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After
173 years, Yuengling Traditional Lager makes a Pennsylvania
brewer an overnight sensation
OCTOBER
15, 2002
Hearth
and heritage
By ANDREA
FOOTE
As the
oldest brewer in the US, Yuengling doesn't only have longevity
to its credit; the brewer's flagship brand Yuengling Traditional
Lager has become one of the hottest "new" brands
in the portfolios of beer wholesalers up and down the Eastern
Seaboard. In the last decade the brewer has grown from 100,000
barrels to more than 1 million and so far this year they
are trending 19.5 percent ahead of 2001.
How
does a brand that got its start when Andrew Jackson was
in the White House suddenly get hot? Well, like so many
"overnight sensations," Yuengling is anything
but. "We are getting ready for our 175th anniversary,"
says Yuengling executive vice president Dave Casinelli.
"Right now we are probably going through the best times
in 173 years, but we have weathered a lot of storms. You
go back 15 or 20 years ago we were like a lot of other regionals
facing the onslaught of national brands with a lot of pressures
to stay alive and a local economy that was not doing well."
So what
makes Yuengling different? Casinelli starts out with the
"determination and passion" that has kept five
generations of Yuenglings brewing through thick and thin.
"[Yuengling president] Dick Yuengling is fifth-generation,"
Casinelli says. "When he took over in 1985, he saw
a lot of regional breweries withering on the vine and he
foresaw the need to change." And, says Casinelli, he
had the Yuengling determination and passion to do just that.
One
of the first moves was the creation of amber-colored Yuengling
Traditional Lager in 1988, the brand that has since become
the company's flagship, accounting for more than half of
its sales volumes and growing. Traditional Lager, notes
Casinelli, is charting double-digit growth while the category
it competes in, full-calorie domestic beer, is in decline.
The
next step was redefining regional. Yuengling made it a priority
to expand beyond its home county, where the company enjoys
a 50-percent market share, but where the economics could
not sustain long-term growth.
The
first big metro market the brewer tackled was Philadelphia,
only 90 miles from the brewer's Pottsville, PA base. The
rest of Pennsylvania followed, as, Casinelli recounts, the
brewer "revisited our entire distribution system, developed
some new product and repackaged and repositioned ourselves."
Draught
and the on-premise sampling that comes with it was a big
part of Yuengling's growth strategy and remains a major
driver for Yuengling today. "Your average brewer's
business is 8- to 10-percent draught. We are about 42-percent
draught," says Casinelli.
Those
efforts are paying off in spades for Yuengling. The company
has grown by more than 400 percent over the last eight years
and has expanded its distribution to include parts of Florida,
the Carolinas, Maryland and New York. After an early '90s
growth spurt that exceeded its capacity, the company built
a new brewery down the street from its historic Pottsville
facility and also purchased the Stroh brewery in Tampa to
add the capacity it needed to meet the demands of its core
market and leave room for expansion. "Our thinking,"
says Casinelli," is always motivated by the long term."
BW
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