A look inside the collapse of RNDC's New York joint venture

Editor’s note: This is a developing story and will be updated periodically with new information. If you have tips about what’s going on at RNDC, please get in touch by emailing me ([email protected]) or texting me on Signal (dinfontay.11). Anonymity available.—Dave.

On Wednesday, Republic National Distributing Company (RNDC) took another major step towards its own unraveling with the announcement that Manhattan Beer & Beverage Distributors (MBBD) would onboard some of the castaways from its short-lived, ill-fated New York joint venture with Opici Family Distributors (OFD).

“We have reached an agreement to acquire distribution rights for a collection of wine and spirits brands from RNDC New York,” wrote MBBD principals Simon, Alex, and Mitchel Bergson in an April 29th letter to employees. “With this acquisition […] our geographic reach will expand to cover the entire state of New York on behalf of these new suppliers.” The memo does not specify which suppliers MBBD will take on.

Nor does a corresponding dispatch sent on OFD and RNDC letterhead the same day. “After 80 years of doing business in the New York market, we have reached an agreement to sell our distribution rights to Manhattan Beer & Beverage Distributors effective August 1,” reads the memo, which is signed by “The Opici Family.” Fingers obtained both documents from a current employee at OFD who has been granted anonymity to avoid retaliation and preserve relationships within the industry.

Neither MBBD nor OFD immediately responded to a request for comment.

It’s not clear what will happen to OFD’s NY workforce come September. “Opici is the last of these old-school wholesale companies,” the current employee told me in an email exchange Thursday. “Throughout the company, it was not unusual to have employees with 30-40 years of [tenure there]. Or matching last names with husbands and wives or children working in different departments.”

Whether those longtime workers will get hired at MBBD—which said in its note that “new team members [would be] joining to support the additional volume and expanded geography,” without specifying from where—or would even want to be hired by a beer-focused mega-wholesaler navigating its “total beverage” transition is an open question. “MBBD will interview for positions, but everyone I am talking to is looking to get out now,” my source said.

Between the Bergsons and the Opicis stands the crumbling edifice of RNDC. It got there in part because OFD, the insider said, “saw the need to scale in order to compete and survive [and] at the time RNDC looked like a natural and positive fit.” The two inked the joint-venture in September 2022, with the much-larger Texas wholesaler hoping the smaller East Coast specialty house would outperform its previous Big Apple boondoggle. Back in 2004, National Distributing Co. (pre-Republic) took a 50% stake in Eber Bros. Wine & Spirits’ Paramount Brands subsidiary with plans to take on the NYC market, only to see rival Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits best the upstate NY parent company in protracted litigation over a botched merger concluded in 2007.

For the company now known as RNDC, the second time was not the charm in NYC. “They just were not who they purported to be,” the current OFD worker said. “I was always surprised by how little engagement we had with anyone from RNDC since the merger. They were hands-off to the point of negligence.”

RNDC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Fingers needs your support to do more independent journalism.