16 New Restaurants in Downtown Allentown

Thinking of catching a bite to eat at one of Allentown's downtown restaurants before a concert or a Phantoms Game at the new arena? You need to make reservations far in advance or be the first in line for dinner if you want a seat.

In the last two years, downtown Allentown has added many new restaurants. 

Coca-Cola Bottling Company of the Lehigh Valley has been at the forefront of this movement and acquired 16 new restaurants as part of this revitalization.

1. Chickie’s and Pete’s
2. Shula’s Restaurant
3. Hamilton Kitchen
4. The Grain
5. Roar Social House
6. The Dime Restaurant in the Renaissance Downtown Allentown Hotel
7. Tony Luke’s
8. Tim Horton’s
9. Crust Coal Fired Pizza
10.  Johnny’s Bagels
11. Billy’s Downtown Diner
12. Nana’s Café & Grill
13. The Hook
14. Centro
15. Center Ice
16. Bell Hall

Great job Tim Buda and the Cold Drink Department for your hard work!

Submitted by: Pam Garin

Persistence!!!

Submitted by Chuck Evans, Director of Sales & Marketing Lehigh

We are reminded everyday, how lucky we are to have Great people in our sales organization!  Our OPRS Tim Buda has been pursuing a new account called Frites, which is a Belgian French fry restaurant in the Lehigh Valley Mall.  After numerous attempts to secure pouring rights, the owner decided to go with the competition because of a new compact freestyle machine that was just developed.  The owner was nice enough to send a note that the choice was strictly about the new technology of fountain and nothing to do about pricing or service.  Tim, continued to check in on the owner to see how his restaurant was shaping up.  After continuous persistence of developing a relationship, the owner changed his mind because of Tim’s persistence and changed to Coke.  The owner was impressed with Tim’s follow-ups and figured in the long run that’s the service and relationship he wanted from his beverage provider.

Great Selling, Great Persistence by Tim Buda!

Upgrading System & Emergency Lighting in Lehigh

Submitted by Brian Horwath:

The Coca Cola Company of the Lehigh Valley continues to gain momentum with upgrading the system in food safety considerations.  In a multiple stage process, necessary repair improvements were made to increase good manufacturing practices and strengthen quality.

Before:

After:

We have upgraded our fire protection system with emergency lighting, visual, and audio.  Below is a picture of one of the units installed.  This will assist the operators in the case of an emergency during the evening hours where previously there was not.

Innovation and Safety Upgrades

Cultivating an environment of continuous improvement, the Coca Cola Bottling Company has combined safety and innovation to address improvement opportunities in the Production Department.  Upgrading machine guarding was identified as a focus for the Maintenance Department.  Completion was seen as a difficult task at first; but, Paul Milkovits took his conceptual ideas and followed them to fruition. These equipment upgrades started from his images and through his skill base, were built and theory became reality.  We are all very proud of Paul, his achievements, and his focus to safety and continual improvement.

Brian Horwath

Director of Operations

Coca Cola Billboard Partnership Program

Submitted by: Chuck Evans, Director of Sales & Marketing

COCA-COLA BILLBOARD PARTNERSHIP PROGRAM

When we acquired the naming rights of Coca-Cola Park, we also acquired marketing assets such as outfield billboards and concourse signage. Early on we used these signage assets to leverage branding of our products.  We also took a chance in leveraging one of the outfield billboards with one of our customers, Wegman’s in return for space.  The partnership concept worked as we gave Wegman’s a billboard to market their name, and in return we were given additional space in the store for displays.  This lasted 5 years, as Wegman’s did not renew their partnership and was going to use that space for their intention to promote alcohol.  As a result, we decided to look at using the signage for additional customers.

Through ABE's SMT, in our S-3 Strategy - Grow Volume & Sparkling, we looked to use our Coca-Cola Park assets with our top 2 customers, Giant & Weis.  We created a similar program with both in leveraging advertising on the billboards for acquiring additional space for displays to grow sparkling and MC.  As a result this past summer, we were up 27.8K cases, 4.2% in volume and up $428.6K, 17.9% in MC over prior year.

To emphasize the results of our display packages thru our Coke Park partnership program with Giant, 20pk volume was up 13.5% and 16.8% MC, and 2L volume was up 11.6% and 26.5% MC.

We also instituted the same Iron Pigs partnership program with Weis and thru incremental displays, 20pk volume was up 44.3% and 123.3% MC, and 2L volume is up 7.5% and 14% MC.

Due to the success, we took this program one step further and have now reached a similar program with our top Independent C&P chain, Topstar and also just reached an agreement with Walmart, running the partnership program Feb - Dec.

The attached picture is the beginning of the Coca-Cola Park partnership program with Walmart.

Just Ask...

Most managers do well in terms of communicating ‘down’ from management to employees. What we are often missing, are mechanisms for employees to communicate ‘up’ on a regular basis. Employees with first-hand knowledge of processes or problems are some of our most valuable resource. They are willing to engage in problem solving rather than accepting legacy answers.

Since I have been at the Lehigh facility, I have been amazed at the employees’ willingness to engage and contribute. Our first successful engagement was when a Logistics employee decided he wanted to move our clamping area to a new employee friendly area.

We defined and implemented this change which had a far reaching effect on productivity, quality and safety.  The employees saw that we were committed to listening and now they offer suggestions all the time.

Now, instead of having formalized meetings, we focus on communicating through day to day conversations with our front line employees.

By Dan Dougherty

IF THEY DON'T FILL IT, WE WILL

Part of ABARTA Beverage East plan for 2013 was an emphasis on growing our very profitable IC (immediate consumption) business.  This volume is not affected by competitive pricing but rather is affected more by increasing space, improving distribution and correct product and brand mix.  It brings consistent dividends and always pays us back for our efforts.

Our tactic to improve our IC business was somewhat basic.  We wanted to increase our space within existing accounts which we called our Plus +1 program (increasing our space by 1 more door to whatever we have) and get new outlets to sell our brands.

A success story we have to tell was with our OPAM (On Premise Account Manager) representative, Jeremy Neill.   While Jeremy was prospecting in Kennett Square, PA, he walked into an account called Enzo’s Pizza and made a discovery. This particular account has been with “Brand X” for over 21 years and has 3 locations.   Two of them are in CCR’s territory and the other in ours. On his call, he discovered the “Brand X” cooler was empty.  As many of you can imagine, for a Sales rep, this is a beautiful situation to walk into if handled correctly!

Jeremy immediately went into “discover mode” with the account, and during his conversations with the manager, realized this was an on going problem.

Jeremy was then given the number to the owner who was at another store. Jeremy explained that he would be happy to fill up the cooler for him if “Brand X” was not. The owner gave the ok and we sent product in the next day for cash. This went on for about 3 weeks until the owner finally agreed to switch.

Estimated sales for the account will be roughly 500 to 600 cases with over 3k in gross profit.

If you’re on the street sourcing new accounts, good things happen even with “Brand X’s” help. See pictures, it tells the full story.

John Iafolla,

Sales Director
Chester County