Trade show: 66 booths featuring products, services
Pub Date: 10/1/2008
By Paul F. Vang
The trade show is an important part of Montana Tavern Association conventions, as attendees get a chance to meet many of the people who supply products to the tavern industry as well as find out about new products.
While I m a relative newcomer to the business side of the hospitality industry, here s a run-down of some of the people and products I thought were interesting.
I had several conversations with Ken Woodward, District Manager for Anheuser Busch, based in Missoula.
Ken is brand new to Montana. He's a native of New England and while going to college picked up a job at a brewery cleaning kettles. He stayed with the business and worked his way up the ranks and after a one-year stint at A-B's home office in St. Louis, transferred to Missoula as District Manager for A-B. (We all miss the late Dave Eggers, though, A-B rep for many years.)
Ken's had a busy few months in Montana as he's spent much of his time out of the office to travel around the state, getting to know his distributors and many of their retail outlets.
Commenting on the recent purchase of A-B by Belgian brewing giant, In-Bev, he says he doesn't expect any changes in A-B's operations. "We're not shutting down any of our regional breweries or wholesalers. The money we make will continue to stay in the U.S.," he says.
Woodward said that the Budweiser Clydesdale horses will keep their jobs, as well, in case you were worried.
Woodward notes that In-Bev previously had a working relationship with A-B, with A-B marketing some In-Bev brands such as Stella Artois, Beck's, etc.
Behind the takeover was the relatively weak U.S. dollar. Major stockholders stood to make big profits from the sale of their stock, so A-B really had no choice but to accept the In-Bev offer.
Erik Wilson of Data Northwest Corporation demonstrated a new wrinkle (to me) in Point of Sale (P.O.S.) equipment.
Point of Sale electronic equipment is, of course, nothing new. It has been around for years and is in wide use in bars and restaurants.
Still, when Erik demonstrated his company's handheld, wireless touch screen POS device it definitely had a "wow" factor for this lay observer of the tavern scene.
It's about the size of an Etch-a-Sketch toy, and a server can take it with them to tables where they can take orders and transmit them to the bartender or kitchen, enter changes, take a swipe of the customer's credit card and print out a receipt from a Bluetooth (wireless) portable printer. In fact, he said, a drive-in restaurant in Missoula is doing just that, equipping each server with one of these devices.
The unit comes with a spare battery pack that can be swapped out when one battery starts running low. When not in use, the unit can be put into a docking device which will also keep things at a full charge.
The device, in addition to the expected bar and restaurant options, also has a touch screen keyboard function so it can actually operate as a mini-laptop computer, though, alas, there is no option for the user to play solitaire on it during slow periods.
Money counting devices are tools making the jump from banks and other financial institutions to local retailers or anybody that takes in a high volume of currency. A machine that impressed me not only counts a stack of mixed denomination paper money, but will sort bills by denomination, separate bills that are upside down or facing the wrong way, and sort bills for banding together.
An emerging trend in the spirits industry, just as it has been in the beer business, is craft distillers. One of the newer, and closest to Montana, is Dry Fly Distilling, based in Spokane, Washington.
Why Dry Fly? The owners, Don Poffenroth, who is Dry Fly s distiller, and Kent Fleischmann are flyfishing enthusiasts and, in fact, came up with the business concept while on a flyfishing trip to Montana.
they've been in business for just a year, now, having marketed their first gins and vodkas in October 2007.
The gin has a fruity aroma to it, and Don says dried apples are part of his recipe. The vodka is produced from Washington winter wheat grown and harvested within 30 miles of Spokane. The vodka's aroma actually has a butterscotch overtone as well. In fact, both vodka and gin start out the same, with different botanicals added to produce the gin.
Don is also distilling whiskey, currently producing a single malt whiskey, a bourbon, and a wheat whiskey, a spirit that has not been made in the U.S. for over a hundred years. Currently, the whiskey production is going into barrels for aging, so it will be several years before release.
Dry Fly Distilling is the first distillery in Washington since 1918 when Prohibition closed down (legal) American distilling. They produced around 3,500 cases of gin and vodka in their first year of operation and plan a major expansion after building production to 5,000 cases, the capacity of the current facility.
Al Arvish, the computer expert who designed Montana s on-line gaming reporting system, was working the Gambling Control Division booth.
Al reports that he will be retiring from GCD at the end of 2008 and hopes that he will finally have some free time to go fishing, something that his job at GCD has definitely interfered with these last few years as the on-line reporting system was developed and implemented. Tight lines, Al.
Source: The Montana Tavern Times, October, 2008, published monthly by Continental Communications, 125 W. Granite St., Suite 102, Butte, MT 59701.