Rolling Rock became the Tito family's signature beer, serving as the financial mainstay for Latrobe Brewing in the decades to follow. Although the Tito brothers consistently invested in improving the brewery's production processes and its capacity, they never seriously attempted to promote Rolling Rock as a national brand.
The Tito family, in fact, never developed a genuine marketing department to support the sale of Rolling Rock, relying instead on the most basic of sales promotions. Well into the s, Latrobe Brewing's sales force restricted its efforts to buying rounds of beers in neighborhood taverns. Despite the company's less than ambitious promotional efforts, Rolling Rock developed a loyal following in southwestern Pennsylvania and gained an established presence in several markets in the northeastern United States.
By , Latrobe Brewing was producing , barrels of Rolling Rock a year, a record high recorded on the 35th anniversary of the brand's inception. Unfortunately for the Tito family, the production total reached in represented Latrobe Brewing's peak year. In the years to follow, production totals declined alarmingly as the Tito family fell victim to the more aggressive, more ambitious marketing efforts displayed by other brewers. Not long after Latrobe Brewing registered its record production total, the dynamics of the brewing industry began to change.
Major brewers began hiring packaged goods experts who transformed the business of selling beer into a battle decided by sophisticated marketing programs. The Titos, historically reluctant to engage in anything more than minimal promotional efforts, refused to follow the industrywide trend. They chose to remain focused on production rather than adopt a marketing orientation, and the sale of Rolling Rock suffered. By , after labor disputes erupted into two strikes, production volume had dropped to , barrels, the nadir reached after the peak of , barrels in The plummet in production prompted the Tito family to sell the business, ending its more than half-century association with Latrobe Brewing.
In , Sundor Group acquired Latrobe Brewing. A leveraged buyout firm based in Darien, Connecticut, Sundor Group intended to reverse the fortunes of Latrobe Brewing and then sell the brewery for a profit, its aim, according to the June 20, issue of Brandweek, to effect a "quick turnaround play.
When Sundor Group acquired Latrobe Brewing, the leveraged buyout company had recently purchased several juice products companies, its original business. The acquisitions had saddled the company with debt, leaving it in a weak financial position to engineer Rolling Rock's transformation into a national brand. Sundor Group lacked sufficient financial muscle to support such an expansion, critics contended, and was forced to greatly reduce capital spending, something the Tito family had always refused to do.
Accordingly, Rolling Rock's market exposure was increased, but at the expense of quality. When Sundor Group sold Latrobe Brewing in , it accomplished its primary objective by making what analysts described as a sizable profit. Latrobe Brewing, however, enjoyed little benefit from its two-year relationship with the leveraged buyout firm.
In , Latrobe Brewing was acquired by Labatt U. Executives assigned to spearhead the revival of the Rolling Rock brand inherited a product that had changed very little since the early years of the Tito family's ownership, particularly the bottle used to package Rolling Rock beer.
Featuring a distinctive painted-label green bottle and a horsehead-and-steeplechase icon, Rolling Rock stood out among the ranks of bottled beers occupying retail shelves. A slogan painted on the bottle referred to mountain springs and the glass-lined tanks of Old Latrobe, followed by a cryptic "33" imprinted beneath.
One of the brand managers employed by Labatt U. Through marketing research, Chappell discovered the "33" imprinted on the long-neck bottles was capable of cultivating near cultlike interest. Lager soon became very popular as more and more German immigrants began opening breweries within America. There are several styles of lager, although the type used by Rolling Rock is known as American lager. American lager, a pale, crisp lager with an appearance of yellow to gold originated in Europe and then was introduced to America through immigration.
Due to this lager being produced and stored in colder climates, brewers would once use the technique of brewing in caves during colder months Anchor Brewing Blog, Lager today is now one of the most consumed beer styles across the world as it differs greatly from other beer styles with its unique fermentation process ad light appearance. Benbow, M. German immigrants in the United States Brewing Industry. Immigrant Entrepreneurship. Beer Et Seq.
How prohibition changed beer. The Mob Museum. Spilling the beans of rolling rock alcohol content percentage. Alcohol By Volume. Log in or sign up to view. Beer Styles. Home Brewing Blog. Stumpo, N. The Latrobe Brewing Co. What is lager? Though alcohol production and sales in the United States were put on hold, it was not to be the end of the short-lived brewing era in Latrobe.
During Prohibition, four local brothers, Frank, Robert, Ralph, and Anthony, of the Tito family took a gamble and purchased the idle facility in hopes that Prohibition would soon be repealed.
The venture paid off gloriously and in , the Brewery was back in business. It was then in that Rolling Rock officially got its introduction to the world. Water, malt, rice, corn, hops, and brewer's yeast. The ingredients that comprise Rolling Rock are rather simple. And as promised on Rolling Rock's green, long neck bottles, " In fact the rather light-bodied beer has been said to change ever so slightly in taste from year to year due to the sediments that run off the hills into the mountain streams that feed the main brewing reservoir.
That stream's bed filled with smooth stones is thought to be responsible for Rolling Rock's name. But, its bottles and the "mystery" painted on them is perhaps more famous than its taste. Rolling Rock, since its creation, has been bottled in distinctive green glass bottles with white painted lettering in both standard 12 oz.
That white pony adorns the front of the bottle and on the back, the slogan "Rolling Rock. From the glass lined-tanks of Old Latrobe we tender this premium beer for your enjoyment, as a tribute to your good taste. It comes from the mountain springs to you. Conventional wisdom suggested it was a number for the printer indicating how many words were in the slogan that was somehow forgotten to be removed.
But many, many others have sprung up since. There are 33 steps from the first floor to the second in the Latrobe Brewery.
There are 33 letters in the list of ingredients. There are supposedly 33 mountain springs that feed the brewing reservoir. It's even been suggested it has something to do with Groundhog's Day, the 33rd day of the year and a bit more than a tradition in western Pennsylvania. In the end, it turns out that even the brewery doesn't know, or at least they won't admit that they do.
Whether or not they purposely never offered an explanation or not, what they did do was make Rolling Rock their mainstay, and its sales supported the brewery for decades. Ironically, the beer's success was never a result of a concentrated marketing effort by the Tito family, contrary to the mass marketed world of high volume beverage production in America today.
Well into the s, the family never tried to promote Rolling Rock as a national brand, and their sales promotions were basic at best. In fact, the most common tactic employed was having Rolling Rock representatives simply buy rounds for the boys at local pubs and taverns.
Yet, they constantly reinvested the profits back into the facility, expanding its production and capacity.
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