We are a nano brewery and we self-distirbute. Have about 20 tap accounts now and my normal process is to research an account on-line, word of mouth to see if I think they'll be a good fit, make a cold call, offer to drop off samples and follow up. In most cases it works well. I had been running into some cases where after I dropped off samples and followed up I'd get a "Love the beer and would like to carry it but I've got a bunch of other beers in the walk-in so you would be behind those." So I say, I'll call next month. Next month, same answer.
So i saw a friend of mine who works for a large distributor and he said that's pay to play. You give them some money, you get on tap.
Now this has happened only a handful of times and to be honest not with the top tier accounts that have a great beer selection but I am just wondering how prevalent it is. BTW I am talking about some mid-size towns too with under 100k population. Not Chicago.
So i saw a friend of mine who works for a large distributor and he said that's pay to play. You give them some money, you get on tap.
Now this has happened only a handful of times and to be honest not with the top tier accounts that have a great beer selection but I am just wondering how prevalent it is. BTW I am talking about some mid-size towns too with under 100k population. Not Chicago.
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