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LaMonica Beverage cut finished product loss 86% in a year and replaced a PFP program that had not changed in years. Carly LaMonica and Jessie LaMonica Fletcher, third-generation owners in Rockford, Illinois, join us to walk through how they did it. The honest part is what happened in between. They opened the GP numbers to their sales team, the reps got competitive, and the profitability results came fast. Then Carly went out on a market visit and did not like what she saw. The execution had slipped. So the pendulum swings back, and the fix is not returning to the old objective grind, it is tying supplier priorities into the program by route with real accountability behind them. We also get into the operations side, where LaMonica does something almost nobody else does: they code close-to-code product on the way in, so they know who sent it back and who put it back out. That led to the 50% rule, and to 43 out-of-code SKUs in one account getting a manager written up alongside the rep. Most reps rent their route. This one is about building a team that owns it. Tapped In Sales is the podcast for beer distributors, by beer distributors. Questions for Carly and Jessie? Hit us up at [email protected] and we will pass them along. #BeerDistribution #SalesLeadership #Profitability

Twenty five companies sell the exact same product TJ Tribell sells, at roughly the same price, with roughly the same service. He has no exclusive territory and no supplier protection. He is also up double digits nine years running in an industry that is flat. His secret is the thing our industry keeps arguing about. Every rep sees the margin, all the way down to the counter guy. Every rep is paid on profit. Every rep can move a price without asking permission. TJ runs sales for Aetna Supply, a family owned top ten plumbing and HVAC wholesaler. He has worked at distributors that hid profitability and distributors that show it, and he has strong opinions about which ones grew. When we raised the objection you have all heard, that reps cannot be trusted with profit, he laughed. In this one we get into the banana question that ends that argument, the buy two get one mistake that cost two truckloads and gained a million dollar customer, negotiating margin back out of your suppliers, and why profit is always sitting in the uncomfortable. Ross makes the point that stings most: beer's protected structure is comfortable, and comfort is a luxury TJ does not get. Listen, learn, and enjoy what you do. More at vxptech.com

Beer is down 4% after a minus 5 last year. Five straight years of decline, and the World Cup summer that was supposed to turn it around didn't. Jason and David Steinman, the third generation running Beer Marketers Insights, join Bud, Mike, and Ross to grade the first half of 2026 the honest way: the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good is real but narrow. Ultra, Busch Light, and a handful of imports are growing, RTDs are still up double digits, NA has grown seven years straight, and spiked sports drinks went from an idea at NBWA to millions of cases in under a year. The bad is everything around it: gas prices, a softer consumer across all of CPG, younger drinkers drinking less, and a World Cup that packed the bars in host cities but never trickled into the off premise that drives this industry. The ugly is RNDC. A multi-billion dollar, forty-state house evaporated in about 18 months, and it's the biggest beer distributors picking up the pieces. That leaves every mid-size house with a decision: pick your lane and run it well, or get into wine and spirits before your competitor does. The Steinmans also cover what to watch for the rest of the year, starting with Labor Day, and why stable and predictable is the win the industry should be chasing right now. If you're setting plans for the back half of 2026, this one is for you.

Your product is good for 270 days. Your distribution drive measures 90. A listener emailed us asking why we're still paying for placements on product that's already sitting on the shelf, and it turned into one of the more honest conversations we've had. Bud, Mike, Ross, and Alicia work through what a distribution drive actually costs a wholesaler. A placement that doesn't turn isn't business, it's activity. Ross puts on the supplier hat and says the quiet part out loud: he's measured on depletions and shipments, so whether it sells through the store isn't his problem. Bud runs the math on what happens when you pay ten bucks a POD against three bucks of net GP per CE, and then the finished product loss bill shows up six months later. The fix isn't refusing to run drives. It's changing what you count. A POD tells you a rep got in the door. A rebuy tells you the product belongs there. Alicia walks through how to bring a supplier a better program instead of just resistance, and why putting your foot down on late submissions protects your team's focus more than any tracker will. If you're building distribution programs or arguing about one right now, this one is for you.

One client caps sales programs at six a month. Another runs 12 to 15, and the reps there can't name half of them. That's the mental load problem, and it's costing you execution you already paid for. Bud, Mike, and Ross dig into how many programs a rep can actually carry in a month, and what happens to your business when you blow past that number. Ross makes the hard argument that every objective and incentive you launch distorts the two things the job is really about, maximizing space and selling the relationship, so you had better be sure the distortion points where you want it to. Mike talks about being the filter, cleaning the clutter for your team, and the line between organizing reps and babying them. Bud shares the ride-with that produced 40 to-dos and why the cap became five. Then the story that lands it: a senior leader can't find his hottest brand at a top account, the rep says it isn't on PFP this month, and the rep doesn't think anything is wrong. That's a programmed rep. The reps who find what nobody put on the list are the scouts, and you need about 20% of them. Plus the vodka aid run, and whose volume it's taking. If you're building next month's programs right now, this one is for you.

Worst week since April. Down 8.6% on volume, down 5% on dollars, and the industry's official answer is that it got too hot outside. Nobody needs another weather report. Here's what's really happening. We're sitting on mid-month client calls watching routes run down 10, 11, even 15, and a good number of those same operators are still flat or growing on GP. That gap is the whole episode. We walk through three places the dollars are still sitting when the cases aren't coming: the rest of the truck, since packaged beverage is growing 4 to 4.5% while bev alc bleeds; the influential accounts nobody has time for, including one client who took 160 under-serviced accounts, put three people on them, and projected 145% of target on the same market and the same products; and route coverage, where success happens at the margin. Then the warning. Volume is down, so everybody's first instinct is to cut routes. There's no accounting line on a P&L for the value of attention, and you only find out what it was worth after the volume follows it out the door. Plus the RTD run, Molson Coors giving up share, and a prediction Bud tries to change in August. Worth a listen if you're resetting goals right now.

Two routes down 25% for the month means your whole company is down 5%. Most of us look at that number, say "Johnny was out," and move on. This week Ross brings a pattern he kept seeing across clients big and small: when a rep goes out on leave, the route gets covered haphazardly, the results tank, and everybody shrugs. Very few distributors have an actual plan for it. Mike has run those routes himself and walks through what really happens out there, from not knowing where the back stock sits to the fear of overselling an account the regular rep has to come back to. There's a real difference between covering a route and selling it, and most relief coverage is survival mode. We get into who should cover, whether burning a team lead is worth what stops getting done, and a more creative option: segment your impact accounts, build a sales rep in training tier, and slide everybody up the line so your best routes never get orphaned. Plus Diageo says it's rewiring distributor incentives toward rate of sale, and we have thoughts. Worth a listen if you're building coverage plans, training reps, or wondering where your points went last month.

July did not give anybody a soft landing. You either made your number or you got crushed, and almost nobody landed in between. We dig into what actually happened last month, why A-B houses slipped off their June trends while MC clients picked up a point, and why Florida and California grew while most of the country did not. Then it gets worse before it gets better. Gas prices bounced back up, and a new one showed up on client calls this month: electricity. One warm market saw prices double, and the numbers coming at us for a 1,200 square foot house sounded like a mortgage payment. There is even a point where it gets too hot to drink beer, and we have watched consumption nosedive in real time to prove it. August has a selling day missing and last year's Labor Day load week has moved into September, so we talk through how to set a goal reps will still reach for. Three clients already threw out their annual budget. Set the budget as a guide, not gospel. We also get into the hemp ban going down to the wire, 35 state attorneys general writing Congress, Kratom bans spreading, flavor carrying the whole category, and the final read on World Cup volume. Worth a listen if you are building sales plans, incentives, or goals right now.

AB told Northern Eagle the World Cup would be like eight Super Bowls in their market. It was. Up in Boston, the Scots went through a full container of Tennent's in four days and Burke Distributing had to bring in a second one. This is a two part episode. First we sit down with Beverly Freitas, sales manager at Northern Eagle in northern New Jersey, which hosted eight matches including the final at MetLife. Then we talk with Kristen Burke, fourth generation president at Burke Distributing in metro Boston, which had seven games at Gillette and the Tartan Army parked in Faneuil Hall. Same questions to both. How do you forecast something you have no comp for? What do you staff up, and when? Which brands surprised you? And what would you do differently if you got the chance again? What comes out is a real operator playbook. Twelve months of planning and daily inventory calls. Six delivery days a week with no Sunday drops allowed. Non buy accounts that finally opened up. On premise up 75% week on week while off premise barely moved. And two teams that decided early that nobody was going to say "not my job." If a big event is ever coming to your market, this is the one to save. Listen, learn, and enjoy what you do.

Five clients came to us in the last 60 days with the same word on their lips: complacency. Reps showing up just enough to get invited back to work tomorrow. But here's the uncomfortable question: is it laziness, or are your reps rationally optimizing their lives around the comp plan you built? Bud, Ross, and Mike work through where complacency really comes from, why pay curves are steepening across the client base, and how to audit your own program before it quietly costs you 5% volume a year. In this episode, we break down… 😴 What complacency actually looks like on the ground: order takers instead of sales professionals, and the bare minimum to stay employed 🏆 The seasoned vet trap: 15 years on the route, great relationships, hits most of his numbers, and hasn't noticed the market changing around him 💰 Johnny hits every supplier incentive and sits at the bottom of the profit leaderboard. Where is his mindset? Wherever the easy money is. 🔍 The self-audit: when was the last time you changed your comp programming, and how many of your PFPs are recycled month after month? 📈 Why customers are asking to steepen the pay curve, and why the optimal starting point may have moved from 70-75 to 75-80 ⏳ Return on effort: reps trading incremental dollars for a simpler life, and why that math has changed as the value of a dollar shrinks 🍺 News: Reyes closes the 11 RNDC territories, Southern Glazer's buys Eagle Rock, Sazerac lands with Reyes, and the Teamsters push a 75% tariff on Mexican beer Key takeaways: It's not laziness. Reps are optimizing their time and pay toward their own equilibrium. If they're optimizing away from your outcomes, your structure is the problem, not the rep. Show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome. If 80% of rep pay is tied to supplier-funded programs, don't be surprised when your strategic priorities get ignored. The fix isn't more money. One client used the exact same dollars, changed how reps earn them, and went on a 16-month streak hitting GP and GP per CE budgets. Steeper curves fit performance cultures. Shallower curves fit relationship cultures. Neither works if it isn't authentic to who you actually are. If complacency is sitting in your gut, it's probably sitting in your sales team's lap. Put it on the agenda at your next management meeting and talk about it openly. This is a roundtable episode, no guest, no script. Bud, Ross, and Mike working through what five clients brought to the table in real time, including some hard reflection on the complacency Bud created himself back at Atlas Sales. If you're heading into budget and planning season wondering whether your comp plan is driving effort or entitlement, this one is for you. Listen, learn, and enjoy what you do. Catch the full episode on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. Want to look at your own data and benchmarking, no sales pitch included? Email us at [email protected]. Share with a friend if you love it.

We're at the midway point of the year, which means comp planning season is here. If you're thinking about moving off commission, restructuring routes, or changing how your reps get paid, this is the episode to start with. Bud, Ross, and Mike get into why commission structures quietly work against your business and what to do instead. In this episode, we break down: 💸 Why your comp plan should serve the business, not the other way around 📊 The hidden cost of commission: endless rerouting and punished top performers 🎯 Equal opportunity vs. equal outcome, and where pay disparity really belongs 🗺️ Why your biggest accounts aren't always your highest impact 🪜 Bands and buckets: a transparent roadmap reps can grow into 🩹 Rip the band-aid off: why you make all the changes at once 🗣️ How to roll out a pay change without losing the room Key takeaways: Volume can hide bad decisions. Align reps to impact, not case count. Reshuffling routes to feed commission kills the reason to grow a route. Put seniority in the base. Keep at-risk dollars equal opportunity for everyone. Reps assume a comp change means less money. Lead with the why. Train your middle managers first. They get the questions reps won't ask you. Chapters: 00:24 Challenges in commission structures 10:05 Transitioning to quota systems 20:14 Real-world applications and case studies 21:05 Equal opportunity vs. equal outcome 29:06 Implementing transparent pay structures 37:47 Effective rollout strategies for compensation changes Listen, learn, and enjoy what you do. If you're trying to make your sales plan clearer, this one is for you. Questions? Send them to [email protected]. =============== YouTube: Watch on YouTube: Tapped In Sales Spotify Podcast: Listen & Watch on Spotify Podcasts Tapped In Sales Apple Podcasts: Listen on Apple Podcast Tapped In Sales =============== Connect with Us:   Follow us on LinkedIn for the latest episodes, industry news, and insights from the beer distribution world. About Tapped In Sales:   Tapped In Sales is a podcast dedicated to beer distributors and beverage industry professionals who are looking to elevate their sales strategies and drive profitability. Hosted by industry experts Bud Dunn and Mike Hall, we dive deep into real-world stories, actionable insights, and the latest trends to help sales teams and managers unlock their full potential. Each episode blends data, strategy, and motivation, making complex topics easy to understand and implement. This podcast is powered by VXP Tech – the leading Sales Strategy Management system designed for beer distributors. VXP simplifies the complexities of goal setting, variable compensation, and sales team performance, helping you master your market and grow profits, case by case. Stay tuned for expert advice, fresh perspectives, and tools to sharpen your sales approach! If you enjoyed the episode, don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend!

Everybody wants one reason the beer industry is soft. Gen Z quit drinking. Spirits stole the share. Pick your headline. The Beer Institute's Chief Economist Andrew Heritage came on to blow most of those up with actual data. The short version: demand is a lot stronger than the doom takes make it sound. The consumer is just stressed, and beer is still the drink people protect when they go out. In this episode, we break down: 🍺 Who actually makes the beer (2-3% of breweries move 96% of the volume) 📊 The Gen Z myth and why they spend the same on alcohol as every generation before them ⛽ How gas prices and a stressed consumer, not category abandonment, are driving the soft weeks 🌡️ The weather math on beer sales ⚽ The World Cup effect on concession and on-premise sales 🥂 The drive to socialize and why on-premise keeps outperforming off-premise Key takeaways: There is no single reason for the softness. It is a stressed consumer, not people walking away from beer. Gen Z is not quitting. They are broke, and they still pick beer over the emerging categories. On-premise is holding because people protect the occasion, not just the beer. Weather and gas prices explain most of the week-to-week swings. Build the occasion and they will come. You have more control locally than you give yourself credit for. Andrew Heritage is Chief Economist at the Beer Institute, covering roughly 90% of industry volume. If you want someone who can separate the myths from the math, this is the one. Want the deck? Email [email protected] and we will share it. Listen, learn, and enjoy what you do. Share with a friend if you love it. 🎧 Also on YouTube | 🔗 LinkedIn: Tapped In Sales / VXP

Every supplier talks about pod gaps. Almost nobody talks about which gaps are worth chasing. Matt Moberly does. Master's in chemistry, 25 years in beer, and he runs the number one New Belgium market in the country, and he treats selling beer like a science experiment. We get into why the account closest to a rep's house is usually the wrong one to chase, how Two Hearted and Oberon make each other bigger instead of stealing from each other, and where the data stops and the human side of this business takes over. In this episode, we break down: 🍺 Why the pod closest to home is usually the wrong pod to chase  📊 Quality-weighting distribution gaps instead of treating every POD the same  🍻 The Double Tap: why Two Hearted and Oberon sell more together, not less  💸 FOLD (Fear of Lost Dollars) and why it moves reps and distributors  🧪 Running sales incentives like a chemistry experiment  🗺️ Carrying the right things, not everything, and the on-premise data void  🤝 Where AI stops and the human side of selling beer begins A few things worth stealing for your own market: Not all PODs are equal. Chase placements that rebuy and stick, not checkbox pods that die in the back room. Double Tap is real. Accounts pouring both Two Hearted and Oberon saw roughly 4x the combined volume of the median single-handle account. FOLD moves people. If you're not getting those go-get dollars, your competition is. Run it like an experiment. Test, measure, adjust, repeat. Carry the right things, not everything. Discipline by style beats stacking five IPAs. Matt started street-level at Bell's, built their national accounts and business insights teams, ran sales and marketing for all of Bell's, and now leads Michigan for New Belgium. Chemistry brain, on-premise heart. Worth a listen if you're building distribution goals, incentives, or trying to get more out of your data than a stack of reports. Share with a friend if you love it. 📩 [email protected] =============== YouTube: Watch on YouTube: Tapped In Sales Spotify Podcast: Listen & Watch on Spotify Podcasts Tapped In Sales Apple Podcasts: Listen on Apple Podcast Tapped In Sales =============== Connect with Us:   Follow us on LinkedIn for the latest episodes, industry news, and insights from the beer distribution world. About Tapped In Sales:   Tapped In Sales is a podcast dedicated to beer distributors and beverage industry professionals who are looking to elevate their sales strategies and drive profitability. Hosted by industry experts Bud Dunn and Mike Hall, we dive deep into real-world stories, actionable insights, and the latest trends to help sales teams and managers unlock their full potential. Each episode blends data, strategy, and motivation, making complex topics easy to understand and implement. This podcast is powered by VXP Tech – the leading Sales Strategy Management system designed for beer distributors. VXP simplifies the complexities of goal setting, variable compensation, and sales team performance, helping you master your market and grow profits, case by case. Stay tuned for expert advice, fresh perspectives, and tools to sharpen your sales approach! If you enjoyed the episode, don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend!

That's Not Vibes, That's Hope and a Prayer | ft. Sean Baker, Rarig Pacific A distributor told Sean Baker he was making decisions "based on vibes." Sean's answer stuck with us: that's not vibes, that's hope and a prayer. Too many distributors are running operations on assumptions instead of truth, and it's costing them on the shelf and on the bottom line. This week we get out of the sales seat and into the warehouse. In this episode, we break down: 🍺 Why "running on vibes" is really hope and a prayer  📦 What overs & shorts are actually costing you  🔍 Operational truth: you can't manage what you can't measure  🤖 Why the goal is augmenting your people, not replacing them  🚚 Old habits worth breaking, from U-boats to the duo lift  💰 The right way to structure warehouse and delivery comp  🤝 Why the whole industry wins when partners stop building walls Who is Sean Sean Baker has touched nearly every corner of this business. He started downstacking cases off a side loader in 2003, moved into warehouse ops, ran a route selling to Kroger and the corner liquor store on the same day, became a sales trainer, worked the supplier side at AB and Heineken, and now leads technology commercialization at Rarig Pacific. He's not a vendor reading from a script. He's an operator who connects how a decision in the warehouse ripples all the way to the six-pack on the shelf. Connect Learn more about Rehrig Pacific Company at rehrigpacific.com Questions for the show? Email [email protected] and we'll pass them along to Sean. Listen, learn, and enjoy what you do. Share with a friend if you love it. =============== YouTube: Watch on YouTube: Tapped In Sales Spotify Podcast: Listen & Watch on Spotify Podcasts Tapped In Sales Apple Podcasts: Listen on Apple Podcast Tapped In Sales =============== Connect with Us:   Follow us on LinkedIn for the latest episodes, industry news, and insights from the beer distribution world. About Tapped In Sales:   Tapped In Sales is a podcast dedicated to beer distributors and beverage industry professionals who are looking to elevate their sales strategies and drive profitability. Hosted by industry experts Bud Dunn and Mike Hall, we dive deep into real-world stories, actionable insights, and the latest trends to help sales teams and managers unlock their full potential. Each episode blends data, strategy, and motivation, making complex topics easy to understand and implement. This podcast is powered by VXP Tech – the leading Sales Strategy Management system designed for beer distributors. VXP simplifies the complexities of goal setting, variable compensation, and sales team performance, helping you master your market and grow profits, case by case. Stay tuned for expert advice, fresh perspectives, and tools to sharpen your sales approach! If you enjoyed the episode, don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend!

RNDC got cracked open like an egg. Now the real question isn't what happened — it's what suppliers do next. Bud, Ross, and Alicia get into the post-RNDC scramble, why limiting your distributor choices may have become a bridge too far, and where the chaos is quietly handing opportunity to the people paying attention. Plus the value war, the flat-drink boom, and the Delta-9 clock running out. In this episode, we break down… 🥚 What suppliers actually do now that RNDC is sold off piece by piece — single point of contact, multi-point headaches, and nobody wanting to hire a wall of middle managers ⚖️ Why "out of balance equals opportunity" — and how the pendulum may swing back toward boutique, brand-building distributors like it's the 1940s 🛢️ Oil down 26% in a month, inflation cooling, and why we think July and August could be a quiet summer sweet spot for volume 🍎 The value war is back: 1 in 4 Busch Light Apple shoppers are first-time beer buyers, 70%+ incremental to the category additive, not cannibalization 🌊 Who's drinking all this? Superlight and Spikeade U-boats rolling out the door — flat, low-alcohol, hyper-premium GP, and a category that came out of nowhere 📊 Lester Jones' gender employment data and why the answer is NOT making the packaging pink 🌿 The Delta-9 endgame: hope is not a strategy, distributors running inventory to zero, and who picks up hemp come January 2027 Key takeaways: Consolidation helped suppliers — one contact, aligned spend and pricing — but RNDC's breakup may be the bridge too far. Out of balance equals opportunity. The Sazerac/Crew & Point deal is a logistics-partner play, not a brand-building one. Smart first-mover move today, but it gets followed, and then profitability becomes the battleground. Don't get lost in the big book. Small craft and wine producers will hunt for brand builders and specialty houses, not a slot they disappear into. The value war is genuinely additive — Busch Light Apple is pulling new drinkers into beer, not stealing from it. Reps stack it high and watch it fly. Hope is not a strategy on Delta-9. The noticeable shift this month: distributors stopped waiting for a rescue and started planning to run inventory to zero. This is a news-and-takes roundtable — Bud, Ross, and Alicia working through what's actually moving in the market right now. The spine is the RNDC fallout: a 40-state wholesaler down to a handful of locations, and a supplier world about to learn how to manage 15-20 relationships where they used to have one or two. When the market goes out of balance, the people watching closely find the opening. Listen, learn, and enjoy what you do. Catch the full episode on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. Got a take on how this shakes out in your market? Email us at [email protected]. Share with a friend if you love it.