Brewery offers boutique liquors

For the past 80 years, the Bess family, owners of Bluff City Beer Co., has taken advantage of opportunities to expand and offer more to their customers. That type of acumen has kept the company growing over the years, and enabling it to bring more variety to Missouri consumers.

The company began in 1928 as Bluff City Fruit Co., in Blodgett, Mo., where founder William H. Bess began selling vegetables and fruit from a roadside stand.

When Prohibition ended in 1933, the company became Bluff City Beer and Produce, a distributor for Griesedieck Brothers beer, along with fruits, vegetables and condiments.

In 1976, the produce division was sold to Proffer Fruit and Produce in Esther, Mo., and the company concentrated solely on selling beer, dropping the words "and Produce" from its name.

Beginning in January, according to Billy Bess, Bluff City Beer began expanding into boutique liquors, featuring liquors and cordials imported from New Zealand, France, Australia and Mexico.

The spirits industry is following the wine industry in experimenting with products from Australia and New Zealand, Bess said.

"For many years people drank Sonoma and Napa Valley wine and French wine," he said. "All of a sudden, people were drinking Australian and Chilean wine and then someone tried Italian wine."

Consumers are now discovering imported flavored vodka, gin and tequila, and ready-to-drink spirits that are mainly vodka-based, Bess said.

"They're already mixed for you," he said. "Just chill and pour."

The new products are another way Bluff City Beer gives consumers more choice and stays competitive in the market.

"For many years we were strictly a malt-based beverage company," Bess said.

The company made its reputation with beer. In 1988, the Miller Brewing Co. recognized Bluff City beer for the achievement of sales in excess of a million cases, and the company was included in the Miller Brewing's Stein Club.

In 1993, Bluff City Beer Company was recognized by the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce as the 1922 Small Business of the Year.

Bluff City Beer is considered to be Missouri's largest beer distributor, covering more than 20 counties.

In the early years following Prohibition, Bluff City Beer expanded into Kennett, Cape Girardeau, and West Plains, and by the 1960s also had a facility in Bonne Terre. The West Plans facility was sold in 1987, and in 1989 a new facility was opened in Herculaneum.

Bluff City Beer moved its corporate headquarters in 1992 to Cape Girardeau. In 1997 it closed the Kennett operation and the next year closed Bonne Terre to consolidate its operations into three divisions: Herculaneum, Cape Girardeau and Poplar Bluff.

Now the company is directing its attention to creating a market for boutique liquor products that the larger liquor companies don't find profitable, Bess said.

"For a long time liquor companies delivered boutique beers," he said. "We took the attitude of 'Why can't we be a beer distributor but deliver boutique liquor?' The liquor companies already have thousands of products in their warehouses already."

The company is able to do this because it's not duplicating the liquor companies' efforts. Bess recalled a time when Coors beer, brewed in Colorado, was unavailable to the eastern half of the United States. Its universal unavailability created a niche for independent distribution.

"Many times businesses have been more successful when they create a mystique around a brand." Bess said. "For years when people went out west, friends would say 'bring me back 10 cases of Coors,'" he said. "Now we have Coors every day. It's not a big deal any more."

The larger distilleries, he said, have enough on their plate selling well known brands of whiskey, gin and vodka. That leaves the flavored "boutique" liquors to a different market.

We're just tapping into another market, introducing new flavors, giving the consumer more choices. It's been going good; we're getting good feedback."