Indholdsfortegnelse for Leaders 2023 i Market Watch

Our Retailer of the Year, Bruce Dierking of Hazel’s Beverage World in Boulder, Colorado, was a lawyer by trade who later moved into the real estate game. After a shopping mall acquisition deal left him and his business partner with a shell of an asset that no one wanted to rent, the duo turned to beverage alcohol retail. Aided by his wife, Carleen, in creating the concept, Dierking opened a bright, airy, 35,000-square-foot store with a vast product selection and named it Hazel’s. Today, Hazel’s does $36 million in annual sales. And it all started with a wrong business turn. It’s a prime example of how bad things can create good things, and this was the turnaround story of a lifetime. It’s an object lesson in keeping your nerve and…

Many people aspire to taste rare Bourbons, but relatively few are afforded the opportunity, as bottles are in high demand and hard to find, and many are priced out of reach for the average consumer. Lawrence Boyce, CEO of Kentucky’s Liquor Barn, has a solution. “We’re drilling down and focusing on the experiential with our rare Bourbons,” he says. “These are products that consumers might not ever see in in a lifetime, or if they do see them, they’re $80 a pour in the on-premise,” he says. “We’re pouring these in our stores, and we have the lowest price in the market.” A dram of Pappy Van Winkle is priced at about $30 a 1-ounce pour during tasting sessions in Liquor Barn stores, Boyce adds. Liquor Barn isn’t a restaurant…

Stephan Abrams began his career at The Liquor Store in Jackson Hole, Wyoming as a cashier on the floor. Fresh off the casino scene along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and exhausted by the tiresome work, he took the job at The Liquor Store as a temporary retreat from his career in hospitality. “It was a fluke,” Abrams says. “But I stuck with it.” Today, nearly 25 years later, Abrams has worked his way up through the business and now co-owns The Liquor Store with his business partner, Rod Everett. A 5,400-square-foot bi-level space that houses nearly 3,000 SKUs, The Liquor Store business has been part of the Jackson Hole community since its founding in 1985, when Peter Cook, a 1995 MARKET WATCH LEADER, was at the helm of the…

For more than 70 years, Morrell & Co. has been focused on the customer experience. The venerable wine retailer, which today does the vast majority of its business in ultra-premium and prestige wine labels, has always maintained a holistic approach to selling wine, choosing to focus on a full-service attitude that helps its upscale clientele with all facets of the wine experience. While much of the Morrell & Co. business has changed since the company’s founding in 1947—including the location of the main store and main warehouse—its ethos remains the same: Represent the best of the best from the world’s key wine regions to fulfill all of the needs of its high-end wine buying clientele. From a marketing perspective, this means allowing the company’s sales team to develop personal relationships…

Since its inception in 1947, Trinchero Family Estates has introduced many successful and innovative wine brands. The company established itself as a true player in the wine category, going big in the 1980s with the Sutter Home White Zinfandel label, a move that ignited a white zinfandel craze in America. Since then, the company has grown and diversified by leaps and bounds, adding dozens of labels to its portfolio through both acquisitions and partnerships. Seaglass, a Central Coast brand first introduced in 2008, has been a particularly bright star for the company in recent years. Since its launch, Seaglass has seen consistent, nearly year-after-year growth. Although it was down 3.7% to 361,000 cases in 2020 due largely to the Covid-19 pandemic shaking many table wine brands that had a large…

Claudia Schubert, who today serves as president and COO of Diageo North America, can look back proudly at some impressive achievements in recent years. In the fiscal year through June 2023, Diageo’s sales in the region rose by 11% on a reported basis to $8.7 billion. That performance included some noteworthy sales gains, such as a 4% rise for Smirnoff and a 25% increase for the single malt Scotch portfolio. Prior to her role on the leadership team at Diageo North America, where she works with CEO Sally Grimes, Schubert had been serving as president of spirits for the U.S. and Canada since 2018, earning a reputation for fostering strong relationships with Diageo’s distributors and driving growth for the core brands. Born and raised in the East German city of…

BRUCE DIERKING ’23 Best Website Award ’17 Hazel’s Beverage World Boulder, Colorado CURTIS MANN ’22 Albertsons Cos. Boise, ID BOB SELBY ’21 Kappy’s Fine Wine & Spirits Everett, MA CHRISTIAN NAVARRO ’20 Best Website Award ’18 Wally’s Wine & Spirits Los Angeles, CA JACK FARRELL ’19 Best Website Award ’16 Community Service Award ’10 Haskell’s Minneapolis, MN CHRIS ADAMS ’18 Sherry-Lehmann Inc.  New York, NY STEW LEONARD JR. ’17 Best Merchandising Award ’15  Stew Leonard’s Wines & Spirits  Norwalk, CT ROGER GILDEHAUS ’16 Best Merchandising Award ’12  Macadoodles (Gild Corp.)  Pineville, MO RON JUNGE ’15 Best Website Award ’12  Brown Derby Stores Inc.  Springfield, MO GARY FISCH ’14 Best Advertising Award ’12 Best Merchandising Award ’05 Gary’s Wine & Marketplace (Shoppers Discount Wine & Spirits)  Wayne, NJ CHARLES SONNENBERG ’09…

As a specialist in real estate deal making, Jon Halper has focused on finding the right street corners in the right zip codes over the last nine years while building his Top Ten Liquors chain in the Twin Cities of Minnesota to 14 stores. “Location means a lot,” the Top Ten founder and CEO says. “We’ve been careful in making our choices for new store sites.” The quick growth and expansion have been nice, but the Minneapolis-based company’s revenue unexpectedly fell off modestly last year. That’s led to a reassessment of priorities. Today, the subject of real estate has been pushed into the background as Halper has turned his focus to technology. Halper’s stores weren’t reaching their full potential, and he decided a new computerized inventory management system was desperately…

The secret to the quick success of Liquor World Las Vegas, according to president and CEO Rony Shamoun, starts and ends with the support and sacrifice of family members. “My family has had a lot to do with the growth of this concept,” he says. “They’ve stayed by my side, and thanks to their vision, we’ve been able to take Liquor World from a single store to 12 locations.” Indeed, the emergence and growth of the 17-year-old retail chain is a worthy example of the classic American dream. From a 1,200-square-foot store leased just prior to the last economic recession, Liquor World has grown into the city’s third-largest beverage alcohol retailer, with revenue in excess of $50 million. For his accomplishments in building a retail powerhouse in one of the…

For many retailers, selling allocated Bourbons has become a headache. Should these high-demand items be reserved for a store’s biggest spenders and loyal patrons? Or should they be raffled off, which then creates a scenario where prized bottles make their way to the secondary market? Northern Indiana’s Belmont Beverage and Chalet Party Shoppes, owned by Tom Druley, have found a more altruistic solution—the stores’ annual allotment of bottles, including Pappy Van Winkle, are auctioned off, with all proceeds above suggested retail price earmarked for local charities. “The auctions fulfill my interest in giving back to the communities where we operate,” says Druley, a 1991 MARKET WATCH LEADER. He notes that local organizations can receive as much as $50,000 from the proceeds of a single auction. “That’s money they hadn’t budgeted…

JAMESON ORANGE Over the past 15 years, flavored whiskies have become a mainstay of beverage alcohol, rising from a small player in the overall whisk(e)y category to become an impactful segment of their own. Given this sector’s perennial popularity among consumers, there’s no shortage of new releases; while many fall to the wayside in the face of a glut of competition, there are others who stand out from the crowd. One such entrant that’s shown immense promise right out of the gate is Jameson Orange from Pernod Ricard USA by way of Irish Distillers. Flavored expressions from Irish whiskey labels are rare, as they’re more frequently seen in the American whiskey space. Even so, Jameson Orange ($25 a 750-ml.), which is Jameson’s flagship triple-distilled Irish whiskey blended with natural orange…

When Bruce Dierking first entered the drinks retail world, his goal was to revolutionize the modern liquor store and enhance the experience of everyone who shopped at his venue. That goal took shape in 2012 when Dierking, his wife, Carleen, and his business partner, Jim Loftus, opened Hazel’s Beverage World in Boulder, Colorado. “My wife had a big role in coming up with the concept for the store and the ways that it would differ from other liquor stores in the area,” Dierking says, noting that while there was already a liquor store in town, the shopping experience was historically poor, and the people of Boulder needed a safer, cleaner, and more elevated place to buy their alcohol. Hazel’s was made for ease of shopping, with bright lights, wide aisles,…

Todd Randall runs his off-premise stores with an on-premise mentality. As vice president of the five-unit Randall’s Wines and Spirits chain of beverage alcohol stores in Missouri and Illinois, Randall says standing out in a highly competitive retail landscape requires much more than a wide selection, conveniently stacked. “You have to run your retail location with on-premise thinking, with marketing, promotions, and ideas that create a great experience,” he says. “People come to your store for the experience. If people just want a bottle, they’re going to grab it when they’re buying their hot dogs, but if they actually want an experience they’re going to go to an independent. We want to make it fun, a destination. I want everyone to feel like it’s a candy store when they walk…

As an omnichannel retailer grounded in e-commerce, Foxtrot finds itself in an unusual position. “We can spread a wide net for delivery, but also use our brick-and-mortar locations for customer acquisition to bring them into the omnichannel,” says Dylan Melvin, beverage director at the 29-unit and growing multicity chain. Those abilities have helped to quickly establish Foxtrot as an innovator in the beverage alcohol space and a retailer with vast opportunity for growth. Foxtrot was established in 2013 by Mike LaVitola and Taylor Bloom as a deliveryonly c-store. The rapid success of the concept led to the opening of its first storefront in Chicago two years later, with a focus on artisan and locally produced food and drinks. By 2019, the concept had expanded into Dallas. Today, Foxtrot has grown…

The RTD category’s meteoric rise has created a wave of new and exciting pre-packaged products. After a few years of truly explosive growth for the category as a whole, High Noon Sun Sips, a spirits-based RTD offering from Spirit of Gallo, the spirits division of E. & J. Gallo Winery, has emerged at the very front of the pack. This is the first time the Spirits Brand of the Year award has been given to an RTD, but High Noon’s unprecedented debut and unparalleled growth stats stand as a testament to its merit. Gallo first rolled out High Noon in May 2019 with four flavors: watermelon, black cherry, grapefruit, and pineapple, all of which were 4.5% abv and boasted 100 calories a 12-ounce serving. Each retailed at $10 a 4-pack…

Health-consciousness has been a hot topic in wine for several years, and better-for-you wine brands saw significant growth last year, with the top players posting a collective 40% rise, according to Impact Databank. Leading the charge was Yellow Tail Pure Bright, a new series of Australian imports from Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits. The line, which touts its light alcohol content and low calories, debuted in 2021 with three flavors: Chardonnay (9.6% abv), Sauvignon Blanc (8.5% abv), and Pinot Grigio (8.5% abv). All three retail at $8 a 750-ml. and range from 80-85 calories a 5-ounce pour. The offshoot of the much larger Yellow Tail brand launched in 2021 as a way to compete in the “better-for-you” arena, addressing consumer demand for healthier alternatives to their usual beverage alcohol choices,…