70 Years of Industry Leadership


70 Years of Industry Leadership

1935-2005

06The Repeal of Prohibition had been in effect for just over a year when a publication called Liquor Store & Dispenser debuted in beverage alcohol outlets across the U.S. Its purpose was to provide a service to the retail trade by addressing a wide range of issues critical to the business of selling beverage alcohol product. Indeed, the editorial in the January 1935 issue was titled, “Successful Merchandising,” an area of focus that is no less important to retailers today. 0507an

In the past 70 years, the magazine has gone through a number of evolutionary steps, as has the industry it covers. By the 1950s, the magazine was simply called Liquor Store, a title that remained until the late 1980s. By then, it was obvious that the American consumer had changed and so had the beverage alcohol retailer, who, unless prohibited by state law, had expanded his product selection beyond wine, beer and spirits. With that in mind, the magazine’s name was changed to Beverage Dynamics, primarily to reflect the increasingly “dynamic” nature of the beverage alcohol industry.

Throughout the 1990s, we increased our distribution to channels beyond traditional wine and spirits shops, to supermarket chains, convenience and drug outlets and eventually to mass merchandisers, keeping abreast of the retail changes that continue to affect the beverage alcohol industry today. At the same time, we’ve maintained our focus on the independent beverage alcohol operation, whether single store or chain, and evolved with them. For example, for many of our readers, the merchandising of beverage alcohol and foods have become increasingly important, as have the synergies of various categories of non-alcohol beverages, and we’ve increased coverage in those areas to keep up with the changes. Even more importantly, we’ve tried to keep our readers apprised of the latest changes in retail technology, with the ascendancy of the Internet and our computerized world.

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Through it all, our mission has remained the same: to serve beverage alcohol retailers by providing them with timely, incisive coverage of their industry.

What follows, then, is a 70-year retrospective of the beverage alcohol industry as presented in the pages of Beverage Dynamics and its earlier incarnations over the past seven decades.

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