Middle Tier: Indispensable

As our country's two largest brewers wrapped up their respective marketing meetings last week, one common theme emerged from both: more investment is required from brewers and distributors, particularly on-premise.It is a jagged little pill for some distributors to swallow, particularly in smaller markets, because on-premise investment typically doesn't return immediate huge volume gains like an off-premise ad or display program would. On-premise investment is like Nike investing in Tiger Woods: it's expensive as hell and it's hard to measure