Blue Ridge Beverage Company -- Our History

Blue Ridge Beverage Company is one of the largest wholesale beverage distributors in Virginia. Headquartered in Salem, Virginia, Blue Ridge distributes a wide variety of malt beverages, fine wine, and soft drinks throughout a 36-county region from four warehouse facilities located in Salem, Waynesboro, South Boston, and Lynchburg. These facilities have nearly 175,000 square feet of total operational space. The Company services more than 3,500 customers using state-of-the-art equipment and continually is working to enhance its value-added services.

Blue Ridge Beverage Company is proud to represent many of the finest beers, wine and soft drink suppliers from the United States and around the world. The Company's largest single supplier is Miller Brewing Company, brewer of Miller Lite, Miller Genuine Draft, Miller High Life, Icehouse, Foster's, Peroni, Pilsner Urquell, and Milwaukee's Best, to name a few. Blue Ridge is currently the largest distributor of Miller products in Virginia. Blue Ridge is also extremely proud to distribute outstanding brands produced by the Coors Brewing Company in that territory worked from our Waynesboro Division located in the Shenandoah Valley. These brands include Coors Banquet, Coors Light, Blue Moon, Keystone Light, George Killian's, and Molson. Other major beer brands include Heineken, Corona, Samuel Adams, Rolling Rock, Foster's, Magic Hat, Harpoon, Stella Artois, Beck's, Guinness and many, many more. Please check with each division as to the brands they sell in their assigned marketing areas.

The Company distributes hundreds of fine wine brands, including popular labels such as Beringer, Robert Mondavi, Yellow Tail, Lindeman's, Franzia, Chateau Morrisette, Sutter Home, Kendall-Jackson, Rosemount, Penfolds, Barboursville, Niebaum-Coppola, and many, many more. These fine wine products, depending on territory agreements, are sold in our Salem, Lynchburg, and South Boston divisions. Soft drinks, water and juices are also playing an increasing role in the Company, with well-known brands such as 7-Up, Canada Dry, RC Cola, A&W, Sunkist, Snapple, Mistic, Arizona, Fiji, and Orangina, among others. Blue Ridge Beverage is also the distributor for Red Bull products.

Blue Ridge Beverage's origins date from the post prohibition era when it was founded in 1938 as a small beer wholesaler. Beer brands distributed by the Company included Red Top, National Bohemian, Iron City, and Falls City, among others. In 1953, the Company became a distributor for Miller Brewing Company, which is now the United States' second largest brewer. However, during the 1950's, Miller was only the seventh largest producer in a beer market that was much more fragmented than you see today.

Blue Ridge Beverage Company has been under the direct ownership of the Archer family since 1959, when James M. Archer, Jr. and his wife Regine moved their family to the Roanoke Valley. Under Mr. Archer's management, the Company initially grew by diversifying into various beer and soft drink brands such as Falstaff, Wiedeman, Ballantine, and Cott's. Then, in 1961, Blue Ridge entered the wine industry by acquiring the distribution rights of an Alexandria, Virginia-based distributor (Globe Distributing Company) who was exiting the Roanoke Valley market. These original brands formed the basis for what is now southwest Virginia's largest and most diversified wine distributor.

Beginning in 1969, tobacco and retailing giant Philip Morris began the acquisition of the Miller Brewing Company. With its new parent's sales and marketing expertise, the brewery introduced the now-famous 7-ounce Miller High Life "pony" bottle. Miller High Life's popularity soared. Spurred further by the introduction of Miller Lite, Miller Brewing Company exploded to more than 41 million barrels of annual production today.

During the 1970's, Blue Ridge Beverage's growth mirrored the fortunes of the Miller Brewing Company. Mr. Archer's untimely death in 1972 occurred just as this Company was poised for the most rapid growth of its history. Regine Archer and the eldest of their three sons, Bob, assumed control of the business and successfully managed the Company's rapid expansion. During this period, Miller cited Blue Ridge Beverage as one of its most effective distributors, winning the prestigious Miller Masters Award on several occasions.

The Archer's youngest son, Paul, joined the Company in 1975 to serve as operations manager of the growing company. Later that year, Blue Ridge moved into a new facility just west of Salem in Roanoke County. By 1977, the Company completed an addition to the building, bringing its total storage space to more than 33,000 square feet. Total employees had tripled to exceed 30 people. The Company computerized its route and financial accounting operations, and was the first beverage distributor in the Roanoke Valley to utilize hand-held computers for order taking in the market.

Besides the growth resulting from Miller Brewing Company's success, Blue Ridge Beverage continued to expand through acquisitions of territories and beverage brands. In 1983, the Archers' third son Jim joined the Company from Corning Glass Works to become its marketing manager. Jim was primarily responsible for adding numerous wine, import beer and soft drink brands to the Company's "multi-brands" portfolio, which is marketed separately from Miller beer products.

In 1984, the Archer family acquired a second Miller distributorship in Charlottesville, Virginia. Son Paul assumed the role of general manager of Cavalier Beverage Company. On December 31, 1988, the Miller distributorship in Harrisonburg, Virginia was acquired and renamed Shenandoah Beverage Company and was operated along with Cavalier Beverage as one company.

In 1985, Blue Ridge in Salem more than doubled its warehouse space by moving a short distance into a new 78,000 square foot facility that is the company headquarters today. In 1987, the Company nearly doubled its wine business by acquiring a large competitor headquartered in the Roanoke Valley. Since the mid-1980's, Blue Ridge Beverage has focused on developing its soft drink business. Today, the Company is one of the major distributors for so-called "New Age" beverages and bottled waters, including Snapple, Mistic, Arizona, Fiji, Perrier, and others.

In 1996, the Company further expanded its soft drink business by acquiring the Roanoke, Virginia operations of All-American Bottling Corporation. This acquisition included the local 7-Up and RC Cola franchises. During this time period, Cavalier Beverage acquired the RC Cola franchise and began distributing Canada Dry, Snapple, Hawaiian Punch, Fiji, Perrier, and other brands in a major portion of its existing territory.

Blue Ridge Beverage and Cavalier Beverage achieved a major milestone on June 30, 1997, when Cavalier/Shenandoah, its 65 employees and two facilities in Charlottesville and Harrisonburg were merged into Blue Ridge Beverage. Simultaneous with the closing of this transaction, Blue Ridge beverage acquired the Miller franchise rights and certain other franchises of Southern Virginia Distributing Company of Danville and Keysville, Virginia. In October 1998, these two locations relocated into a new 33,000 square foot facility in South Boston, Virginia. In February 1998, the Company also purchased the rights to distribute Miller Brewing Company products (among others) in the Lynchburg, Virginia market area. With the closing of these transactions, Blue Ridge Beverage now has more than 240 employees, with operations covering 36 contiguous counties, central and southern Virginia.

Also of note, was the construction of a state-of-the-art facility in Waynesboro, Virginia, which became operational in January of 2001. With the opening of this 50,000 square foot facility, duplication of systems and poor efficiencies were eliminated and span of control became much more effective. With this move, Blue Ridge was now operating in four strategically located and efficient facilities. The current General Manager for this important Division is Tom Parker who joined the Company in 2003 and does an outstanding job for Blue Ridge and the community.

Though the Company is always interested in growth through smart acquisition, it is focused on creating a unified corporate culture to generate internal growth, increasing productivity, and to achieve various efficiencies. Regine Archer is Chairman and Bob Archer is the President/CEO of the entire corporation. Jim Archer is the Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing for the combined company. Paul Archer remains at the Waynesboro location and is now responsible for operations at that expanded new facility. The Archers' youngest daughter, Jackie has also played an invaluable role during this period of acquisition and organizational change. She has and extensive background in the banking industry in Chicago for over 12 years and now serves as a member of our Board of Directors and is the Company's Executive vice President and Chief Financial Officer. She is actively involved in all accounting, fiscal policy, and bank relationship issues. Daughter Evelyn Archer Hunt assumed responsibility as Divisional Manager of the new facility/operation in South Boston, Virginia. Evelyn has assumed a dual role by becoming the Divisional Manager of the Company's Lynchburg division in June of 2004. Also, in January 2002, a new General Manager position was created at the Salem Division in order to facilitate a reorganization of the corporate-wide leadership.

Effective September 30, 2003, Blue Ridge Beverage acquired Dod Distributing, primarily a Coors Brewing Company wholesaler, also possessed a broad portfolio to include Corona and Heineken in their marketing area. We successfully merged this operation into our facility located in Waynesboro on January 5, 2004, bringing two outstanding sales and operational workforces together. This acquisition was most important in terms of market share and our long-term futures in this area. Jackie Archer served as the "transition manager" for this entire effort and served as the Division General Manager until recently. As previously stated, Tom Parker now serves as our General Manager and is leading an extremely effective sales and marketing team. The Waynesboro Division was a prestigious national President's Cup award winner in 2007, which is given to the top distributors in the country by the Coors Brewing Company.

Blue Ridge Beverage Company's successful growth strategy and strong competitive position are directly attributable to the quality of its employees. Without experienced, hard-working and dedicated individuals, none of the Company's achievements would be possible. Blue Ridge Beverage and its senior management continually strive to offer customers the highest quality beverage products available, to provide suppliers and customers the highest service levels possible and, above all, to provide motivation, leadership, and an excellent work environment for its valued employees.

Blue Ridge Beverage Company, Inc., is a Virginia ABC licensed wholesale distributor of beer and wine products,
and is authorized to sell alcoholic beverages only to Virginia ABC licensed retailers.

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