Brewing up business: retailers are utilizing several strategies to help spur sales of beer: in-store tastings, varied use of POS materials, beer-matching dinners and barbecues, special staff training and much more.

It's late morning on a recent Saturday and at the Highland Park, IL, store of Sam's Wine & Spirits the parking lot is filled and inside the cavernous store there's a carnival-like air with samplings going on in just about every aisle. Just past the front doors, a rep is pouring samples of New Belgian Brewing Co.'s Fat Tire Amber Ale. Behind him are cases of the beer stacked high and topped by the craft brewery's trademark Cruiser bicycle in bright red, which is being raffled off.

"That's the type of marketing the little guys are doing to draw attention," said Adam Wachendorf, director of operations, for the three-store, Chicago-based chain.

Scenes like this particular Saturday morning are not unusual at Sam's. "We do a lot of that," he said. "We definitely fill up our store with tastings."

Sampling opportunities, such as these at Sam's, are among the most potent techniques that beer retailers now use to drive sales at their outlets and to keep competitors at bay. Besides in-store tastings, savvy retailers across the country are hosting meet-the-brewer events and beer festivals, undertaking staff education sessions, and doing consumer beer dinners, all in an effort to ring up bigger sales.

"I've got to do this to compete with every gas station and Costco," said Stuart Haimes, owner of Shoreline Beverage in Huntington, NY.

Major beer marketers, too, are doing all they can to boost sales this summer and fall, with new advertising, new packaging that offers more convenience, new point-of-sale displays and new tie-ins to professional sporting events. What's more, at a time when sales of mainstream domestic lagers are stagnating, some of the mass-market brewers are introducing higher margin seasonal, specialty and regional beers.

Sampling Sparks Sales

On the local level, consumer sampling has proved to be a sure-fire tool. Tasting events, retailers have found, not only bring in customers, if promoted in advance, bur also spark new sales.

At Liquor Mart in Boulder, CO, beer buyer Tiffany Lough conducts in-store tastings of four products at a time. "People seem to really appreciate it," she said.

In Elkton, MD, just off Interstate 95 between New York City and Washington, DC, Robert Murray, an owner of State Line Liquors, also conducts regular evening tastings. These sampling opportunities have become so popular that he has boosted the number he offers from once a month to once a week. Formal tastings may attract 50 customers on an evening, double that if Belgian beers are on the table, he says, adding that he typically builds a sale around the products being sampled. "You're trying to build loyalty," he explained.

Sales of ordinarily slow moving beers may jump from a couple of cases a week to as many as 10 after a sampling session. "They're creating brand awareness," said Sam's Wachendorf.

At Spec's Fine Wines, Liquors and Foods warehouse store in downtown Houston, TX, beer buyer Oscar Sicola said tastings spark a 20 to 30 percent increase in the item being tasted. For lesser known beers--what Sicola calls the hot dollar items--that may be just two or three cases.

Even so, John Alberhasky, an owner and the self-designated beer guy at John's Grocery in Iowa City, IA, is a big believer in sampling. "Once you give somebody a taste, they say, 'Oh my god, that's so good.' It's a very small investment with a big return."

Some retailers have taken sampling to an even higher level. Richard Scholz, owner of Bierkraft, a specialty store in Brooklyn, NY, offers just 25 seats to his weekly evening pairing of beers and cheese or chocolate. "We figured it would pull people into the store when it was quiet at night. Now, it's become a big thing," he noted, adding that these events pay off at the cash register. "It's always a good evening after the tastings." Often, he says, there's a brewery owner or brewer speaking during the tasting. Among the recent speakers was Anne Sprecher of Wisconsin's Sprecher Brewing Co.

Building More Business

Sampling isn't the only in-store activity beer retailers are utilizing to bring in customers and boost their bottom lines.

Liquor Mart in Boulder does occasional barbeques in its parking lot on Friday afternoons--a recent one featured Erdinger. John's Grocery hosts two area beer festivals and Sam's hosts an annual beer night under a tent in the parking lot outside its downtown Chicago store. At Sam's Quik Check, a convenience store near Duke University in Durham, NC, that has become a regional beer destination through word-of-mouth, owner John Boy hosts a Guitar Hero X-Box video game tournament with prizes contributed by local beer wholesalers.

There's more. Some of the bigger beer sellers, like Liquor Mart, also conduct beer dinners at nearby fine-dining establishments, matching brews to different cuisines and courses. Shoreline Beverage conducts a once-a-month meet-the-brewer evening. John's Grocery's Alberhasky leads an annual customer tour of breweries in the Czech Republic and then builds an in-store display with photos and souvenirs among the Czech beers he has stacked in the front of the store. He also sells 450 different kinds of beer glassware for which he had to build an addition.

Retail staff education also is growing in popularity with store owners. The staff at Liquor Mart spends its Sundays off visiting local breweries. At John's Grocery, which stocks almost 2,500 brews, Alberhasky regularly holds staff tastings. "I try to get my staff as excited about the beers as I am," he said. "You can tell when they really like something. It just absolutely flies out of there." Bierkraft's Scholz and his staff taste and discuss beer each evening so that they can hand-sell beers to customers. "We sell beer like a fine wine shop," said Scholz.

Bierkraft, Shoreline, State Line and others, where it is allowed, have added tap beer selections to augment the bottled brews they sell. The stores fill gallon screw cap growlers with brews that ordinarily are only found on draft at on-premise establishments.

Some retailers still rely heavily on newspaper advertising, but others augment it with a presence on the Internet. The web home page of Liquor Mart in Boulder, for example, recently featured coupon specials, discounts on mix-and-match cases and on 12-packs of Budweiser, Miller and Coors products. The store also offers a beer club, providing members a different selection of six packs of "high-end beers," generally new or limited release products. The brews, accompanied by tasting notes, are picked up at the store. State Line Liquors offers a wealth of beer information on its home page. Email lists also are important to let customers know about new products, sales and events. John's has a database of 4,000 names, while Bierkraft has about 2,000.

Using Supplier POS 

Traditional point-of-sale materials also remain important to beer retailers.

"I use them when I get them," said Boy of Sam's Quik Shop, who earlier this year had a Cinco de Mayo beach display.

At Liquor Mart, Budweiser brought in a "Cruizin Cooler," a motorized scooter with a built-in cooler. "That just adds to the look of the store and makes it fun for customers," offered Lough.

Sicola of Spec's said he has lots of national beer POS materials in his stores, bur noted, "We don't want to clutter the store."

Big case displays help too. "Bud, Miller, Coors. They're stacked and stacked and stacked," said State Line's Murray. "It sells."

At Spec's heavy promotion is a year-round necessity, said Sicola, noting that he's done Major League Baseball promotions with Budweiser, March Madness with Samuel Adams and Gold Cup Soccer with Miller.

Sports tie-ins remain of prime importance to brewers. During the fall, Anheuser-Busch will focus on the sports it sponsors, said Bud Light Brand Director Rick Leininger. The St. Louis-based brewer will be tying in to NFL Football with team specific packaging. Budweiser also will be a presenting sponsor of Major League Baseball's Divisional Series, which shifts to Turner Sports and the St. Louis-based brewer will gain commercial time during Turner's broadcasts of the NCLS. Soccer, too, is gaining importance with Anheuser Busch tying into the FIFA World Cup with its green screen national team photo opportunities. Miller Brewing, meanwhile, has become a sponsor of Gold Cup Soccer.

The emphasis in advertising for Bud Light, meanwhile, remains its "Flippin' Cold" campaign, featuring upside down bottles, said Leininger. Print, broadcast, Internet and out-door ads are integrated around this theme. "We're touting Bud Light as cold and refreshing," he said. "It's a lot of fun."

A-B also is taking a softer sell, marketing through beer retailers a DVD version of the film "American Brew," produced and directed by award-winning film-maker Roger Sherman. It's part of the company's industry development "Here's to Beer" campaign.

Packaging, Marketing Initiatives

Meanwhile, Coors is focusing on the cold, particularly its "cold activated" bottles. "Guys are fascinated with finding new and innovative ways to enjoy cold beer," said spokesperson Jenny Volanakis. "Until now, no beer brand has offered them a way of knowing when their beer is the ultimate temperature and ready to drink." Making use of thermochromatic ink on its bottle labels, the mountains on the label will turn blue when the beer has been sufficiently chilled. The bottle tested extremely high with consumers, Volanakis said, noting that the new bottle swill be supported by focused advertising and POS materials. There will also be off-premise Summer Cold Front Parties in major cities through the end of the summer, which feature guerrilla marketing snow patrol teams giving away ski trips to Vail.

Coors also has introduced a new, albeit retro look, for its cans. The look is reminiscent of the country's first aluminum beer can introduced by Coors in 1949. Many of the original design elements, including griffins and the Rocky Mountains, are part of the new design. Meanwhile, Molson brands have been repackaged to mirror packaging in Canada. The move is aimed at dispelling the notion that the U.S. product is different from that north of the border.

As for Coors Light ads, they now feature a new tagline, "The World's Most Refreshing Beer," a nod to the brand's successful positioning as the beer as cold and refreshing as the Rocky Mountains. The campaign includes a series of ads featuring unusual record holders, including the World's Fastest Man, The Strongest Man in the World and the World's Fastest Eater.

Newly designed cans are part of the market focus for Crown Import's Corona Extra brand. The look of the new blue cans is designed to make them stand out on retail shelves. "The convenience of a can is sure to be a hit with consumers," said Timm Amundson, vice president of marketing for Corona Extra and Corona Light at Crown.

Crown, meanwhile, is cross marketing Tsingtao Beer with a new off-premise campaign that focuses on food pairing and is designed to leverage cross merchandizing opportunities for grocer's produce and seafood departments. The importer also is offering a bamboo steamer and recipe set to go with the Chinese beer import.

New marketing efforts are under way at Milwaukee-based Miller Brewing Co., which recently announced plans to create new market models in Texas and Florida/Georgia markets. The brewer plans to utilize local sales and marketing strategies and then expand the model to additional markets. Miller, which recently retained new ad agencies for both its Miller Lite and High Life brands, is continuing to air its "Take Back the High Life" TV spots. I be campaign, which positions Miller High Life as common sense in a bottle, extends to radio spots, billboards and in-store displays. The current Miler Lite "Trophies" ads compare Lite's taste and carbohydrate stats with Bud Light and other beverages. That message will be complemented with the distribution of blue and white shrink-wrapped Miller Lite bottles hitting retail this summer. Sweepstakes dangling a Jeep giveaway and trips to Atlantic City also are on tap.

It's not all about packaging or adverting. The big brewers also are busy introducing new products.

Miller has rolled out Miller Chill, a Mexican style Chelada beer with salt and lime, and a new Leinenkugel seasonal, Sunset Wheat, which reviewers have likened to Blue Moon Belgian-style Wheat Beer from Coors.

Anheuser-Busch has launched new Michelob branded specialty brews, including a line of Ultra Fruit infused beers, as well as such seasonal specialty beers as Beach Bum Blonde Ale. It also has begun producing regional specialty brands, among them Skip Jack Amber for the Southeast and Tarpon Spoon Bohemian Pilsner in Florida.

Will all these efforts lift sales in the months ahead? They may indeed. But the job of marketing beer, said Murray of State Line Liquors, "is getting harder and harder."