Diocese awarded $20M bond deal
November 28, 2006Thibodaux toy drive kicks into high gear
December 1, 2006
For over 50 years, Buquet Distributing Company, Inc. has been serving good times, friendships and beer to the Tri-parish area. Because, after all, according to J.J. Buquet III, those three go hand in hand.
“We’re a people business,” explained Buquet. “We’re about selling and promoting the small enjoyment in life of getting together with friends and sharing time together. That’s what the beer business is about. When I talk generically about beer … it’s about getting together with friends and developing and deepening friendships and relationships.”
Buquet said that was a lesson he learned from his father, founder of Buquet Distributing. Fresh from earning his MBA at Tulane, the younger Buquet said he encountered a problem. “I thought all the answers were found in my little computer screen,” he said. “I was struggling to figure out my problem. (Dad) said, ‘Son, you can worry about all the things you’re worried about. And you can search for all your answers in math problems. But at the end of the day, it’s people that make it happen. Your answers are going to be found more with your people.
“He was absolutely right.”
And that theory—people are what matter—is the likely reason Buquet Distributing has had such longevity in the Tri-Parish area. The history of the company dates to the early 1950s when father James Buquet purchased the Anheuser-Busch beer route for the Tri-Parish area. The senior Buquet had just come out of the Korean War and was working in the oilfield industry when his cousin, Charlie Boudreaux, spoke to him about the beer route.
“(Charlie) was running the beer route for Anheuser-Busch in this area,” said Buquet. “Over dinner one Sunday, he (told my dad), ‘I think I’m going to lose my job.’”
At the time, the Tri-Parish area was a part of the Baton Rouge distributorship. After the owner became sick, the brewer wanted to form a separate distributorship in the Tri-Parish area.
J.J. Buquet went on, “(Charlie) said, ‘I know what the volume is. I run the route, and I service this area. It’s not a lot. Whoever buys it, it’s going to be a one-man show, so I’m sure when they get a buyer, I’m going to lose my job.’”
To make a long story short, James Buquet interviewed for the beer route. He was granted the distributorship in November 1953. “It was just the two of them for the first couple of years,” said Buquet. “It was two employees, two trucks, a little warehouse, a little bit of inventory and off you went with a pen in your hand. He had two brands (Budweiser and Michelob) and maybe four packages.
“Today, we’re at about 70 employees. We have 17 route trucks on the road. We have close to 20 vans on the road. And we have about 170 packages spread across 40 brands”
Buquet said since the beginning, the beer industry has changed dramatically.
When his father first started the distributorship, Anheuser-Busch was just a regional brewery out of St. Louis that had less than .5-percent of the market share in this area. “Down here, Falstaff and Dixie were the real kings of the hill,” he recalled.
Today, Anheuser-Busch holds a healthy 63-percent share of the industry.
The differences are not only in the market share, but also in the brand names. “Back then, dad had Budweiser,” said Buquet. “Bud Light didn’t exist in 1952. It didn’t come out until the late 1970s. So (back then) it was just Budweiser and Michelob.”
That was a time when the product came to the warehouse via railroad. Today it is delivered completely by trucks from Anheuser-Busch’s Houston brewery. Buquet said the beer is shipped to the distributor almost as soon as it is bottled and packaged. “We keep an average of 10 to 12 days of inventory,” said Buquet. “By the time it hits the back room of a store, it’s maybe 15 to 20 days old, and within a relatively short time it’s on the shelf.”
While at Buquet Distributing, the beer is kept in an environmentally controlled warehouse. “The moment it gets here, it’s right into a warehouse that’s kept no higher that 72 degrees all year long. Right now, our set points are around 58- to 62 degrees. On average, most beer, we’re required to pull it off the shelf and destroy it once it hits 110 days,” he said.
Buquet said the biggest sales come throughout the summer.
“Late-April, all the way through Labor Day—that’s our peak season,” he said. “January is typically our slowest month of the year. We spike at Mardi Gras, then for the first three or four weeks of Lent we see a big dip. And we see a little bump in sales around Thanksgiving and Christmas.”
And this year as a whole? “This year, we will hit about 2.1 million cases,” said Buquet.
Perhaps the reason for Buquet’s extended success can be the fact that the company has stayed true to its roots—a family business. Buquet has a sister and brother-in-law that are part of the company. “And my dad, who’s 80, still comes to work every day. He sort of keeps me in line, I guess.
“It’s very much a family business.”
Staying true to its roots means remembering one thing: “People make it happen.”
And Buquet has kept that philosophy: “The people of this community,” he said, “have helped us to achieve the success that we’ve achieved.”
J.J. Buquet III has been the president of Buquet Distributing Company, Inc., for the past 16 years. The company has been in business in the Houma since 1953, when Buquet’s father, James Buquet Jr., was granted the beer route in the Tri-parish area.
