Craft Distribution Company | Delivering us tasty craft beer!
Hello friends in beer,
Apologies for the posting hiatus in the last month – it’s been a busy summer! We are happy to share some awesome news with you though regarding a new distributor who is putting roots down here in fabulous Knox-Vegas!
There has been a huge explosion of breweries across our fine country. Knoxville and east Tennessee has also received a nice sampling of the spoils with our own breweries opening up at a regular pace, several others on the horizon and new brands coming into our market. It is a great time to be a beer snob! That said, Tennessee – as much as we love her – still has a few challenges in regards to getting beer into the state – namely taxes but often too, it’s finding a partner in a distributor who can help you represent your brand. What’s a distributor? In short this is the entity that works between the breweries and retail outlets. They receive the beer from the breweries and get it to the retailers. They also perform a very important function for Uncle Sam – collecting taxes – perhaps we can dive into that in a future post.
We are fortunate in that we’ve got some great distributors here in K-town but with more breweries popping up and wanting to come into TN, it can become a little more difficult to ensure the right fit for both the distributor and the brewer. Some distributors represent a lot of brands. If you happen to be fortunate enough to have a dedicated rep in the area (Sweetwater and Highland are great examples), you’ve got someone who can go out and advocate along with the distributor which ensures tap handles, wicked-cool displays, pint nights and other activities that keep your name in front of us – the craft beer consumer. Not all breweries are at that point though, at least not yet, so they rely on their distributors to help them with these elements.
Enter Craft Distribution Company (CDC). CDC began as an idea one night while enjoying a few beverages at Suttree’s High Gravity Tavern where a question was posed regarding why we could get some beer and not others. The ensuing conversation sparked a fire for Kim Arrants who then made a decision; to become a distributor. With her love of stouts (barrel aged to be exact) fueling the passion, kids leaving the nest and a husband who practices business law, things began to take shape. These things, of course, take time. There’s paperwork, more paperwork and oh, yeah, paperwork. You’ve also got to find a place to keep the beer, determine how to pickup and deliver said beer, keep the beer cold and hire a team that is just as passionate as you are.
Well, all these boxes are checked and hopefully shortly after you read this post CDC will be delivering high quality craft beer throughout the area. Kim brought on Robert Gomez – who we all know from Barley’s and the Maryville Kroger Craft Beer Bar. She also has Matt Baker, formerly of Bounty Beverage, on her team as well. Do you know what’s awesome about that? These are craft beer people – like you and me – with a passion for and deep knowledge of the liquid. They will be awesome advocates in beer!
What beer are we talking about? Well, they are working on an impressive list. Those already with a thumbs up are North Coast Brewing Company, Tin Man Brewing Company (Damascene!), Thomas Creek Brewery, Duck-Rabbit Craft Brewery, Caldera Brewing, Lucky Bucket Brewing and Tallgrass Brewing Company. There are several others in the works that I think we’ll all be pretty excited to hear about. All of this – and more – will be handled out of their S. Middlebrook headquarters that currently has a 1250 square foot cooler ready to rock – with plenty of room to grow.
I’m pretty excited for these guys and for the beer they’ll be bringing us. Give ’em a like on Facebook and keep your eyes peeled, these guys are going to rock it out.
Cheers!