Ed Evans, president of Evans Distributing in Iowa City, hopes to have a tenant for the company’s warehouse space at the Iowa City Industrial Park by Jan. 1. PHOTO/CHASE CASTLE
By Chase Castle
chase@corridorbusiness.com
Evans Distributing, which holds local distribution rights to Pabst Blue Ribbon and other beers, has been sold to Fleck Sales of Cedar Rapids.
In addition to Pabst Blue Ribbon, the purchase included distribution rights for Sprecher Brewing, O’Fallon Brewery and Anchor Brewing for all of Johnson County, in addition to parts of Linn, Washington, Iowa and Cedar counties. It also covers distribution rights for those labels in Columbus Junction, with about 80 percent of Evans’ clients within 15 miles of Iowa City.
The deal took effect Nov. 1. Details of the transaction were not disclosed.
The purchase brings an end to 57 years of business for Evans Distributing. The company was purchased in 1959 from Iowa City Bottling Works, which bottled soft drinks from its plant at 525 S. Gilbert St., now home to Mosley’s Barbecue. Ten years later, the company adopted the Evans Distributing name.
The company owns a roughly 10,000-square-foot warehouse located northeast of Highway 6 and Scott Boulevard at the Iowa City Industrial Park. Evans occupies about 7,900 square feet of the space, with the remainder rented to Luis Auto Repair.
Company President Ed Evans plans to list the warehouse with Mid-West Commercial Real Estate, and aims to have the property rented by the start of the new year.
“When we built this, we built it with the idea in mind that it would eventually be something else one day, as opposed to Fleck Sales and 7G,” Mr. Evans said. “Their buildings are pretty much designed to be beer distribution centers.”
Mr. Evans said he has developed close relationships with clients over the course of several decades in business, and expects those dynamics to change with a new distributor.
“I personally called some of those people for 35 years, so you kind of grew up with them,” he said. “So there certainly will be some impact there.”
The company hit a high point in 1979, when Evans Distributing accounted for nearly 45 percent of beer distribution in Iowa, according to Mr. Evans, largely through its distribution rights to Pabst Blue Ribbon.
“We basically dominated the market with just one beer,” he said.
The market has changed considerably since then, however, due to the proliferation of craft breweries – defined as those that make less than 6 million barrels of beer annually and have no more than 25 percent of ownership under a non-craft brewer, according to the Brewers Association of Boulder, Colorado.
Iowa had 58 craft breweries in 2015, up from less than 30 in 2011. Nationwide, large breweries, or those that produce more than 6 million barrels annually, still accounted for about 72 percent of all beer sales in the U.S last year.
Fleck Sales’ purchase comes more than a year after buying Eldridge-based Wolfe Beverage Company. At the time of that April 2015 acquisition, Wolfe served three counties in Eastern Iowa with rights to 18 breweries. Fleck Sales President Dudley Fleck said in announcing the purchase that the businesses would have combined annual revenues of around $70 million.
Prior to purchasing Evans, Fleck Sales had the distribution rights to 25 counties in East Central and Southeast Iowa, Mr. Fleck said.
“It was one of the holes in our territory that we didn’t represent Pabst, and so when the opportunity became available, we though it’d be a good time to pick up that last missing piece of the puzzle,” he said.
Despite the ubiquity of craft beer in recent years, Pabst Blue Ribbon has emerged as an unlikely favorite among millennials.
MarketWatch reported last year that PBR sales more than doubled over a nine-year period, from 151 million liters in 2005 to 373 million in 2014. Analysts with market research firm Euromonitor attribute part of that resurgence to younger beer drinkers trying to differentiate themselves from previous generations, which have long preferred mass-produced light lagers.
“It’s kind of funny that PBR or a beer like Coors Banquet are showing sales increases … while domestic light beers have been struggling,” Mr. Fleck said.
