Tour of Monarch Beverage – Hosted by Bob Mack of World Class Beer

Monarch beverage is an Indiana owned family business. They moved to a new facility on the east side of Indianapolis about 3 years ago.  Monarch sells over 17 million cases of beer and wine annually.  As a wholesaler and distributor, they handle beer and wine only – No liquor. 

Since the 21^st amendment – states all regulate alcohol independently. In Indiana there is a three tier system.  Breweries sell to distributors who then sell to the retail stores.  The distributor takes care of all transportation, most shelf stocking and paying the alcohol taxes on everything that is sold. Monarch represents approximately ¼ of all the beer tax revenue in the state of Indiana.

In 1970 there were roughly 40 breweries operating nationwide. Today that number is close to 2000. There are almost different breweries that have products available in Indiana.  Everything that is not a Budweiser product is handled through Monarch beverage.  Even with the large number of breweries that are now available beer consumption is actually down slightly over the last 5 years.  That said, on the day of our tour Monarch had 1.4 million cases of beer in stock.

Monarch has several innovative systems to help them manage their 900 – 1000 daily stops. The entire system is computer controlled, and many items go from the loading dock to the shipping dock without ever being touched by a human hand. They have 2 beer robots that tear down full pallets and load them into the automated system. They also have 4 robots that palletize orders. These robots are part of the vertique system. Everything is loaded so it comes of the truck in the correct order based on when each stop is scheduled throughout the day.