Independent wholesaler Scout Distribution has expanded north from its San Diego headquarters to Los Angeles.
“We have been eyeing the Los Angeles market for a long time, and for us, it was all about timing,” Scout CEO Jeff Hansson said in a press release. “LA is a vast and complex market that we are excited to tackle.”
Scout, which was founded in 2018 in San Diego and expanded to Arizona with statewide distribution in April, is launching in Los Angeles with 17 brands. They include beer (Ogopogo Brewing, Harland Brewing, Embolden Beer Company, Port Brewing, Tiny Bubbles, Abnormal Beer Company and Calidad Beer), beyond beer (Loverboy, Fountain Hard Seltzer, Babe Kombucha and New Motion Beverages), wine (Jetway and Longhouse Wines), spirits (Sundowner Spirits and Seaborn Cocktails), Bivouac Ciderworks and Dark Horse Coffee.
Scout’s Southern California territory now includes Los Angeles, San Diego and Orange counties. The new market will unlock doors at the retail level, Hansson said.
“Servicing Los Angeles gives us leverage against our competitors in grocery chains and with other critical retailers,” Hansson said in the release. “It’s a crucial market for Scout to cover in order to provide a continuous distribution footprint for our supplier partners.”
With the expansion to Los Angeles, Scout has hired Tim Cooney as the VP and general manager of the new business unit. Cooney was previously senior sales director for greater Los Angeles at Anheuser-Busch InBev.
“Tim brings an expansive knowledge of the Los Angeles territory and shares our vision in working closely with our brands to help them achieve their highest potential,” Scout president Anthony Levas said in the release. “We find his leadership abilities, experience and skill set to be the perfect fit to lead Scout LA to success. We are thrilled to have him managing the team, and look forward to seeing all we will accomplish with him at the helm.”
Scout LA has also tapped Even Smelser as area sales manager and Lailie Martin as key accounts manager. Smelser joined Scout from Classic Beverage, where he managed on-premise sales. Martin was previously at Modern Times.
“Our entire sales team has been hand-picked to include people from incredibly strong beer
distribution backgrounds and who have firsthand knowledge of the LA market,” Cooney said in the release. “We are positioned perfectly with our portfolio, this team, and Scout’s vision to make Scout LA a success.”
In addition to the new Los Angeles hires, Scout also named Michael Yao as chief operating officer overseeing its business units in California and Arizona. Yao joined Scout in October 2020 from Triangle Distributing, where he last served as VP and general manager.
The middle tier in Southern California has been in flux for several years. Last month, the Reyes Beer Division acquired the rights to several large beer brands from Classic, including Molson Coors, Mark Anthony Brands, Boston Beer Company, Heineken USA, Lagunitas Brewing Company, Firestone Walker Brewing Company, Pabst Brewing Company and Sierra Nevada Brewing Company. The deal added 6.8 million cases to Reyes’ business in the region.
In July 2020, Anheuser-Busch and Heimark Distributing president and CEO Peter Heimark – also the owner of Triangle Distributing – agreed to a deal that swapped rights to A-B’s portfolio from Triangle back to A-B and from A-B’s wholly owned distributor in Riverside to Heimark.
The recent moves are continued fallout from several deals in 2018 in which Constellation Brands – maker and importer of Modelo, Corona and Pacifico – forced the sale of its brands to Reyes subsidiaries from independent wholesalers including Markstein Beverage Co., Triangle, and Beauchamp Distributing.
Scout’s success as a new and independent distributor makes it something of a unicorn. In September, Massachusetts-based Night Shift Distributing shut down after five years, and Night Shift Brewing sold the rights to its brands to Sheehan Family Companies. Stone Distributing ceased its Northern California operations in March and sold the rights to Stone Brewing products in the territory to Matagrano.