I think pay-to-play is so gray. It’s so blurry. Even for a distributor like Windy City to say, “We don’t pay to play.” I think they’re wrong. I think they do! I think they do it differently. You posted a photo of Matt Modica in somebody’s keg room changing couplers and maintaining their stuff. Shouldn’t that bar owner have to pay Dapper Tap or Steuver & Sons or whoever to do that maintenance work? And now you have a rep doing that for free. [Editor’s note: we inquired about this in a follow-up, and the coupler equipment in question is actually owned by Windy City, not the bar. While Phil’s specific example is inaccurate, his point is more broadly about the gray area of “service.”] If the letter of the law is distributors can’t provide something of value to the account, well, that’s what he’s doing. Now do I think he shouldn’t go down there and do that? Absolutely not. I absolutely think he should!

I think one of the best relationships we have here is with a specific distributor rep. It’s a relationship—he’s a Glunz rep—we’re literally fighting to maintain because [he's] one of the best sales reps. You ask anybody in the industry if they know John Lindemann—they love him. They’ll say he’s one of the best. We did an event with Marz Brewing, a tap takeover. One of our faucets went down, we needed a washer or something. He happened to be nearby, I texted him, and he came by and fixed the line for another brewery’s event that had nothing to do with him because he understands the relationship we have. Brands are fleeing Glunz, trying to make sure I still have orders from him and then Old Milwaukee—turns out he never legally had the right to sell it to us. So our biggest brand, our bestselling beer, all of a sudden I’m not supposed to order it from him.

So I’m arguing with Pabst right now on the corporate level to change whatever territories need changing so I can continue to order from him, or I’m just not going to buy it. Because I owe him that business, right? He’s been there for us so much that we need to be here for him. That’s the distributor-rep account relationship that is crucial.

I think even a house like Glunz, who brands are fleeing for a reason, they were in the dark ages up until recently, they get that. And I think Windy City gets that, and the other distributors are playing catch up and figuring out how to put the right people in the right places. There’s cutting a check or taking somebody to a suite at the Cubs game in order to secure certain tap lines. Then there’s certain levels of support and relationship-based stuff.



At the same time I think the opponents of pay-to-play, or the people who look at it as this hard-and-fast rule don't necessarily take into account the really thin margins that bars and restaurant have to live in. I don’t have much off-premise or retail experience, I couldn’t speak to their margins. But I know the razor-thin margins mean that if you want to expand your tap lines, you want to open a bar and build a walk-in cooler, and put 12 tap lines in because that’s what you think you need—that adds up. So if some distributor shows up and says, “Hey I’ve got a check for you if you buy half those tap lines from us,” it’s really hard to say no to that. I think there’s this idea that it’s these nefarious big distributors and breweries twisting their moustaches saying, “I’m going to dominate this world because I have the money to pay to play.” When really, if you boil it down to individual account, it’s more just finding ways—that couple extra bucks here and there—that really can give you a bit more runway. Start-up costs are crazy.