At the Map Room, a Bucktown bar with a tap list the length of a novel, the beers of Bell’s Brewery are suddenly what everyone wants. “They’ve never been more popular,” says bar owner Laura Blasingame. “If you can’t have it, you really want it.”
And Bell isn’t the only brewer who feels hamstrung. Many industry experts say the law keeps small brewers out of Chicago, already a notoriously competitive market, and constrains those who are already here. In short, it does a lot to dictate what beers end up on the shelf at your local liquor store or on tap in your local tavern. And not surprisingly, distribution law, which has been deeply influenced by business interests, has a lot to do with politics and little to do with beer.
Simple economics might dictate that small distributors would start up to serve these small brands, but in Chicago it’s hard for the existing specialty distributors to keep up with the big guys. “Chicago is the worst market,” says an industry veteran who’s worked in both brewing and distribution and asked to remain anonymous. Salesmen for powerful distributors often control what goes where in liquor stores, and though it’s illegal for them to give bars beer or promotional goods–tap handles, glassware, neon signs–he says it’s common practice in Chicago. “The big guys all do it,” says a distributor rep who also asked not to be named. “The most widespread strategy is a free keg for a tap line, where the bar can ‘try it out.’” According to another distributor rep who asked to remain anonymous, all the swag has created unfair expectations for smaller operations, which simply can’t afford to keep up: “I’ve been lambasted by customers saying that we have to give away five free barrels to get a line.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Mass-market brands don’t actually own their distribution networks–that’d be a violation of the three-tier system–but they can effectively control them. Even in a declining market, there’s a lot of money to be made in distributing the best-known beer brands, and wholesalers want to keep their biggest clients happy. The identification is so complete that if a distributor handles Miller or Anheuser-Busch, people in the industry almost always refer to the company–even if it carries multiple unaffiliated brands–as the “Miller distributor” or the “A-B distributor.”
But it bothered Larry Bell.
Bell was worried that CBS would push only the beers that had the potential to sell widely, like Oberon and Bell’s Amber Ale, and neglect his more obscure varieties. He didn’t feel reassured when he met with CBS executives in August. “They asked what the history of the company was and I said, ‘Well, haven’t you looked at the Web site?’ Normally when you go see a distributor, they say, ‘We’ve gone out and tried the beers and we’re very excited about selling Oberon.’ There was none of that. Their answers to questions about carrying all the brands were extremely unenthusiastic.”
