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Show Lots of Brew Consumed - Distributors Duel In Park City Beer Barrel! Bout With the battle currently going to the brewery that made Lou Rawls famous9 ' ! ' " .m. More Bud is unloaded for The Alamo Black Pearl, Janeaux's, the Alamo, The Club and the Cattle Co. Midgley says part of the Bud dominance has been a willingness to split," allowing allow-ing Bud to be on tap alongside a competing brand likeCoors. "Coors doesn't like to split," he said. Miller refused to comment on how Bud is doing in Park City, but a Miller employee, who asked not to be named, said Miller won't . discount its beer to anyone, even in quantity, and that has hurt sales. The employee says that has always been Miller policy. Tuffy Marks, who owns M & M Distributing, says his company has always sold kegs at one price for all and is not interested in getting into a beer war with anyone. "We just treat all of our people the same," he said. That also being the posture of Miller, it could be aggressive Bud salesmanship salesman-ship will make the red letters a very familiar sight in town for some time. But that doesn't mean Coors, or Miller, is dead. One account that Bud has been unsuccessful in landing is Deer Valley, which has Miller and Coors on tap, but only Bud in bottles. Marks also said Coors can be found in the Corner Store and several other taverns in Park City. And Park West could go to Miller, because Miller products pro-ducts are featured at The Ritz Cafe, and owner Wolfgang Wolf-gang Sonntag has assumed control of Park West's food services So, what is the bottom line? Aside from the obvious entertainment of watching the beer marketing competition, compe-tition, the lower drinking prices featured asa result ot acute tavern competition, sports sponsorships and other spinoffs, the beer battle means money in the bank for Park Citv. One final assessment is that Park City, largely due to agressive retail schemes like the Alamo four-for-one promotion, pro-motion, is becoming a cheaper place to drink beer than Salt Lake City. That may or may not go over big with locals when the word filters into the lowland valleys and they find their favorite watering holes jammed with visitors who could drink supplies dry in a single night. "That," said one Alamo patron, "could be enough to make you cry." This Bud's for you. All four of them. You may have seen the announcement: four glasses of draft Budweiser at Park City's Alamo for the price of one. Even by down-valley standards, beer at that price (a buck for four 8-ounce glasses) is a budget buy. And the four-for-one offer isn't he only thing to tell you something's up beer-wise in Park City. What's up are Budweiser sales in a blitz that has seen Park City swing from a Coors stronghold to become a Bud -Miller-Coors combat zone, with the battle currently current-ly going to the brewery that made Lou Rawls famous. Yes, it's a beer war, and the players are ready to admit (if you promise most of them you won't quote them) that Bud is winning in Park City, whicn is, by an standards, the most beer-drinking town of its size in Utah. The most recent coup for Big Four Distributing Co.; your local Bud outlet, was the signing of a contract with Ogden Food Services, which handles the Park City Resort food facilities including the Rusty Nail Saloon. The account was heavily sought by Miller and Coors. It's the second straight season for Bud at the resort. Two years ago, Coors was sold through M&M Distributing Distri-buting of Salt Lake City. The beer barons have divided Utah as a whole in a rather inequitable fashion, if you are Coors or Miller. That's because, according to August wholesale beer delivery deli-very figures supplied by the Utah Beer Wholesalers Association, Bud and Mich-elob Mich-elob products were accounting account-ing for 52 percent of the market to Coors' 24 percent and Miller's 8.9 percent, third-place share. The remaining beer sales for the state are taken up by what brewery industry sources call "off brands" such asHamms, Lone Star and Olympia. The Park City battle is more apparent as each tavern along the way adds those neon beer signs to the window. You know the ones: - they glare at you in the late evening hours in shades of red and pale blue. The beer signs are part of the marketing strategy. Buy a certain brand and you'll be likely to receive any number of "point of sale" promotional promotion-al tools. Bud clocks, Miller clocks, Coors scenery shots complete with backlighting. The incentives don't end there. " In fact, there is a lot of finger pointing going on in . the Park City beer brawl. I Sources up and down Mam i Street and inside competing i - anymore. Midgley estimated that there are currently 52 possible possi-ble beer-selling accounts in town. Of those, he said at least one Bud or Michelob product is sold in 51 locations. In fact, the men said so much Anheuser-Busch products pro-ducts are consumed in Park City, that Big Four trucks have to make deliveries five days a week. By the height of the ski season, Midgley estimated as many as 400 kegs of Bud products a week will be delivered to Park City and more than 1,500 cases of bottles and cans. Miller, which is distributed here by brewery-owned Miller Brands of Salt Lake City, has not made a dent in the draft trade Bud has suddenly come to enjoy. Currently, some Busch product pro-duct is being pumped in the Holiday Inn, Park City Resort, Utah Coal and Lumber, the newly opened Ore House, which also pumps Coors and Miller, The beer companies say Bud products are being sold at a very low price. That, according to one Coors source, is driving out the competition. Inside Miller, the charge is Budweiser is discounting quantity keg orders and. is adding free kegs for large orders to sweeten the deal. That is true, according to one well-known Park City tavern manager. Mark Stemler of the Alamo, which is selling the four-for-one drafts, say; Big Four offers a quantity discount on kegs to all its customers. Buy 30 barrels, get four free. That works out to $23.75 a keg, $3.25 less than a keg of Coors. Stemler said it's not just price that makes Bud an attractive deal. "They service their customers, custom-ers, it's the largest selling beer in the world and people want Bud. If we earned something else on tap in The Club, for example, we would still have to have Bud in bottles. This way, we only have to carry Bud," he said. Big Four Manager and part owner John Alleman and co-worker Bob Midgley say it's great to have the top-selling brand in Park City, but hasten to add they and the employees of the Provchbased wholesaler had to work hard to become number one. They say driver Tom Olinghouse and merchandiser mer-chandiser Dave Bailey are in Park City almost every day. Alleman says Coors used to rule Park City, but not |
