Post #198406 by Lake Surfer on Wed, Nov 16, 2005 9:06 AM

Some news about your favorite Hukilau wobbly pop...

I miss Cabana Boy, how is he these days?

Beer company takes cheeky approach to marketing itself

Bootie Beer, brewed in La Crosse, tries to use sex appeal to take brew to a national audience

By RICK ROMELL
[email protected]

Posted: Nov. 15, 2005

A brew with Wisconsin ties named - wink, wink - Bootie Beer is making noise about kicking some fermented malt beverage industry butt.

Urging customers to "grabëbootie," the folks at Florida-based Bootie Beer Corp. declare national ambitions for their suggestively named drink, which is produced in La Crosse by City Brewing Co.

"We have a really exciting thing going on in the beer industry," said Tania Torruella, chief executive officer and interim chief financial officer of Bootie.

Torruella said the firm had identified image problems in the beer industry. Among other things, she said, distributors have been quoted as saying that "the sexiness in beer has been lost to the point where it's comical."

Enter Bootie, with conservative labeling that contrasts with its attention-grabbing name.

"Our target market finds Bootie Beer and Bootie Light very sexy, exciting, light and fun, and at the same time, delicious," Torruella said. The company's target market hasn't exactly been honed razor-sharp.

"Everyone who drinks beer is our target," she said.

The name, she said, is "very relevant to the current generation. It's a hip name. It's cool. It's fun. It has a lot of meanings."

Besides the slang reference to the human posterior, Torruella said Bootie also could refer to the hood of a car or pirate treasure.

"Bootie is sexy," she said. "Bootie means a lot of things to a lot of people."

Whether Bootie can shake up the sluggish U.S. beer market, though, remains to be seen.

As brewers go, the firm is tiny. It announced this week that its debut in the Northwest generated orders from distributors of more than 20,000 cases. Twenty thousand cases represents about 20 minutes of sales for the Miller Brewing Co.

Put another way, it would take more than 400 such shipments to fill the "World's Largest Six Pack" - the holding tanks that are a La Crosse landmark at City Brewing.

Bootie has been losing money. In fact, its auditors said in October that the firm's "recurring losses from operations and its difficulties in generating sufficient cash flow to meet its obligations and sustain its operations raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern."

Jim Crane, internal accountant for Bootie, said: "You're going to have a going-concern opinion whenever you have negative operating cash flows, which Bootie Beer has now and probably will" for several quarters.

Executive's troubled history

In the same filing with securities regulators that contained the auditors' statement, Bootie said it expected, by issuing debentures and borrowing, to be able to raise the cash needed to operate and meet its obligations.

Torruella is a former stockbroker terminated by Merrill Lynch in 2001 and later banned from the industry. Merrill reported to the New York Stock Exchange in 2002 that more than 150 customers had complained about Torruella, alleging such things as unauthorized and unsuitable trading, failure to follow instructions, and creating and issuing unapproved correspondence to customers.

As of June 2002, when the exchange banned Torruella from working again for a member firm, Merrill Lynch had paid $19.5 million in customer settlements, according to an exchange document.

The exchange banned Torruella for failing to testify before its enforcement division. According to the exchange document, Torruella's lawyer said she couldn't testify until after arbitration proceedings she had begun against Merrill had finished. The exchange said it couldn't wait that long.

"The only reason I was disbarred is because I failed to attend" the exchange hearing, Torruella said. "None of the other allegations were ever validated, and everyone went home happy."

Bootie's stock is publicly traded, but thinly. Shares last traded on Friday, at $1.10.

City Brewing, housed in the former G. Heileman Brewing plant, employs as many as 400 people, most of them making beverages for other companies that contract for the production.

"They're not one of our larger customers," President Randy Smith said of Bootie, "but I don't like to say any customer is not important to us. Everybody contributes something to the total output."

He described Bootie as "a lighter type product, very drinkable."

"It's real good beer," Smith said.