Evolving Enterprise Inco Beverage celebrates 90th anniversary in December - Yahoo Finance

Nov. 26—JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — For three family generations over the course of 90 years, Inco Beverage Inc. has supplied beer to retail establishments in the region.

The answers to the following questions were provided by Joe Incardona, vice president of the company his grandfather started.

The goal of presenting this questionnaire is to show how time-tested businesses have grown and endured. For more, listen to the podcast.

Question: How did your business start?

Answer: My grandparents, Joe and Amelia Incardona, founded Inco Beverage two weeks after Prohibition ended in December 1933. They started in a small storefront/warehouse on Adams Street in downtown Johnstown and lived in an apartment above the business.

My grandfather had been working with my grandmother in her parents' business on Railroad Street in downtown Johnstown. That business was J. Puma & Son Banana Importing, as my grandmother's father was the banana importer for the Johnstown area since the early 1900s. I think this experience in the wholesale produce/food business got my grandfather, Joe Incardona (for whom I am named), thinking about going out on his own in another wholesaling business — in the case of Inco Beverage, beer.

Inco Beverage started out with four beer brands, three which were brewed not far away in Pittsburgh: Iron City, Duquesne, and Ft. Pitt. The fourth brand was a local brand from the Rockwood Brewery in nearby Rockwood (Somerset County).

My grandparents started their family around this same time, with my Aunt Nancy being born in 1934, and my dad, Antonino "Nino" Incardona, being born two weeks after the devastating 1936 Johnstown flood. My dad and my aunt would become involved with Inco Beverage years later, which ensured the business would continue into the second generation of the Incardona family.

Question: What were some of the major developments in the business over time? How has your business evolved to what it is today?

Answer: My grandparents rode the "rollercoaster" of the American beer industry from the time they started in 1933 through the 1980s. The business grew rapidly in the post-World War II era, as Inco Beverage became the Johnstown-area importing distributor for its first major national beer brand, Carling Black Label. This prompted a move to a larger building on Railroad Street in Johnstown, a strategic location in downtown Johnstown in that it has a railroad siding. At this time, Inco Beverage's shipments of beer products came via rail to our Railroad Street warehouse.

By the early 1960s, Carling Black Label was faltering as a beer brand nationally. Fortunately, my grandfather had an opportunity to become the Schlitz importing distributor for the Johnstown area. Schlitz was on fire nationally as a brand, so, once again, Inco Beverage was running out of space in our warehouse. This prompted a move to Moxham, at 56 Bridge St., where we also began bottling sodas as the Squirt Bottling Co. of Johnstown. Our soda brands included Squirt, Bubble Up, and the Nehi fruit flavors.

Inco rode the wave of the Schlitz brand's success until it began to falter nationally.

Schlitz Brewing Co. was then acquired by Stroh's Brewing Co., so Inco became the importing distributor for the Stroh's brands. The Stroh's brands did extremely well through the 1970s into the 1980s, until the company started having some financial difficulties related to its purchase of the much bigger Schlitz Brewing Co.

Once again, when it looked as if the company's fortunes would take a downturn, my grandfather jumped on an opportunity to become a Miller Brewing Co. importing distributor. At this time, the flagship Miller brand was Miller High Life. Soon afterward, Miller Lite became one of the first national light beer brands in the U.S. The success of Miller Lite prompted Inco Beverage to seek another larger warehousing facility, this time building a new warehouse/office complex in Richland Township in 1977.

Inco has continued to operate as a major importing distributor out of the Richland Township facility (147 Allison Drive off Eisenhower Boulevard), expanding the warehouse and offices multiple times until today to accommodate more brands; more delivery vehicles and drivers; and a bigger sales, customer service, and administrative staff.

Inco operated with about 45 employees until the next major development occurred, which was our purchase of neighboring Greensburg Beverage in January 2019. This acquisition doubled the size of our staff and more than doubled the size of our wholesaling territory.

Question: What's most rewarding about your business?

Answer: The most rewarding thing about our business is that the third generation of Incardona family members (myself, my cousins Ryan and Terry Rizzo, and my brother John Incardona) have been able to continue the legacy of our grandparents in operating Inco Beverage the way my grandparents did. Our employees are like family to us. Many of them have been with us for 20, 30, even 40 years. We will celebrate our 90th anniversary as a company this December. Our goal is to be a Johnstown company for at least another 90 years! What makes this possible is the outstanding work ethic of our employees here in Johnstown, and a large complement of loyal customers.

Question: How broad is the territory reached by your products or services?

Answer: Our current territory encompasses a 15-county area: Cambria, Somerset, Indiana, Bedford, Blair, Huntingdon, Centre, Clearfield, Jefferson, Armstrong, Westmoreland, Fayette, Greene and Washington counties, and the eastern edge of Allegheny County (Monroeville area).

Question: What have been your biggest business challenges?

Answer: Our biggest business challenge is the competition between beer, wine and spirits to capture the attention of our local population. The American consumer's tastes have changed immensely since my grandparents started out with just four beer brands in 1933. Fortunately, the beer industry has adapted, with innovations designed to attract a younger generation of legal drinking-age adults. Our product portfolio has mushroomed, as we now represent hundreds of malt beverage brands. In addition to beer, our suppliers now make a wide variety of hard seltzers, hard iced teas, and flavored malt beverages that mirror many distilled spirits drinks, such as margaritas, daiquiris, mojitos, etc.

Question: What advice do you have for people who want to open and sustain a business in Johnstown?

My advice for anyone wanting to open and grow a business in Johnstown: Take advantage of the outstanding work ethic of the Johnstown work force. A brief anecdote about that: I was at an industry meeting in Harrisburg, and met the founder/president of a major microbrewery/taproom in Pittsburgh. When he heard my company was located in Johnstown, he immediately said: "Don't ever move out of Johnstown." I asked him why.

He told me his family had previously been in the business of manufacturing equipment used by the steel industry in Pittsburgh. His family business eventually grew to include multiple factories. He told me the most profitable, most efficient of those factories was the one his family owned in Johnstown. He attributed that to the work ethic of the people of the Johnstown area.

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