Q&A with: Marjorie Feldman-Wood

Mar. 12—MARJORIE FELDMAN-WOOD

Occupation: Owner and CFO of Al's Beverage in East Windsor and other soda distributors and manufacturers.

Hometown: Lives in Granby. Grew up in Winchendon, Massachusetts, on the border with New Hampshire.

Background: Earned a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration; majored in accounting, following in her father's footsteps, who was an accountant in her hometown. Worked in the tax department at (David) Chase Enterprises in Hartford, and in Chase's cable/television operations in Warsaw, Poland.

Interests: Likes to cook and have impromptu dinner parties. Has been renovating a vacation lake house in New Hampshire, where the family swims and kayaks and spends time with friends.

Q: How did you get involved with Al's Beverage Company?

A: I had a friend at the time and we said, "Let's do something together." He had actually founded Al's Beverage Company. I had saved up some money. We ended up buying Al's.

I thought, I'll do a consolidation strategy. We'll buy up other companies that are similar, we'll buy up manufacturers and distributors. We'll be vertically integrated and there's no heir apparent. It was a straight consolidation strategy. So, that's what we did.

We bought Al's. Unfortunately our partnership didn't work out so well. I ended up buying him out and I kept running Al's.

I later bought a company called Jason's Soda Systems, which was a distributor in Connecticut. Two years after that, I bought a building in East Windsor. After that, I bought a few companies along the way. I bought Rhode Island Fruit and Syrup in Smithfield, Rhode Island. I bought Cameron Supply in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

We have some distribution strategically located, so we cover New England pretty well between Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania.

Al's is a manufacturer. It manufacturers only for the food service industry. Everything we do is in fountains. Anything that's in a dispensed beverage, whether it's frozen, whether it's soda, we manufacture it or we distribute it.

We are a licensed manufacturer for the Keurig Dr. Pepper Company. We manufacture RC, 7Up, Canada, Dry, Sunkist Orange, Stewart's Root Beer, and a few other brands for them. We're licensed by them and we manufacture a whole line of our own products.

We also are a licensed manufacturer through Polar Beverages of Gosling Ginger Beer. Our latest adventure was to get the license for PEZ to be able to create a PEZ frozen beverage line, which has been our most exciting line in our area of growth.

We have our own cola, we own our own lemon, our own ginger and we either do some private labeling or we do it under the house brands. It's an exciting business.

Q: When did you first get involved with Al's?

A: Aug. 2, 1996.

Q: How big was the company in '96?

A: 10 folks total.

Q: What was the business like at the time?

A: It was in Springfield on Gasoline Alley. Our biggest tank was 1,000 gallons and it had a little mix room and it had some packaging. We had a handful of customers and barely making $1 million in revenue. They had some relationships.

Q: What was Al's responsibility to soda companies in 1996?

A: It was strictly a manufacturer. To this day, the biggest part of our businesses is manufacturing. We sell trailer loads to distributors up and down the East Coast, into the mid-Atlantic, into Tennessee.

Q: How far reaching is Al's at this point?

A: We go all the way to California with certain products. Really, we hug the East Coast. We go into the mid-Atlantic, New York, and Pennsylvania. We're stronger in the East than we are anywhere else. Our biggest growth has been in Tennessee. We go all the way to Florida.

Q: How many employees do you have now?

A: Pre-COVID, we were up to 75. Post-COVID we're at about 50.

Q: Do you expect to hire back?

A: No. We go to the restaurant trade, so we took a direct hit. It's been an interesting time. I kept a skeleton crew on. There's still some work that we do, whether it's nursing homes or jails or whatnot, where that work continued, but it's limited.

Q: What's in the future for Al's?

A: We're always looking at the next opportunities in this industry and there is an opportunity right now with a chain that is looking for their own private product, which is really exciting. I do see the frozen beverage industry as really interesting.

The big players right now, Coke and Pepsi, are getting involved in boozy drinks. Everybody's going to be branching out into that, take home, single serve, alcoholic versus non-alcoholic drinks. It's going to be what's probably going to save them.

Q: What about you? What are your personal plans?

A: I have a 9 1/2 -year-old daughter. Our ties are pretty established here in Connecticut.

For right now, I see status quo. I see us doing what we do best. I've tried a few experiments along the way with new products and new things. I tried to create a water cooler that would dispense flavored beverages. it was a great idea and people loved it, but it was impossible to produce and it cost me a lot of money. I couldn't get the machine produced. Right now we're just sticking to our knitting.

Note: This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

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