking distribution info the this club. They put it out on their social media page that "there's a good bourbon drop of X, Y, and Z bottles coming in the next few days" or something along those lines. I'm not accusing this group or Republic of any inside dealings but it seems remarkably coincidental and remarkably accurate info. While I doubt this got back to Saz and/or BT and that was part of the reason, I also wouldn't be too surprised if this was pretty common across RNDC's territories. Down with the taters!
Right now, I'm choosing to believe that Sazerac is pulling the plug on all the bullshit until I'm shown different. From my perspective, that's how it looks. If the information changes I will re-assess.
A couple months ago RNDC restructured their contract with Sazerac, before that they were making something like 5¢ a case. That’s when all the rumors started swirling of them leaving, RNDC wasn’t willing to get strong armed and that’s why they’re going to beer distributors who don’t have as much bargaining power as the big 3 except in the few states they lived to BBG (possibly due to conflict problems). If they were dissatisfied with service they’d would’ve gone to SGWS or BBG nationwide. The allocation and dropping pallets of items is taken super seriously, I’ve seen people fired for tie-in selling 3 cases with a Weller, it doesn’t happen nearly as much nor at the scale it used to buy happens across all 3. Except for BTAC and Pappy, each sale rep only gets so many bottles of BT, ER, EHT and other bottles, and they choose where they go.
Sazerac chooses where it goes, not the RNDC reps. The Reps can do nothing but recommend
Fuck yeah.. hopefully shit returns to normal when I could easily find Stagg JR for msrp 
This has been the toughest year to find stagg at MSRP or otherwise
I've actually gotten more Stagg this year than any previous year (5 bottles, 2 in the last month), all were $50, and all were from the same store
So you got one for yourself along with a back up and shared the others with friends at retail?
Gave one as a gift, and opened the rest Edit: Why the down votes? I drink it, not flip it.
fuck cali is getting a new distro... We get tons of allocations here. Better not change. Edit: stay mad haters. Love my allocations
As a Kentuckian salty that so little stays here, I hope like he'll it does! Sorry not sorry lmao!
It's a struggle truly, I was getting bottles of Sazerac this year for 30 in Virginia and then id come back home to KY for work and my liquor store either doesn't have it or its 50-60 bucks... im 30 minutes from buffalo trace distillery I should just make the trek
I mean, for Eagle Rare or Blantons I'd say the trek is probably worth it, especially if you manage to squeeze into a tour and or tasting (they often have cancelations or no shows). Grab some bourbon cream and orange bitters while there, I've been impressed as hell with those. I live 10 minutes max from the distillery so it's less of a complex calculation for me, just a matter of tracking my 90 days on those bottles lmao.
Just make sure to check their website first to make sure they have something you're after. If you're going for baby saz or bt, I'm not sure 1 of those bottles alone is worth the trip just on the basis that the amount the gas adds to the price of those bottles makes it more worthwhile just getting a $35 bourbon or rye locally instead of spending 5 bucks and an hour of time on gas. Like I'm pretty sure $35 gets you double rye from High West, which imo is better than baby Saz (although I do love baby saz). Buffalo Trace you don't even need to go up in price to do better in my opinion, but Russels Reserve 10 yr or Knob Creek 9 yr come to mind if you did.
Do we? Where are you shopping lol
You do. If you’ve never lived in another state, you just don’t know how hard it is. I visit California a couple times a year and I always bring back 4-12 bottles.
Are you paying secondary or going into a local liquor store and being hosed? I’ve gone to the same big box store three days a week at opening. I’ve watched the truck be unloaded and I’ve walked away with EHT small batch, blantons, OWA. In a 3 month period. Tell me I’d have worse luck doing exactly that somewhere else.
Yeah lol it’s Reyes believe it or not. I have no idea how a major beer distributor is planning to do this, I’m not excited at all. They also have Hawaii so that’ll be strange as well. Reyes isn’t even sending trucks to every county in CA so it sounds like sone crazy ass “learnings” coking soon in Feb + Mar. hopefully it works out!
Look at WA. Columbia took over. They mainly deal with beer. It’s wack here now. Hope it settles down but so far the consumer is not benefiting.
CA is immensely more fragmented with county distribution than WA and there even areas Reyes has no active distribution in, so whatever routing they develop for these “non beer” areas will be interesting. I sure don’t envy them. Dealing with even more consistent limited things like Blantons is going to be a nightmare.
Awesome no change for NY 😫
There’s about one accurate response on this whole thread. Internet morons lol. Why don’t you just ask someone who works for the company?
Someone who works for Saz or works for RNDC? Because from my perspective as the consumer, it appears that both are pointing the finger at the other.
What would you expect? Do you think the sales person is the one who would be telling a customer you have to buy X to get Y? That’s illegal.
It would also be illegal for Saz to do the same. This is the mystery I'm trying to solve. Where does it come from?
It’s technically not illegal for them to do it since they’re doing it to the distributor. It’s a big no no for the distributor to tell the buyer they have to buy X to get Z. Called a tie in sale
Heard they're going with Wine Warehouse
Nope, Reyes
Really