Eli Gershkovitch Case Study

The following report is to introduce the brewery's profile and production process, which include brewing

Gordon Biersch has done very well in terms of year-on-year business growth and the strategic choices they made have served them well. Their emphasis on high quality, moderately priced food along with the choice of serving only in-house brewed premium German beer was instrumental in distinguishing them from their competition and making them successful. The location of their first restaurant was critical in attracting a large number of customers and helped them gain instant traction in an otherwise crowded market. Their target market was open to new concepts and hence the design of the restaurant was well received. The ambience of the restaurants provided a trendy and upscale dining experience which appealed to both younger and older generations. The Gordon Biersch team was customer focused and worked towards retaining their consumer by offering their regular customers with a beer stein with their names on it and a polished locker to keep the beer stein. This helped them develop brand loyalty amongst their customers. Their in house brewed German beer was flavorful and well-liked and the choice to sell only their in-house brewed beer helped them develop brand image and get their name out within the community and their target segment.

The next project was bottling Gordon Biersch signature beer and retailing it. This had three biggest challenges: this project was entirely Gordon’s baby and demanded time and attention; secondly the freshness of the bottled beer versus the freshly brewed was an issue for which they decided the beer would have a shelf life no longer than three months. Thirdly and the most exciting challenge was the head-to-head competition with other microbreweries and premium beers. Despite the tough competitive environment, Gordon Biersch aimed to achieve 11% of the market in three years (by 1996). This retail venture required huge investment, thus they decided to start small to prove to the investors that they could pull it off.

Originally located in Cranston, Rhode Island, the Narragansett Brewing Company was founded in 1888 by six business men of German origin. Two years later, the brewery was built, and George Wilhelm of Berlin Germany was appointed Brew master. During the next 20 years, Narragansett Brewery blossomed into the largest Brewery in New England. In 1914, they expanded their business further to include the largest and most hygienic bottling system in New England. They were granted a license by the U.S. Government that would allow them to continue to sell beer through Prohibition for “medicinal purposes” only. (Anderson, 1988)

From the first sip of his first Belgian beer, Gershkovitch became enamored with the idea of "tank to tap" brew and truly make something fantastic in the process. He immediately applied his legal knowledge, using both his researching skills that had become indispensable in his studies and his experience with liquor licenses for clients to kick off his work. Fighting a moratorium on liquor licenses in Gastown, Vancouver, the eventual success as a result of community dedication and legal know-how established Steamworks Brew Pub in 1995.

For many years, beer companies had faced many economic challenges. In economic sphere, the beer company has reached a maturity stage and the growth has been moderate. In this maturity stage it is very hard for any one company to takeover the market form its competitors because of the tremendous competition. Expanding into foreign market is also one of the concerns for Canadian companies in this era. But apart from this there are some facts, which reflect the bright side of the beer economy in the Canadian industry and those are

Strives to be the leader in micro brewing while maintaining the core values it started with and had employee buy in even before it went” 100 % employee owned in2013” (Gorski, 2013).

The Boston Beer Company, Inc., founded in 1984, is a leading brewer in United States, offering wide variety of high quality full-flavored, handcraftedbeers. It is distinctive due to the time-honored recipe of brewing and authentic, consistent quality of alcoholic beverages. Samuel Adams Boston Lager is the pride of BBC, regular handcrafted beer “stands for quality, inner self-worth, authenticity, and unique New England or Yankee toughness” ( Martin Roper, Chief Operating Officer). Unfortunately, the company experienced the failure of conquering light beer segment

The brewing industry can be characterized by Porter’s Five Forces framework. New entries to brewing have a relative ease in creating home micro-breweries, which is aided by

One of the Nation’s third-largest craft breweries, based out of Colorado, New Belgium Brewing Company, Inc. (the Company). The Company was founded in 1991, a privately held corporation. Its first operation started off in the basement of Jeff Lebesch (founder). The Company prides itself on its branding strategies “triple bottom line” and social responsibility which focuses on economic, social, and environmental factors. New Belgium’s marketing strategy links the Company’s viewpoint to the quality of its products. The Company continues to support the community, giving back & advocating positive change. However for continued success, New Belgium has to continually analysis its situation in the marketplace,

     In this paper I will be talking about the U.S. beer industry and in short an overview of the brewing industry worldwide. I will talk about the barriers to entry, economies of scale, government intervention, pricing, current market trends, product differentiation, and imports. The focus being mainly on the U.S. brewing industry oligopoly. The U.S. brewing industry has three major players: Anheuser-Busch, SAB Miller, and Coors/Molson. Anheuser-Busch is currently the largest brewer in the world, producing over 100 million barrels a year. Anheuser-Busch currently owns over 50% of the market in the United States, with Miller trailing behind at 20% and Coors at about 11% with the rest of the market occupied by imports and craft breweries. When analyzing any industry, how easy it is for newcomers to enter the market is a great importance. If there are high barriers to entry

The brewing industry is interesting to examine due to its relatively unique structure. Up until November 2015, the market was dominated by four main players, known informally as the “Big Four”. AB InBev was the largest, followed by SABMiller, Heineken and Carlsberg. In November 2015, however, ABInBev and SABMiller agreed a formal $107 billion takeover deal, combining the brewers into a company which industry experts claim would control around half of the industry’s profits (Mickle, 2015). As a result of the sheer size and complexity of the merger, it is anticipated that the deal will not be finalised until the second half of 2016 as ABInBev must negotiate with anti-trust regulators around the world with respect to their potential monopolistic position. As the deal is yet to be completed, this report will analyse ABInBev independent of SABMiller.

Hirotaro Higuchi (the protagonist), and CEO of Asahi Breweries, Ltd. must decide if he should increase its production and packaging capacity to meet the supply demands of their distributors, due to the company’s recent developments in the beer industry. Asahi Breweries has launched and seized a huge section of the dry beer market, ensuing from sales growth of 71.9% in comparison to the industry’s growth of 7.6%. A proposal has been made for, increasing their production capacity to 2,100,000 kiloliters to accommodate the recent shortages to their distributors. He has suggested an investment proposal plan of 230 billion yen within two years (1989 to 1990), to increase their brewing and packaging capacity by 30%. Hirotaro Higuchi must decide if he will welcome or dismiss this proposal. “Guiding change may be the ultimate test of a leader- no business survives over the long term if it can’t reinvent itself” (Kotter, 2007).

|What do you see as the key success factors for firms in the global beer industry? |

The following letter addresses your query regarding actions for annulment in the General Court (GC) as regards to the decision of the Commission to restrict the import of beer to only 10,000 litres per month. Immediately, it is important that the locus standi of a non – privileged applicant, the company has restricted access to courts. However, under Article 263 (4) in the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) there are three situations in which you are able to bring your action before a judicial review.