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Anheuser-Busch and D & S Beverages

People driving through Moorhead have likely noticed the large Anheuser-Busch facility just north of I-94. How many of those people, however, have given any thought to what actually occurs in the manufacturing process? How does barley grown in fields throughout the Red River Valley become the beer millions of people indulge in each year? I visited with Doug Restemayer, President of D & S Beverages, to find out exactly what goes on behind the doors of Anheuser-Busch.

Who is D & S Beverages?

D & S Beverages has been a staple of the Moorhead business scene since it was established in 1968 by Don Setter Sr., who originally worked for Anheuser-Busch selling bakery products, primarily yeast. Setter Sr. began D & S Beverages in a very small building where seven employees and five trucks serviced 127 accounts, selling less than 100,000 cases of beer. Today D & S Beverages employs over fifty people, selling over 1.8 million cases of products annually to 700 accounts. In 1968, there were less than 20 different beer products to sell; today they have 700 and growing. The majority of the company’s current business is with Anheuser-Busch, but D & S also sells beer from twenty other suppliers, including Bells, Alaskan, Flying Dog, Boulder, New Holland, Euclid, Tallgrass, and Southern Tier. They also sell Monster Energy drink, Dad’s Root beer, Arizona Tea, and Sparkling Ice.

Restemayer took over D & S Beverages in 2000, taking the reins from his father-in-law. The company is currently working on its fourth expansion, a $1.1 million addition that will add 7,200 ft2 of cold storage for beer along with an enclosure for their receiving dock area. In 2011, they completed a 10,000 ft2 warehouse addition and an 18,000 ft2 drive thru for storage and loading of trucks. That small building where Setter Sr. began his business has become a 58,000 ft2 facility encompassing an entire city block. With the acquisition of Anderson Beverages of Crookston on September 30th of this year, D & S Beverages has expanded their territory to include Polk, Norman, and Mahnomen counties in Minnesota. They also currently distribute in the counties of Cass, Traill, and Steele in North Dakota and Clay, Becker, Wadena, and Otter Tail counties in Minnesota.

So just how does product

get from grain to glass?

Many people do not know that there are three separate local facilities that are involved in the manufacturing process: a malt plant in Moorhead, a barley elevator in West Fargo owned by Busch Ag, and D & S Beverages. “Much of the barley used in Budweiser is grown here in the valley,” Restemayer explained. “It is bought by Anheuser-Busch, stored in West Fargo, processed into malting barley at the Moorhead plant, shipped to St. Louis to be turned into product, and then shipped back to us where we distribute it to almost 600 retailers in a 100 mile radius.” The process is truly a complete circle from start to finish.

According to the American Malting Barley Association, malting is the process of readying barley to be used in brewing. Malting is broken down into three steps in order to help to release the starches in the barley. To make beer, barley grains are steeped in water just until they germinate. The process is arrested by drying the grains, which are then cracked to expose the germinated seed. Germinated, dried barley is what’s known to beer makers as malt. Breweries soak malt in warm water to activate enzymes that convert the barley’s carbohydrates to simple sugars. These sugars give the liquid drained off the malt its name: sweet liquor. Sweet liquor is then boiled with hops, a perennial, vine plant which adds flavor and aroma to the beer, and also acts as a preservative.

History of Beer and Anheuser-Busch:

The earliest chemically confirmed barley beer to date was discovered at Godin Tepe in the central Zagros Mountains of Iran, where fragments of a jug, at least 5000 years old was found to coated with beerstone, a by-product of the brewing process. In 1612, the first commercial brewery opened in New Amsterdam, New York after colonists advertised in London newspapers for experienced brewers. The modern era of brewing in the U.S. began in the late 1800’s with the advent of commercial refrigeration, automatic bottling, pasteurization, and railroad distribution.

In the 1870’s, Adolphus Busch pioneered the use of double-walled railcars, a network of icehouses to make Budweiser the first national brand. By 2012, Anheuser-Busch had grown into one of nation’s the leading beer retailers, accounting for 47.6% of U.S. beer sales. According to the Alcohol & Tobacco Tax & Trade Bureau, a division of the Department of Treasury, almost 196 million barrels of beer were produced nationwide in 2012, which required over 5.6 billion pounds of grain products.

D & S Beverages:

One of the things that make D & S Beverages unique is that it has remained a locally owned family business despite its success, something not often seen in today’s culture of corporate takeovers. Restemayer credits the organization’s success to its culture. “Our perspective is we are very fortunate to be in the great business of beverage distributing that is challenging, changing, and fast paced,” he said, “yet there is room to have a lot of fun while getting the job done.” D & S considers its employees “teammates,” a term indicative of their overall philosophy. “We truly treat our team like family,” he continued, “which is why we have such loyal and long-term teammates.”

Employees receive a top notch benefits package that Restemayer believes is the right thing to do. “We have a pop machine for 25 cents, Monster for a buck, come in on the weekend and wash your personal vehicle, pick up some ice and a cooler – simple things, but symbolic of our culture,” he explained. The friendly and fun atmosphere does not mean, however, that D & S is not very passionate about their business. “We are extremely brand focused,” Restemayer said. “The beer industry is very competitive.”

D & S culture is driven by different mantras used by Restemayer including, “Speed is Life,” “attention to detail,” “differentiation,” and “pride and attitude.” It is also very likely that one can hear him quoting Al Pacino from the movie Any Given Sunday at the company’s monthly team meetings: “One inch at a time – on THIS team we fight for that inch … that inch makes all the difference between winning and losing.”