By Harry Schuhmacher
Published September 2013, Volume 34, Number 4
Do you know what a SKU is? In the consumer goods industry, it is an abbreviation for stock keeping unit, and we pronounce it “skew.” A stock-keeping unit is just a very unfancy way of referring to a specific brand and package combination. In the beer industry, a brand would be Lagunitas IPA. A package would be a six-pack. A SKU would be a Lagunitas IPA six-pack, and it is assigned a specific bar code for scanning at the supermarket. Now you can bask in the glory of lording a new term over your friends at the bar. You’re welcome.
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By Harry Schuhmacher
Published May 2013, Volume 34, Number 2
This may come as a shock to my many fans and admirers, but I’m not the smartest bear in the beverage business. Or even the beer business, as long as we’re qualifying. Nor am I the best-looking, or the richest, or the tallest, or have the whitest teeth. But there’s one metric I suspect I can safely claim: I’ve been to more beverage industry corporate conferences than anybody else currently alive, and maybe more than anybody who has ever lived.
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By Harry Schuhmacher
Published September 2012, Volume 33, Number 4
It’s hard to believe it’s been 18 years since I attended my first Craft Brewers Conference. At the time I was working for a beer distributorship in Houston, and the management there was just getting interested in crafts and imports. We had just taken on the Celis brands, and as the CBC was in Austin that year, I persuaded my bosses to let me attend. I was the eager young buck, pad and pencil in hand, ready to take copious notes about this burgeoning new beer category and show my superiors that this thing had legs. Read More…
By Harry Schuhmacher
Published January 2013, Volume 33, Number 6
I am writing this in the lobby bar of the Warwick Hotel in Denver, where I am waiting for my colleague, wine editor Emily Pennington, to join me shortly so that we may catch a cab down to watch the first presidential debate between Obama and Romney. Emily is 25 years old, and as I’ve been observing her for the past 24 hours in our travels, she seems as alien to me as some new undocumented species from the Ugandan forest.
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