The German immigrant drove daily from Covington, Ky. to Dayton to sell Heidelberg Brewing Co’s Student Prince and Heirloom beers to the Dayton market.
Miller Jr. says his great-grandmother, Emma, taught piano to help support the family.
“She did the books, and he sold the beer,” Miller said.
Heidelberg kept the name even though the brewery closed in 1946 after being sold to Bavarian Brewery. Student Prince and Heirloom were discounted.
“We couldn’t afford to change the name,” Miller said of that decision.
From 1 to 300 trucks
Still family-owned, Heidelberg is now one of the Midwest’s largest distributors of beers, wines, low-powered spirits and non-alcoholic beverages.
Albert W. Vontz Jr., an only child, helped run the company after commanding the destroyer USS Wells during World War II.
Vontz Jr. was a noted philanthropist in the Cincinnati area donating to causes that support arts and education.
Locally, Heidelberg is involved a list of charities that includes Big Brothers and Big Sisters of the Greater Miami Valley , Dayton Visual Arts Center, Culture Works, the American Heart Association, Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra and The Pink Ribbon Girls. It sponsors Fleurs Et Vin, a food and wine event that benefits AIDS Resource Center Ohio.
Miller said the company is invested in the state and this city and strives to be good stewards of the community and environment.
He said the alcohol industry is built with family businesses and longstanding relationships.
Heidelberg does business with major players, but is not a coast-to-coast player, he said, noting that the company’s base and focus is here.
“We need Ohio to be healthy. We can’t pick up our business and move it,” he said. “How are we influencing and supporting Ohio’s success as a good place to live and work? Why would someone want to live in Ohio?”
According to court documents, the company is now owned by Albert Vontz III and his sister, Carol Miller, the mother of Vail Miller Jr., and their families.
Among the 18,000 products the company sells in Dayton is 6 million cases from Anheuser-Busch InBev and Yuengling products breweries yearly.
Ohio law requires that beer, wine and spirits this is to be sold by bars, restaurants and stores go through a distributor.
The company now has 300 trucks to deliver beer, wine, spirits and other drinks to 26,000 establishments in Ohio and Kentucky from 10 warehouses.
The Dayton facility serves 1,900 retailers in the market. Its 62 beer and wine trucks cover 56 routes in a 14-county area.
New digs
The company, which employs about 1,600, bought the former Cooper Tire & Rubber Company at 3601 Dryden Road in Moraine in September of 2012.
It moved its beer operations from the 244,000-square-foot Leo Street facility the following May.
“We were in North Dayton since the early ’50s,” Miller said. “We were sort of land-locked and couldn’t grow.”
The Moraine building was vacant for about five years. The building's $21. 2 million renovation from an industrial site included office space, a water tower, dock-door replacement, the removal of a rail system used to move tires and the addition of a 32,000-square-foot cooler for draft and specialty packaged beers.
“At the end of the day, we liked the idea of recycling more than the idea of building new,” Miller said, a graduate of Miami University in Oxford.
A whole lot of beer
An average 700,000 cases of beer, wine and other beverages are on its warehouse floor daily, but our tour of the facility revealed that there is still plenty of room for Heidelberg to grow.
There are even train tracks that could potentially be used in the future.
Continued growth is one of Miller’s goals. A strong work force is important.
“How do we thrive and adopt (the business to) where people feel valued and respected in an ever-changing and complex world?” he questioned.
Miller was optimistic about the industry and sees potential in things like the ever-growing craft beer market.
Thanks to more craft breweries per capita than anywhere else in the state, Dayton has been declared "Ohio's Beer Capital" by a list of cheerleaders that includes the organizers of AleFest.
>> A guide to Dayton's breweries
Time will tell how Heidelberg becomes involved in craft beers.
“With all of these upstarts, it is one woman, one truck,” Miller said. “How do you go from four employees to eight? Are you going to invest in trucks and hire people to drive trucks? We want to embrace those folks, but we also have commitments.”
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