The 12x distribution play, step by step
Plus the seven-week holiday phone campaign, velocity math on your own book, and a free card-perks tool.
Jeremy Young5 min readToday's Alcohol Industry Insider Newsletter
What's inside:
🎯 Steal This Play: Don't open a new state until a chain says yes: Girl Beer's 12x distribution play
🎯 Steal This Play: Steal the seven-week phone campaign that catches the orders email misses
📊 Three Numbers: 53% of Winery Sales Ride on a Use Permit You Probably Haven't Read
📊 Three Numbers: 55% growth on 43% more doors: run the velocity math on your own book
🛠️ Try These Tools: Put an AI on your card perks and monthly bills before the next supply order
Don't open a new state until a chain says yes: Girl Beer's 12x distribution play
Girl Beer, a flavored light lager launched in fall 2024, grew its distributor count 12x in six months. Founder Ray Biebuyck walked through the mechanism on the Business of Drinks podcast (episode 139).
Setup: The brand self-distributed in Southern California for eight months. Biebuyck calls that a strategic mistake that set the business back eight months, caught in distribution bottlenecks and AB/Molson-Coors wholesaler consolidation.
The play: Arizona became the template. Full-state distribution through Hensley, an AB wholesaler, plus Kroger, Walmart, and Whole Foods mandates, chain liquor stores, Total Wine, and BevMo, all live at once. The standing rules: no new state without anchor chain commitments and a full-state wholesaler network, no launches on convenience stores alone, and no brand spend in a market until consumers can actually buy the product there. Before entering, Biebuyck confirms buy-in at three levels: category manager, sales rep, and executive. Shelf placement is deliberate too, at the end of the beer set where it transitions into seltzer and RTD rather than inside the lager block.
Result: Distributors up 12x in six months, a $5M seed round, 3,000 retail doors targeted by year end, and top 10% velocities in early Whole Foods accounts.
Adapt it: Smaller brewery or distillery, pick one state and one named chain, and hold the line on the rest. Winery, refuse a statewide agreement until specific accounts are committed in writing. Retail buyer, ask every new brand which chains already said yes before you give them shelf. Distributor rep, borrow the three-level buy-in question for your own supplier reviews.
Pull up your next planned market this week and check it against all three gates. If one is missing, delay the launch and the ad spend until it isn't.
You are a beverage market-entry strategist who has launched brands through AB and Molson-Coors wholesaler networks and large-format grocery chains. I am evaluating whether to open a new market and I want you to be the skeptic in the room.
My situation:
- Business type: [winery / brewery / distillery / RTD brand]
- Product and price: [e.g., 4.2% flavored light lager, $11.99 six-pack / $28 Albariño / $34 blanco tequila]
- Current markets and performance: [e.g., 4 states, 600 doors, 1.2 cases per store per week]
- Market I am considering: [state or metro]
- Wholesaler options there: [name, or "none identified yet"]
- Chain commitments so far: [e.g., verbal interest from one Kroger division, nothing signed]
- Cash I can put behind the launch: [dollar amount]
- My timeline: [e.g., live by Q3]
Produce four things:
1. A go/no-go gate sheet. For each gate (full-state wholesaler network, anchor chain commitments, buy-in confirmed at category manager, rep, and executive level, and product buyable before any brand spend), tell me pass, fail, or unknown based on what I gave you, and name the exact question I need answered to move an unknown to pass.
2. The sequencing plan. What has to be signed, shipped, or staffed in what order over the next 90 days, with the one step most brands skip.
3. The shelf argument. Write the three-sentence pitch I give a category manager explaining who my product brings into the category that they do not already have, using my price and style.
4. The no-go version. If I fail a gate, tell me what to do instead with the same money in the markets I already have.
Push back hard. If my chain commitments are verbal, say so and tell me to wait. Do not congratulate me on the idea. End with the single biggest reason this launch would stall and what I would do about it this month.
Steal the seven-week phone campaign that catches the orders email misses
Chatterbox Wine Marketing published its holiday DTC phone plan, and the mechanics are specific enough to run as written.
The setup. Holiday email open rates fall exactly when the stakes rise. Meanwhile the orders that matter most in December (multiple ship-to addresses, gift notes, magnums, verticals, special packaging) are the ones people abandon in a cart and happily finish with a human.
The play. Weeks 1 and 2: set a revenue goal first, because it sizes your list. Build an offer of five or six wines, one clear incentive, and one or two gift-ready options like a curated three-pack. Segment into club members, non-club buyers who ordered in the last two years, and lapsed buyers. Clean phone numbers, kill duplicates, flag anyone who asked not to be called. Get your carrier's holiday cutoff and build the calendar backwards from it.
Week 3: send a storytelling email (the vintage, the winemaker's holiday table), then the offer email, then start dialing within a day or two.
Weeks 4 to 6: highest-value customers first. Short voicemail, same-day email or text. Track calls, contacts reached, orders, and average order value daily. Ask every buyer: "Is there anyone on your list who'd love this?"
Week 7: call back every "maybe" and remind them of the cutoff.
The result. Chatterbox says an experienced agent makes up to 300 dials a day and most campaigns run two to three weeks. The firm does not publish conversion or revenue figures.
Adapt it. One person at 40 dials a day still covers 400 contacts in two weeks, so start with your top 200 by lifetime spend. A brewery sells allocation packs and barrel picks the same way, a distillery sells gift sets and engraved bottles, a retail shop works corporate gifting accounts, and a distributor rep calls on-premise buyers about holiday features. Larger teams add temp callers and split by segment.
Pick your shipping cutoff date, count back seven weeks, and put the two email sends on the calendar today. Every call note goes into your CRM, because that is what makes January's first campaign easy.
You are my DTC phone campaign manager for [winery / brewery / distillery / retail shop] in [region]. I am running a seven-week outbound calling campaign ending at my shipping cutoff of [DATE].
My situation:
- Revenue goal for the campaign: [$ amount]
- Callable customer list size: [number], broken into club/loyalty members [number], buyers in the last two years [number], lapsed buyers [number]
- Team available to call: [number of people, hours per week each]
- Products I want to feature: [list 5 or 6 SKUs with prices]
- Incentive I can afford: [e.g. free shipping on 6+, 15% off a three-pack, bonus library bottle]
- Gift-ready option: [e.g. curated three-pack at $X]
Produce:
1. A week-by-week calendar working backwards from my cutoff date, with the two email sends (storytelling, then offer) placed before calls start.
2. The math: how many dials, contacts, and orders at what average order value I need to hit my revenue goal, and whether my team size can cover the list in the time available. Tell me straight if the goal is unrealistic and what to cut.
3. Three short call scripts, one per segment, each under 90 seconds spoken. Include the gift add-on question and two objection responses ("I already have plenty of wine," "money is tight this year").
4. A 20-second voicemail script and the same-day follow-up text and email that go with it.
5. A daily tracking sheet: the five fields my callers log after every call.
Rules: no corporate filler, write the way a real person talks on the phone, and flag anything that would need compliance or do-not-call review in my state. If my list is too small for the goal, say so in the first line.
53% of Winery Sales Ride on a Use Permit You Probably Haven't Read
53% Tasting rooms and wine clubs account for 53% of the average winery's sales, according to Silicon Valley Bank's 2026 State of the U.S. Wine Industry report, cited by SevenFifty Daily. Over half your revenue sits on a land use approval, so pull your permit this week and confirm your visitor counts, event days, and food service match what is actually on file.
2% U.S. wine sales slipped 2% by volume in 2025 on excess supply and shifting taste preferences, per the same SevenFifty Daily reporting. Plan your 2027 budget on flat demand and win share through hospitality and club retention instead of waiting for the category to carry you.
26% The Prisoner grew 26% in Circana channels through the first half of 2026 after closing 2025 at 241,000 cases, per Impact Databank, Shane English reports in Shanken News Daily. A $45 red blend growing that fast in this market is an argument against discounting your way to volume.
55% growth on 43% more doors: run the velocity math on your own book
55% G4 Tequila's volume rose 55% in the first nine months of 2026 while points of distribution climbed 43% and dollar sales per point rose 7.7%, Daniel Marsteller reports in Shanken News Daily (October 23, 2026). Run that same split on your own book before you credit the marketing: growth per account is what keeps a buyer from cutting you.
11.2% Treasury Wine Estates sales fell 11.2% to A$2.56 billion for the fiscal year through June, but CEO Sam Fischer told investors the luxury portfolio has posted three straight quarters of U.S. depletions growth, per Shanken News Daily. The movement is above $10 a bottle, so put your sales attention on the tier that is actually depleting.
3.5% Convenience-channel beverage sales grew 3.5% in Q3 2026 against 2.9% in Q2, according to Goldman Sachs Equity Research's Beverage Bytes retailer survey reported by BevNET. If you have singles, cans, or RTDs, pitch c-store accounts while traffic is still climbing.
Pull your last nine months of depletions by account this week and sort them into new doors versus existing ones.
Work with Jeremy
Last year's playbook won't win this year's market.
Most beverage businesses are answering a down year with what worked in a good one: another discount, another email blast, the same trade calls. If you want a second set of eyes on yours, book a 30-minute strategy session with me. Bring the problem that's costing you the most right now, and we'll see how we could work together.
👉 Book a strategy session
30 minutes on Google Meet, Tuesday to Friday. Pick any open time on my calendar.
Put an AI on your card perks and monthly bills before the next supply order
Kudos, from Kudos Technologies, is a free browser extension and phone app that sits on top of the cards you already carry. It picks the card with the best return at checkout and autofills the details, auto-activates issuer offers from Amex, Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citi, tracks benefits before they expire, and its AI will call your providers to negotiate bills and cancel subscriptions you stopped using. Kudos says it works at more than 2 million stores and supports more than 3,000 credit cards. Version 3.0 launched on Product Hunt on October 12, 2026.
Who it's for: owner-operators and the one or two people who actually spend money. Tasting room and taproom managers ordering supplies online, DTC leads carrying a stack of monthly software charges, shop owners buying from suppliers on a rewards card, distributor reps living on hotel and airline cards with credits that quietly expire.
The first job: a 30-minute overhead audit. Install the extension, connect the card your recurring charges hit, and have Kudos AI list every benefit expiring this year, every subscription nobody has opened in 90 days, and every bill it thinks it can renegotiate (cell, internet, streaming for the tasting room). One review on the Kudos site, from Marcus T. on June 3, 2026, says the AI got a cellphone bill from $420 to $315 a month with no plan changes.
Cost: the extension is free and the home page says "Get started for free." The pages read on October 12, 2026 do not list dollar prices for the premium or lifetime tiers that reviewers mention, so check current US pricing on joinkudos.com before you pay for anything.
Setup, from the Kudos support page: install the extension, click the puzzle icon in your browser toolbar, pin Kudos, then add the mobile app if you want in-store card suggestions. Both sync.
The catch: this is a consumer finance product, not accounting. The headline figures ($750 a year in offers, $3,000 in missed benefits) are the company's own marketing, and the Making Sense of Cents review by Michelle Schroeder-Gardner that repeats the $750 figure is a disclosed sponsored partnership. The pages read do not say whether business cards are supported, and it will not touch the bigger line items: freight, distributor terms, or merchant processing. Treat it as found money on the small stuff.
This week, connect one card and ask it for everything expiring before December 31. Hand that list to whoever pays your bills, and put a calendar reminder to rerun it the first week of every quarter.
From the Editor:
I am always open to consulting, implementation, or brainstorming sessions. Just respond to this email, and I will get back to you shortly.
Alcohol Industry Insider Newsletter: the three-times-a-week growth newsletter for wine, beer, and spirits businesses that need smarter marketing, better sales, practical AI tools, and clear ideas they can implement now.
By Jeremy Young: serial entrepreneur, growth marketer, wine critic, and beverage industry insider.
Respond to this email with questions, ideas, or opportunities, and I will get back to you shortly!
Until next time,
Jeremy
Share This Newsletter
If you found this content useful, please share it with your colleagues and friends…
Your personal link (every colleague who subscribes through it counts toward your rewards):
👉 https://alcoholindustryinsider.com/subscribe
Every past issue, the free apps, the Prompt Library, and the AI Tools pages are on the website:
👉 alcoholindustryinsider.com
Get the next one in your inbox.
Free, mondays, wednesdays, and fridays. Five minutes to read.
Work with Jeremy
Reading the plays is the easy part.
Changing what your team does on Monday morning is harder. Book a 30-minute strategy session with me, and we'll work out what to change first and how we could work together.
30 minutes on Google Meet