Soave: Newsletter Spring 2006

Teamwork!

Everyday throughout our organization, individuals come together for a common purpose, sometimes ordinary… sometimes extraordinary.
Among the many noteworthy examples of such inspiring team efforts is the recent expansion of CITY Beverage - Illinois, now the fifth largest Anheuser-Busch distributor in the United States. Since the 1980s, Chicago Beer Distributing, led by my partner, Cecil Troutwine, along with Mike Dowd and Mike Flynn, has been successfully marketing and distributing Anheuser-Busch brands in a fiercely competitive market. During the past 24 months, this team has grown our business from 5.5 million to approximately 20 million cases per year through acquisition and market growth. This doesn’t happen without teamwork.

Sometimes teamwork is evident across company lines, such as the effort put forth by those leading the new SEED ethics training initiative. We also saw an inspired employee recommendation bear fruit with the Soave-wide fund drive for our employees’ families devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Members from every company in our portfolio contributed, and with an equal corporate match to our employees’ charity, more than a dozen Soave families received meaningful and much appreciated assistance ( see two of the thank you letters we received inside).

There are many opportunities presented each and every day to improve our company results, our customers’ satisfaction and our employees’ well-being through the fruits of teamwork. To be sure, we have many talented and outstanding individuals in our company and I appreciate every one of you.

I’m most proud, though, when we act together as one team, complementing each other’s strengths and weaknesses for the benefit of all.

Let’s make 2006 another year for which our whole Soave team can be proud!

Soave Enterprises ranked 192 on Forbes Magazine’s 2005 list of “America’s Largest Private Companies” with more than $1 billion in revenues. The rankings were announced in the annual special report last November.

Soave Enterprises joined 17 other Michigan-based companies on the 2005 list, which is based on previous year revenues. Forbes listed Soave Enterprises’ 2004 revenues at $1.6 billion, a 49.8 percent increase over the previous year, and total employees at 2,556.

Combined, the 339 companies on Forbes’ 2005 list of closely held businesses sold a trillion dollars' worth of goods and services and employed four million people.

Last year's count of privately held U.S. businesses with at least $1 billion in revenue was only 305.

Aggressive Sales Surge Pushes CITY Beverage-Chicago to the Top

CITY Beverage - Chicago (CBC) finished the year with a great surge to post the best sales increase of any wholesaler in the Chicago market for 2005.

CBC, which services more than 1,400 retail accounts, reversed a negative sales trend over the past several years and sold more than three million cases of Anheuser-Busch products last year.

Acquired in late 2004 as the latest member of the CITY Beverage-Illinois family, the newly renamed CITY Beverage-Chicago services Chicago’s south-side area. General Manager Mike Flynn and Sales Manager Tom Hincks, both formerly with CITY Beverage - Markham, bring more than 35 years of experience in the industry. Juan Sanchez and Patrick Clifton also were promoted from the Markham facility to join Jim Ligue, James McCoy and all other personnel who were retained from the previous owners.

To celebrate the acquisition, CITY Beverage-Chicago hosted an open house in February at its headquarters and invited every retail customer, city officials, community leaders and friends from Anheuser-Busch to meet the new management team and get reacquainted with current personnel.

During 2005, Flynn’s management team completed a restructuring of the distribution territory for all of the sales and delivery routes using the historically successful Chicago Beer Distributing structure as a model. This process resulted in the addition of seven new positions – six in sales and one delivery route – and greatly increased the time allotted to spend with customers selling and servicing Anheuser-Busch products. Since the new management team took over, other recent success stories include:

• CITY Beverage-Chicago gained new distribution for Anheuser-Busch brands in US Cellular Field (home of the White Sox), the United Center (home of the Bulls and Blackhawks), Soldier Field (home of the Bears and Fire), Hawthorne & Maywood Racetracks, and Southwest Airlines at Midway Airport.

• CITY Beverage-Chicago also secured the exclusive premium beer category for Budweiser and Bud Light at Millennium Park, Lollapalooza Fest, the Northerly Island Concert venue, Chicago Blues Fest, Latin Music Fest, the Chicago Marathon and Taste of Chicago.

“The effort was amazing,” says Cecil Troutwine, who was grateful for the employees’ work to reach these goals. “Everyone pitched in to help – across all the operations – and everyone should take great pride in the result.” Congratulations on your number one finish CBC. This Bud’s for you!

Soave SPECTRUM is developed and published by Soave Enterprises LLC for and about the employees and the companies owned by Anthony Soave. Entire contents © 2008 Soave Enterprises LLC. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.