Hey everybody! Long time no talk. I wanted to take a minute to make everyone aware and explain some changes we are making to our local distribution footprint. As you may or may not know, we are distributed in Southwest Ohio and Northern Kentucky by Stagnaro Distributing. They are currently our only distribution partner and up until now we have been available to retailers in their entire distribution footprint which extends from Dayton, Ohio down to well past Florence Kentucky. They have been a great partner with us for nearly 3 years now and we are happy to continue working with them for the foreseeable future.
As we have begun to grow and make a name for ourselves in the local beer world it has become increasingly difficult to support all of the bars and restaurants throughout this fairly large distribution area that are interested in carrying our product. Recently we have had to turn down numerous opportunities to attend events or otherwise be involved in happenings around town simply because we just don't have enough beer to go around. Our goal from day 1 has been to stay as local as possible and to never "bite off more than we can chew" as they say. Over the last few months we have had a lot of difficulty keeping even our closest neighbors supplied with beer so we have decided to reduce our distribution territory for a while. This will allow us to adequately serve SOME people instead of inadequately serving a LOT of people.
So. Effective this week you will only be able to buy Blank Slate in Hamilton County Ohio. I apologize to those bar and restaurant owners outside of Hamilton County who have been supporters of us in the past. This decision wasn't made lightly and I hope that you will still support us when we are ready to resume selling in your area. Again, thank you for the support.
The logical question to ask is "why don't you just make more beer". Well, we're working on it. Our business model has always been one of slow, sustainable growth, much slower than many of our peers. For one, we don't have the deep pockets needed to pull it off but more importantly I feel strongly that our ability to maintain the high standards we have for quality and consistency dictate that we do it this way. We are currently preparing to triple our capacity and hope to have that online by early 2016. However, by our best estimates this will only begin to meet the demand that we currently have inside Hamilton County. I'd love to put a time frame as to when we will be ready to add other counties back into distribution but right now I really don't know when that will be. I don't want to make any promises that I don't think we can keep so I'll just say that we'll see you when we see you.
Thanks for listening!
