With all the beer commercials that regularly glut your
television or computer screen, you might suspect that as the beer-keg rolls, so
turns the world. That isn’t necessarily the case, of course. Beer sales from
major breweries throughout North America remain highly profitable, although
there has been little overall growth in consumption. However, what is a remarkable phenomenon over the past
decade has been the continued rise of microbrews across America. As things
stand, craft beer sales continue to increase by double digits each year. No
need to mention any specific brand names, but it’s safe to say that anyone
located in any given region of the United States now has regular access to
quality, small-scale craft beer.
But there are major logistical problems that arise when
delivering craft beers from brewery to end-user. Unlike the large international brewing
companies with their well-defined distribution systems, craft beers have to
rely on distribution networks which they don’t necessarily share ownership in. Since
they rely on other distributors to deliver their goods to market, there is an
understandable amount of product that gets lost in transit. Something along the
lines of 5% of microbreweries’ combined output gets lost somewhere down the
distribution chain.
With the right kind of tracking technology from Metalcraft,
this doesn’t have to happen.
A prominent craft beer company located in Houston, TX needed
a system that would allow it to make sure its beer kegs got delivered where
they needed to go, when they needed to go.
Another Rounds Apps, a Texas-based
technology company, was ready to make that happen for them. But in order to
make the system work correctly, Another Round needed industrial-strength
barcodes that would be resistant to all the types of hazards a typical beer-keg
is exposed to on its way to the store or to the bar: power washing, coolers,
overheated delivery trucks, and the like. With Metalcraft metal barcode
nameplates, we provided them with just the right solution.
Our solution was truly effective and just as functional as
RFID technology for the purposes of the application. As one happy company
member put it, “RFID is a white collar solution… We’re tracking possession and
accountability, not GPS location. Brewers just want to know who has the kegs.”
With Metalcraft’s barcode nameplates at their service,
brewers get to know exactly that.