Beverage World - May 2008 - (Page 46) [UPCLOSE] system for the brewery. A Cold Spring hard lemonade also is in the pipeline. Aside from the fact that creating new products and creating new activity is what Lenore loves to do, it also helps John Lenore & Co. offset some challenging aspects of being a beer wholesaler today, which are consolidation and the slowing sales of mainstream brews. “I have tremendous respect for Bud and Miller, but they can’t dominate the industry any- » TODAY, JOHN LENORE & CO., based in San Diego, has about 150 employees and delivers nearly three million cases a year. more,” he says. “And the days when (wholesalers) could count on the breweries keeping their numbers up…it’s tough now. The industry has changed dramatically.” Among those changes has been the shift toward goodfor-you beverages. So Lenore plans to launch in the near future functional beverages including Guadalupe, Aztec Power, and to take full advantage of Cold Spring Brewery, which sits on Lake Aziv, a prehistoric glacial lake, Cold Spring mineral water. “My background was tough,” says Lenore, who lost his father when he was 5 at the height of the Great Depression. “People came (to the United States) with nothing, with one thought in mind: to work hard and create a future for their children and grandchildren and that’s exactly what (my grandparents and parents) did for us. We never asked for anything. We just took advantage of the opportunities that are out there and we worked hard. Not bad for a Sicilian immigrant from West Virginia who worked in a coal mine, huh?” BW
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