Niche in distributing craft brew
By Mark Glover, Sacramento Bee
Back in 2007, the nation was sliding into recession and a seismic shift was occurring in the beer-distribution business.
Big-name brewers that once depended on a wide network of relatively small, local distributors were shifting gears and turning to so-called mega-distributors who could handle millions of cases of beer on a grand scale.
Jason Mussetter, barely out of his 20s and a second-generation employee of family-owned Mussetter Distributing in Auburn, studied the Northern California beer industry and decided that the local company needed to do some shifting of its own. He convinced the family that future success could be found in craft beers.
The distributorship serves a swath of Northern California craft purveyors stretching from the Bay Area to Lake Tahoe. Clients include Hoppy Brewing Co. in Sacramento, Grand Teton Brewing in Victor, Idaho and Tahoe Mountain Brewing Co., which has a brewpub in Tahoe City and a brewery in Truckee.
