The Reyes Beer Division will acquire “substantially all the assets” of Powers Distributing in Lake Orion, Michigan, the company announced today.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The transaction is scheduled to close on December 10.
The Powers deal will add about 5.7 million cases to Reyes’ business from suppliers including Molson Coors, Constellation Brands, Mark Anthony Brands (White Claw, Mike’s), Boston Beer Company (Truly Hard Seltzer, Twisted Tea, Samuel Adams, Dogfish Head, Angry Orchard), Heineken and Diageo (Guinness). The deal will add around 2,800 customers to Reyes’ business in a state where it previously did not operate.
“We are thrilled to have the opportunity to compete in a new market – the ninth for RBD across the United States – to continue to expand our relationships with our suppliers, and to serve customers with a wide array of choices,” Reyes Beer Division CEO Tom Day said in a press release.
Powers Distributing’s territory consists of Oakland and Macomb counties, which cover the northern suburbs of Detroit. The company employs more than 250 workers, manages 85 brands via 30 different supplier relationships and operates a fleet of 45 trucks, according to the wholesaler’s website.
Powers Distributing has been family-owned and operated since its founding in 1939, which president Robert Powers pointed to as something that made the Reyes deal appealing, as the country’s largest wholesaler is still privately owned.
“Reyes Beer Division and Powers Distributing have a lot in common, including, but not limited to, being great long-standing family-owned businesses that both place a heightened focus on employee training and industry responsibility,” Powers said in the release. “I am confident that RBD will serve our market with the same world-class customer service that we prided ourselves on and build even more growth and success for the state of Michigan.”
With the acquisition, Reyes will add its ninth state, the first new market it has entered since its acquisition of Indianapolis-based Monarch Beverages in October 2020.
Thus far in 2021, Reyes has added about 19.1 million case equivalents to its business nationwide through deals that have acquired brand rights from some wholesalers and asset acquisitions of wholesalers in California, Maryland, South Carolina, and now Michigan.
Reyes acquired 1.1 million cases from West Palm Beach, Florida-based Brown Distributing and 6.8 million cases from Classic Beverages in Southern California. Both deals were announced in September.
Also last month, Reyes closed on its deal to acquire Greenville, South Carolina-based Greenco Beverage, which added 2.8 million case equivalents.
In August, Reyes acquired Centreville, Maryland-based G & G Distributors, which added 700,000 case equivalents. Reyes acquired Redding Distributing in Northern California in April, which added 2 million case equivalents to Reyes’ Golden Brands.
Reyes’ appetite for acquisitions has been called into question by the California Family Beer Distributors (CFBD), a trade group representing mostly independent Anheuser-Busch wholesalers in the Golden State, and national trade group the Brewers Association in comments to the Department of the Treasury’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) as part of President Joe Biden’s executive order calling for increased competition across several industries, including beverage alcohol. Those comment submissions were primarily focused on the California market where Reyes Beer Division controls about 160 million of the state’s roughly 300 million cases.
Reyes Beer Division CEO Day offered a rebuttal to the TTB and challenged the notion that competition in California’s beer market has suffered due to his company’s expansion efforts.
The Reyes Beer Division distributes more than 260 million cases annually to more than 100,000 retail accounts across California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, South Carolina, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.