Bringing the beer with Budweiser of Asheville: WNC knocks down 15,000 cases of beer a day

When you crack that first ice cold Bud Light or Green Man ESB for the Super Bowl, pause for a second and mentally thank Kyle Rodman.

After all, he took a good-sized hike to deliver your beer to the store.

"I walk on average 20 miles a day," said Rodman, a 32-year-old delivery driver for Budweiser of Asheville, the largest beer distributor in the mountains. "The most I've ever done is 32 miles."

Rodman, who's been with Fletcher-based Budweiser of Asheville for two and a half years, has 52 stores on his route, which is mostly in East Asheville and Buncombe.

He's one of 25 drivers and 25 sales reps at Budweiser who team up to sell and deliver an astounding 15,000 cases of beer a day — that's right, per day — in the 12 westernmost counties of our mountains. For Super Bowl weekend, consumption jumps by 20-25 percent.

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On Wednesday, I tagged along with Rodman and Anthony Davis, an off-premises team leader, as they wrangled their daily mission of keeping the mountains' beer level at equilibrium. I wasn't even slinging cases of beer — and I definitely did not start at 5 a.m. like the drivers do — and I was wiped out by 3 p.m.

I started around 7:45 a.m., getting a run-down on the business from sales director Chad Wood and his dad, Hubie Wood, who moved to Asheville from Columbia, South Carolina in 1979 to work as general manager of Budweiser of Asheville. In 1985, Hubie Wood got the chance to buy the distributorship, with a loan and buy-back deal from Anheuser-Busch, and it's still family owned.

Wood, 75, has seen plenty of change in a half century in the business.

"The biggest thing is the proliferation of brands and packaging," Hubie Wood said. "When I first got into beer business all we had was six pack cans. Then bottles came on later."

Initially, the elder Wood resisted delivering the locally made craft beers, because he had so much loyalty to Anheuser-Busch and thought the craft guys could hurt the big company's bottom line. 

"Chad came up in my office one day and said, 'You've got to forget that. We've got to get with the program,'" Hubie Wood recalled. "We started embracing all these guys because, quite frankly, that's where all the action is."

Sitting in a conference room in their 110,000-square-foot facility on Rutledge Road in Fletcher, the Woods clearly know the business from the inside out. The place is a well-oiled machine now, with 110 employees total, and a second warehouse in Sylva.

Every day, Monday-Friday, 25 trucks, either side-loaders with the sliding vertical doors or end-loading tractor-trailers that deliver to grocery stores, ply the mountain roads to deliver to 1,100 locations. Chad Wood didn't want to divulge exactly how many cases they deliver every day, but Budweiser of Asheville has more than 60 percent market share in those 12 counties, so he did some extrapolating.

The pallet loads of beer, in kegs and cases, that reach to the ceiling in the cavernous warehouse, also give a pretty solid hint. In short, we drink a lot of beer around here.

"I think there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 15,000 cases of beer consumed per day in those 12 counties," Wood said. "That’s on average. We’ve always figured 65 percent of the beer is consumed between Thursday evening and Sunday afternoon, with Friday and Saturday being your biggest day."

The Super Bowl is a high-sales weekend, with sales spiking by about 20-25 percent compared to a normal winter weekend, Chad Wood said, but it's nothing compared to July 4, or the summer in general. June, July and August are your beer drinking months.

Father and son emphasize that this is a team operation, with warehouse workers loading thousands of cases of beer onto the fleet of trucks every weekday between about 3 p.m. and midnight, with an army of drivers and sales reps working hand in glove to gauge the demand and deliver the beers. Chad and Hubie Wood spend a fair amount of time in the office now, but they know the streets, too, as everybody starts out doing the hard labor at Budweiser of Asheville.

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"We know it because we’ve done it," said Chad Wood, 47. "Back (when I started), we'd sell and deliver at the same time, handwriting tickets."

The technology has changed — sales reps use handheld computers with rolling inventory histories to make sure stocks remain ample, and delivery drivers print out delivery tickets from mobile computers and printers in their big rigs. But as far as delivering the beer, stocking the shelves, putting up the displays and keeping customers happy, "none of that has changed," Chad Wood said.

Keeping customers happy is where Rodman and Davis, the team leader, come in.

Rodman, a good-natured, crazy-fit guy who worked for a relative's tree cutting business for seven years before joining Budweiser, has one speed: high. Even when he was pushing a hand-truck with six cases of beer weighing close to 200 pounds, I couldn't stay with him.

"I tried to slow down some for you to keep up," Rodman said with a laugh as he shifted his way through the truck's 10 gears. "When you first start doing this job, it wears you out."

We hit the M&J Food Store on Swannanoa River Road, where Rodman delivered a mere 36 cases of Bud products and craft beer. Budweiser of Asheville delivers the full gamut of Anheuser-Busch products, but it also brings 13 different locally made craft beers and ciders.

Next we headed to Target in East Asheville, where Rodman grabbed a flatbed cart from the stockroom and started loading 69 cases of mostly craft beer.

Now, I might do this in say, 10 separate trips, but Rodman went for one. Figuring conservatively, we estimated the cart carried about 2,000 pounds.

He got a running start for the inclined ramp behind the stores and muscled the cart and chest-high load of suds to the back door. Rodman does not need CrossFit to stay in shape.

After checking it in with Target's inventory manager, Rodman wheeled the cart into the store. I didn't realize this, but the drivers are also responsible for stocking all the shelves, rotating stock and making sure it all looks good.

It took Rodman about an hour to place it all just right. He wasn't even breathing hard, although his cap developed a telltale perspiration stain.

"This stuff ain't light, that's for sure," he said with a smile.

He knocked out a quick delivery to Walgreen's on Tunnel Road, 12 cases, another of his 20 stops. 

At this point, Davis swung by to pick me up, and we drove to Madison County to see sales and deliveries there, including to an Ingles. While Asheville residents think the world revolves around craft brews, it's a Budweiser country past the city limits. Actually, more like Busch country.

"Overall, about 90 percent of our sales are of Anheuser-Busch products — and Busch Light and Busch are at the top in the rural areas," Davis said.

Davis, a 20-year veteran of Budweiser who delivered for 10 years before switching to sales, drives one of those little white Ford Focus hatchbacks you see on the road all the time. Budweiser of Asheville owns about 30 of them.

Davis, too, is a bundle of energy as he zips from store to store to help drivers and sales reps. His phone is constantly ringing, and I'm not going to lie — it was one of the highlights of the day.

When professional wrestler Ric Flair starts bellowing, "You're talking to the Rolex wearing, diamond ring wearing..." you know Davis has an incoming call. That's his ring tone.

A Weaverville native, Davis clearly loves his job, and you can tell he's paid his dues, which makes him respect the drivers and sales reps even more.

Davis related two weather anecdotes that really sum up the extremes. In winter, he said, nothing is worse than going to yank up the sliding doors on a side loader, then realizing too late the door is still locked, right as your fingertips launch off the cold steel.

In the summer, a nice cool rain might feel OK when you're outside, but when you're in the beer cooler for 20 minutes arranging stock, with fans blowing that 34 degree icy breeze right through your wet clothes, you think you'll never feel warm again.

"A lot of people don't realize what it takes to do this job," said Davis.

At the Country Hub store in Mars Hill, sales team member Chris Dozier spent about 15 minutes in the cooler, checking packages and scrolling through the computer. He calculates the store's needs, then put in the order for the delivery guy.

"You're pretty much wearing a jacket all year long," Dozier said.

The store goes through 30-40 cases of Busch Light a week, part of a total of 150-200 cases. The beer guys do the ordering, visiting twice a week, so the store manager doesn't have to.

"We kind of know what's moving, because we know the country," Dozier said.

In an interesting side note, all beer sales are cash on delivery, so the stores have to cut a check or make an electronic debit upon delivery.

Across the street, the Ingles supermarket order makes the convenience store look like small potatoes. Tractor-trailer driver Kris Surrett brought in two pallet loads and is arranging them in the beer cooler. He delivers three days a week, two or three pallets each day, and a pallet can hold 98 cases.

Surrett will hit five or six grocery stores a day. Occasionally, he'll get help from Davis or another team member for building displays or other tasks.

In the beer business, they rarely have a slow day. We stay thirsty around here.

"If you work together, it makes everything go a lot better," Surrett said.